Cara’s Blog

The similarities between all the wars we have studied so far are remarkable. As the war went on Sam Watkins grew sick of fighting. He saw horrific sights of the hanging of two teenage spies, “blood covered ground… [and] the groans of the wounded and dying” (169) in many battles, and the remains of men which he regretted to kill. Wages of War picks up almost where Co. Aytch leaves off. Yet again the nation is faced with the dilemma of what is to happen to the veterans who come home along with many more questions. What would happen to the freed blacks? If they were even to be freed, and what would happen to the South? The death of Abraham Lincoln complicated these questions more.

I wasn’t terribly surprised to read that Nathaniel Hawthorne though that “no war should be fought over [slavery]” and that it would “ultimately go away by itself.” However, it made me a little frustrated with human ignorance. To say that slavery would “ vanish like a dream” after its used has been fulfilled is foolish, heartless, and makes about as much sense as assuming, as the author points out, that the Axis Powers during WWII would just “vanish like a dream.”