(Image Source: Session Magazine)

BY CHARLIE MCKEAGUE

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

“It is the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, and today canons boomed at down recreating the attack on Fort Sumter that plunged the nation into civil war. Music.”

Shots fired – cannons unleashed.  April 12th - a day of remembrance and celebration in the U.S.  But what’s changed? And how should Americans remember the occasion.

First to CNN – which provides a brief history lesson – and reminds us just how bloody the war was.


“The civil war, also known as the War Between the States killed more American troops than any other U.S. war.  And it all started here. Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. Confederate troops opened fire on the fort.  The union commander surrendered the next day and the civil war had begun."

The media are honoring the anniversary with longer than normal op-eds – quizzes – interactive teaching guides and more.  An opinion writer for The Root says Americans should care more about this day – especially African Americans.

“150 years later, many black Americans would give a collective shrug of the shoulders and say, ‘So what?’”

He goes on detailing why all Americans – black and white – should care, concluding…

“…black and white were forged into the first American rainbow for freedom. It is not a past to be forgotten, much less scorned. It's time to make the 150th anniversary of the Civil War the occasion for welding together a rainbow of remembrance.”

A writer for Fox News agrees that Americans should honor this day – and remember how far we’ve come.

“What is clear is that the nation has progressed mightily beyond where it was at the onset of the Civil War, both as a world power and in the way that the equal rights of its citizens are regarded and protected. It was a long, hard road but it has taken us all to a better place.”

Finally, a historian tells the New York Daily News –  don’t forget about a simple change in grammar.

“Before the civil war, when speaking about our country we would say, ‘The United States Are’ Plural. We saw ourselves as a collection of things, a union.  After the civil war we began talking about a one thing, a nation.  And we began saying ‘The United States is’”
 

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Transcript by Newsy.