Memorial Day

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. William James, in 1897, dedicating the monument to Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th regiment, a monument which still stands in Boston Common today: “And when South Carolina took the final step in battering down Fort Sumter, it was the fanatics of slavery themselves who called upon their idolized institution ruin swift and complete. What law and reason were unable to accomplish, had now to be done by that uncertain and dreadful dispenser of God’s judgments, War – War, with its abominably casual, inaccurate methods, destroying good and bad together, but at last able to hew a way out.” More James:“What country under heaven has not thousands of such youths to rejoice in, youths on whom the safety of the human race depends? Whether or not they leave memorials behind them, whether their names are writ in water or in marble, depends mostly on the opportunities which the accidents of history throw into their path” The monument, and James, and the 54th regiment,…