Book Review

As the United States approaches its most exalted patriotic holiday on July 4th where we celebrate our hardwon union and form of government that provides civil freedoms seen nowhere else in the world, we accept that we are living during a time of heightened political divisiveness, perhaps not seen since the time of our Civil War.

In The Presence of Mine Enemies, written in 2006 by Edward L. Ayers, provides a panoply of personal stories, recollections and material collected in The Valley of The Shadow Project detailing life during the era of the Civil War. These primary sources include thousands of letters, diaries, newspapers, census entries, photographs, maps and military records left by residents of the counties of Franklin, Pennsylvania, and Augusta, Virginia, which are the focus of action in this book.

The Valley of the Shadow Project is so named as a nod to the 23rd Psalm of the Old Testament and Hebrew Bible because both combatant sides, the North and the South, made it their touchstone for their own perceived righteous stand ("The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want"). The author uses verses from this psalm as a descriptor/introduction to each chapter.

It is the personal stories and recollections from the Valley of the Shadow archive that put the flesh on the bones of our understanding of events that led these communities and their peoples, separated only by the political construct of the Mason-Dixon line, into war. Yet they had much in common that included the same history, religious beliefs, allegiance, great agricultural and industrial wealth, and accomplishment. The book asks how war could be the result.

Before the civil war began, before John Brown's attack at Harper's Ferry, or the problematic election of 1860, on July 4, 1859, people of both Republican and Democratic parties in both Franklin County and Augusta County were unabashedly celebrating the remembrance of their common Union.

One resident at the time wrote, "We may quarrel and abuse each other, as much as possible, during political campaigns and it may be at other times; but upon the recurrence of our natal day [July 4th] we drop our weapons of warfare and gather around the festive board, like a band of brothers, not knowing any difference or distinction."

Then came those events that exacerbated tensions. The author writes, "Had it been generally believed in 1860 that the election of Lincoln would bring the bloodiest civil war of modern times [620,000 killed which is equivalent today in percentage of the country to 8 million people] ... it is doubtful whether the popular vote would have ...[ gone the way it did]...Voters on both sides profoundly misunderstood and underestimated the other."

The author goes on to state, "The American political system after November 1860 sloughed off its decades-old form of politics, that of coalition, compromise, and efficacy. People had long called one another names and imagined terrible failings in their opponents during campaigns but then put those words aside when it came time to govern...In the place of compromise had arisen a politics devoted to expressing anger and frustration...The politics of grievance devoted its energies to identifying enemies and drawing lines. It longed for some kind of culmination, some degree of satisfaction."

For the reader, there are many personal accounts and historical events that support the author's conclusions and that also resonate with descriptions of our current discourse.

Inexorably, the author demonstrates how the breakdown of the government and then the rule of law, drug the country into killing fields that wrecked the lives of families and took a generation of young men. This left the elders and women to deal with the results of the destruction of the national economy that would require decades to recover.

This book is not a new publication but it provides a wealth of historic data and wisdom that could perhaps help us change how so many seem to embrace what the author names as the "politics of grievance." Perhaps on this July 4th, we might explore what unites instead of what divides us.

This book is available at Inkberry Books in Niwot.