As the centennial of the Civil War approached Life magazine asked Robert Penn Warren to write an essay on the impact the war had on America. Warren, a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and numerous other prizes accepted. This small book is the essay he wrote in 1961. While Warren never considered himself a historian, he had a lifelong love of history and published a biography on John Brown. His grandfather, who fought for the South while believing in Union, told him about the Civil War and instilled in him a love of history.

This essay is as fresh and new today as it was in 1961. Warren's thoughts on the war, what he calls "The Great Alibi" and the "Treasury of Virtue" are still accurate. This is one of the great essays on the American Civil War, the impact on American history and how it affects us today. The style of writing is interesting, intelligent and very easy to read. You will quickly be caught up in the logic even as you identify current positions and come to understand their historic importance.

Robert Penn Warren, a noted Southern writer, is certain that our Civil War shaped modern America, the social institutions which had to take care of the freed slaves, domestic policies, and foreign interests. "The Civil War is our only 'felt' history -- history lived in the national imagination and not just on paper. This is not to say that the War is always, and by all men, felt in the same way. Quite the contrary. But this fact is an index to the very complexity, depth, and fundamental significance of the event. It is an overwhelming and vital image of human, and national, experience."



It taking place so long ago and ended so disastrously with the death of Abraham Lincoln, I really don't believe it caused our failing economy, philosophy, and psychology. Far too many wars, most on foreign lands, have taken place since then to put all the blame on the ressurection of the slaves. "There is no facet of our lives today that does not owe its present character in some measure to the Civil War."



The Confederate Commander in East Tennessee was General James Longstreet. The siege of Knoxville and Battle of Fort Sanders was disastrous for this area. Bridge burners to stop the railroad took place across East Tennessee. The campaign at Strawberry Plains was led by Colonel William P. Sanders, for whom the Fort on the UT campus was named. Bulls Gap, birthplace of Archie Campbell (HeeHaw fame) was pivotal for the northeast, as was Lick Creek Bridge and Blue Springs.



In Middle Tennessee, commandered by Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood, Nathan Bedford Forrest reigned in Columbia, having been born a short distance away in Chapel Hill; Columbia is the birthplace of a U. S. President, James Polk, Thompson's Station and Fort Donelson on either end of Nashville had important confrontations. In Pulaski, Sam Davis was hanged as a Confederate spy; there is a statue on the Square and on Capitol Hill in Nashville. His home at Smyrna is near Murfreesboro.



West Tennessee was under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom Sherman called, "that devil Forrest." There is a statue of him in Forrest Square on Union Avenue in Memphis. He started his campaign in Clifton on the Tennessee River where the federal ironclad held sway, near Jackson, TN. At Shiloh, one of the nations's oldest and most pristine battlefield parks, General Albert Sidney Johnston led the Southern side and died (buried there 25 miles Northeast of Corinth, Mississippi, near Savannah, Tennessee. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have established a memorial at Salem Cemetery near Jackson and a small park at Davis Bridge, near Bolivar.



Robert Penn Warren was a Phodes Scholar at Oxford University in London and taught at Yale University, as did Richard Marius. He wrote JOHN BROWN: THE MAKING OF A MARTYR, THE CAVE, WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME, BAND OF ANGELS (made into a movie), ALL THE KINGS'S MEN which won the Pulitzer prize and made into an Academy award winning movie about Huey Long. He also wrote PROMISES (poetry, which won the Edna St. Vincent Millay Award of Poetry Society of America), SELECTED ESSAYS, TEXTBOOKS: UNDERSTANDING POETRY and UNDERSTANDING FICTION. He was truly as much a part of history as the Civil War of which he writes his meditation on the Centennial in this book.

Robert Penn Warren, a noted Southern writer, is certain that our Civil War shaped modern America, the social institutions which had to take care of the freed slaves, domestic policies, and foreign interests. "The Civil War is our only 'felt' history -- history lived in the national imagination and not just on paper. This is not to say that the War is always, and by all men, felt in the same way. Quite the contrary. But this fact is an index to the very complexity, depth, and fundamental significance of the event. It is an overwhelming and vital image of human, and national, experience."

It taking place so long ago and ended so disastrously with the death of Abraham Lincoln, I really don't believe it caused our failing economy, philosophy, and psychology. Far too many wars, most on foreign lands, have taken place since then to put all the blame on the ressurection of the slaves. "There is no facet of our lives today that does not owe its present character in some measure to the Civil War."

The Confederate Commander in East Tennessee was General James Longstreet. The siege of Knoxville and Battle of Fort Sanders was disastrous for this area. Bridge burners to stop the railroad took place across East Tennessee. The campaign at Strawberry Plains was led by Colonel William P. Sanders, for whom the Fort on the UT campus was named. Bulls Gap, birthplace of Archie Campbell (HeeHaw fame) was pivotal for the northeast, as was Lick Creek Bridge and Blue Springs.

In Middle Tennessee, commandered by Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood, Nathan Bedford Forrest reigned in Columbia, having been born a short distance away in Chapel Hill; Columbia is the birthplace of a U. S. President, James Polk, Thompson's Station and Fort Donelson on either end of Nashville had important confrontations. In Pulaski, Sam Davis was hanged as a Confederate spy; there is a statue on the Square and on Capitol Hill in Nashville. His home at Smyrna is near Murfreesboro.

West Tennessee was under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom Sherman called, "that devil Forrest." There is a statue of him in Forrest Square on Union Avenue in Memphis. He started his campaign in Clifton on the Tennessee River where the federal ironclad held sway, near Jackson, TN. At Shiloh, one of the nations's oldest and most pristine battlefield parks, General Albert Sidney Johnston led the Southern side and died (buried there 25 miles Northeast of Corinth, Mississippi, near Savannah, Tennessee. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have established a memorial at Salem Cemetery near Jackson and a small park at Davis Bridge, near Bolivar.

Robert Penn Warren was a Phodes Scholar at Oxford University in London and taught at Yale University, as did Richard Marius. He wrote JOHN BROWN: THE MAKING OF A MARTYR, THE CAVE, WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME, BAND OF ANGELS (made into a movie), ALL THE KINGS'S MEN which won the Pulitzer prize and made into an Academy award winning movie about Huey Long. He also wrote PROMISES (poetry, which won the Edna St. Vincent Millay Award of Poetry Society of America), SELECTED ESSAYS, TEXTBOOKS: UNDERSTANDING POETRY and UNDERSTANDING FICTION. He was truly as much a part of history as the Civil War of which he writes his meditation on the Centennial in this book.