What The American Public Always Wants Is A Tragedy With A...

It is known that as time passes by humans tend to change the meanings of certain events that have occurred in the past, they add a new connotation to it. This isn’t much different when regarding U.S History. Every time we go through a tragedy or something we aren’t specifically proud of we try to see the positive side of it in order to not be ashamed of ourselves just like Blight’s prologue states a quote by William Dean Howells, â€Å"What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.† Moreover, through the Civil War and the years it follow we see how the idea of what the Civil War means is revolutionized. At the beginning when the Civil War broke out many thought that they were fighting the South because they seceded from the Union. However, towards the end like Blight states, â€Å"In the final months of the Civil War, all participants knew they were living through transformations† (23). One needed to know what the far was go ing to be about in order to make it clear of the coming steps that would be developed after the Civil War. Just on key Lincoln gives the war a new meaning, the war was fought to emancipate slaves and to bestow upon them their basic rights. Blight states in his The Dead and the Living, â€Å"Lincoln seemed to see fitfully that rebirth would be rooted in the challenge of human equality in a nation† (13). This became the most reasonable meaning to the Civil War since it was one of the main reasons that tension continued to grow. Moreover, it wasShow MoreRelatedThe Beginning Of The Civil War1289 Words   |  6 PagesWar was in fact about slavery and that slavery was an issue â€Å"resolved† by the Civil War. Yes the war was initially about race and how the country â€Å"needed† to free slaves, David W. 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