Well, here we are, right at the brink of disaster. Things are about to get really busy. The United States is about to begin a unique, and very bloody, war. It’s unique in that it was kind of the transitional war from old colonial warfare weapons and strategies, to new modern weapons and strategies. It’s a bit of both, but it will start off, much more in the old colonial style. But it’s going to end with ironclad ships, machine guns, revolvers, aerial reconnaissance, and total war. We’ll get to all that as we go.
Last episode, I mentioned that even before Lincoln was inaugurated as President, there were places in the South where there were forts that were controlled by troops that were federal, or Union troops. The US army had forts in several key places in the south. In some of those places, the commanders and troops were actually northerners, so their allegiance was to the federal government, rather than to the locals. We are going to get to the really well-known example of this, Fort Sumter, in a moment, but there were others as well.
What is A Short Walk through Our Long History?
I think that if you want to understand the world we live in today, it helps to understand the important events of history. In this series, we are going to look at major events, people, documents, places, books, and ideas that have shaped history, and thus shaped our modern world.