yet once, ages ago,
they had been everywhere and
had seen everything

The books which make up this trilogy began, very simply, as an attempt to understand the men who fought in the Army of the Potomac. As a small boy I had known a number of these men in their old age; they were grave, dignified, and thoughtful, with long white beards and a general air of being pillars of the community. They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets; yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much. All that was real had taken place when they were young; everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much—they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it, and they had enough of the old-fashioned religion to believe without any question that when they passed over they would simply be rejoining men and ways of living which they had known long ago.

Yet, in an odd way, the old veterans did leave one correct impression: the notion that as young men they had been caught up by something ever so much larger than themselves and that the war in which they fought did settle something for us—or, incredibly, started something which we ourselves have got to finish. It was not only the biggest experience in their own lives; it was in a way the biggest experience in our life as a nation, and it deserves all of the study it is getting.

From the preface to Mr. Lincoln’s Army, Book One of the Army of Potomac Trilogy by Bruce Catton, (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1962).

They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets;

yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much.

All that was real had taken place when they were young;

everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much —

they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it,

It was not only the biggest experience in their own lives; it was in a way the biggest experience in our life as a nation.

I am reminded of what Big Bill wrote in his play, Henry V.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

In remembrance of Mr. Abraham Lincoln who died on April 15th, 1865.

to reawaken
keep ourselves awake by
dawn’s expectations

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

Henry David Thoreau in the book, Walden, from the Oxford University Press Edition, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 1997.

Nope, not going to tell the joke.

I’ll just tell you the punch line.

“Ralph, what are you doing OUT there?”

The joke is about Ralph Waldo Emerson, another of these three barreled named fellers that populated New England literature, talking to Henry David Thoreau (see) about being in jail.

Most folks, I think, have heard of Thoreau but I am pretty sure they don’t know why anymore.

With a little agitation of folks memories, they might just remember that Thoreau went to jail.

But I am pretty sure they don’t know why.

Back in the day, citizens had to pay a poll tax for the right to vote and whether they voted or not, the tax had to be paid.

At the time the United States of America was at war with Mexico over Texas which, as an independent country was looking to ban slavery so them fellers in the US Government who came from the south and who didn’t want a new, none slave holding country on the border, decided the United States should take Texas in as a State, a slave holding State and to do so, Mexico had to be warred off.

Anyway, Mr. Thoreau was against the war and any war at that, so he refused to pay his poll tax and spent the night in jail.

The people of the town of Concord were pretty upset that such a public defiance was taking place in their town so the folks who had some influence got on the case of Mr. Emerson who was famous for being famous and saying famous things before anyone else said them and Mr. Emerson went down to the jail and asked Mr. Thoreau, “Henry, what are doing in there?”

I have already told you Mr. Thoreau’s response.

It got me to thinking, all these folks with a burr up their butt about something that they don’t like that they US Government has done or is doing.

Well Sir, if they are so mad and so sure of their protest, let them stop paying their taxes.

As Mr. Thoreau might say, “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. “

Set let them folks make a conscious endeavor to elevate their argument not through news sound bites and social media posts but in defiance of the government by not paying taxes.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sure.

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Mr. Thoreau meant when he wrote these thoughts down.

But that is where I am today I guess.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.