A political sign sums up what the majority of the nation has lived through for four years.

Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally.

Colorado State Fairgrounds. Pueblo, Colorado.

Sept. 15, 2008

A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.

“We made the experiment; and the fruit is before us,” Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Slavery. 1857-1858 ca.

President Abraham Lincoln was correct, we cannot escape history. As General Robert E. Lee creeps back into our news streams through mentions from President Donald Trump and energy surrounding the removal of statues honoring Confederate leadership, the inherited haunts of the American Civil War still call out.

The American Civil War will forever fascinate me, not just the battlefield glory but the politics that ground this American experiment in democracy to a halt 150 years ago. To understand the politics is to understand the root issue of the war, the continued expansion of slavery.

The battleship illustrated was on a mission to draw artillery fire from entrenched Confederates at Vicksburg, Mississippi. As the Confederates spent their dwindling ammunition reserves, the Union naval officers celebrated their broadcasted fakeout, the ship was a hoax, made of wood.