Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Today, in 1831, one Rebecca Harding Davis was born. I confess I'd never heard of her before reading today's edition of Today in Literature; she was a novelist and social historian -- successful at both of them, accomplishments especially notable because women in the mid- to late 19th century weren't exactly encouraged to play a prominent role in the world.

In her autobiography, Bits of Gossip (1904), she talks about the effects of the US Civil War on the lives of people on both sides. (Born in Pennsylvania, she moved with her family to Alabama for the first five years of her life, and then finally to Wheeling, in what became the "border state" of West Virginia -- eventually residing with her husband in Philadelphia. So her loyalties didn't fall into nice, neat boxes with sharply-defined corners.) She discusses a couple of heroic and/or heartbreaking stories of soldiers in combat, but then goes on to lay out some of the more unpleasant facts -- such as new immigrants being pressed into service -- which people of the time were preferring to forget. She concludes thusly:

These are sordid facts that I have dragged up. But - they are facts. And because we have hidden them our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage.

That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

Does that ring a bell, or what?