Ever since Obama spoke in Richmond, I’ve been thinking about the Civil War. Thinking about how amazing it was that spoke there, in the Capital of the Confederacy, to an audience of thousands, and spoke about healing and reuniting a nation. For me that speech is the most incredible one of them all. Waching the footage of Obama in Richmond, I couldn’t help but think of Lincoln, and how he quietly walked those devastated streets the day after the Confederate army fell. It was not exactly a victory trip – Lincoln simply walked the streets with just a few people. He just went down to Richmond and put his body there, right in the wound – a sort of bandage? It was an amazing act, and one quickly overshadowed and largely forgotten.
Now Obama will close out in Manassas, where not one but two Civil War battles were fought (Bull Run, to Northerners). Manassas, where in the first battle of Manassas the Civil War pretty much began, and where the second battle of Manassas saw over 18,000 casualties among Union and Confederate soldiers.
I can’t really deal with it, actually. I’m a professor of Civil War era literature, so I live partly in that world, in that national crisis. When I heard that Obama would give his last speech there I just sat down at my computer and started looking at photos of the battlefields, and thinking about that soil, about slavery, about war, about how many generations it takes to . . . to what? Heal? Overcome? Get over? I don’t know.
So last night I had the most OBVIOUS dream – you know, how sometimes dreams are just stupid, they’re so obvious. I was in a big old New England house, one of those 18th century wooden saltboxes, the kind that rich folks have bought up and made nice in recent years. But when I was a kid (not so long ago, in the early 70s, and yes, I’m a Yankee), most of them were still ramshackle and bitterly cold all year, the walls hung with fading cabbage-rose paper, the stairs creaky, the old plaster ceilings cracked and sagging. This dream house was like that. And the people in it were me, a random selection of other folks from my past, and Abraham Lincoln.
Yep. Good old Abraham Lincoln, there he was. Except that he had a nice beard WITH a mustache, thank you. And the thing was, we were all in this house together, and it was BOTH 1864 in the waning months of the Civil War, AND now. We were in this time-warp, and both moments were happening simultaneously, and both moments were uncertain. The mood in the house was anxious, even fearful. And in the dream, I was trying to go up this narrow, rickety set of stairs, but I was in a big hoop skirt, and I tripped. Lincoln was standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching me as I fumbled with my burdensome clothes. I couldn’t get back up on my feet – kept slipping and sitting down again on the steps in frustration. I said to him, "I don’t think I can make it up these stairs!" and he said, "I don’t think you’ll have to fret about those skirts very much longer."
And that was it. I woke up laughing (hopefully, like another Abraham’s Sarah who woke up laughing, I was laughing because of knowledge of a new birth).
Anyway. Those are my cheesy, way too historical thoughts. This is also my first ever post so I’m sure I’ve broken all sorts of rules and I apologize in advance.