With what's going on in the Middle East right now I think this is especially fitting.
"By December [1860] the subject was omnipresent, inescapable. 'Nothing was talked of but secession,' remembered one Southerner, 'in every company, at every street corner, whenever two people met that was the subject discussed.' How could Southerners not have seen secession coming, especially as they were, taken as a group, its architects? They did see it coming, of course. They voted and acted in ways that made it a likely, then an inevitable, then an accomplished fact. But they did not, could not, have foretold how it would feel.
And how did it feel? In diary after diary, letter after letter, Southerners describe themselves as being in a state of what might be termed political shock. The particulars and timing, of course, vary from state to state, family to family, person to person--but the trajectory goes something like this. Passing references to political affairs begin to lengthen, deepen, and become more personal; the abstract busy-ness of everyday life takes on direction and then energy, surging, swirling, and building, until the writers find themselves at the epicenter of something mammoth and unknown to them. It is a curious feeling, so immediate and strong, so much larger than the little bodies that seek to apprehend it, direct it, join it. Eventually, when political affairs have achieved sufficient gravity, time begins to warp. The months that stretch out between the election and Sumter become a hurtling calm, a furious wait. Finally, the wait--timeless and brief, exhilarating and terrifying--is over. If will be War. The mammoth something has swallowed up all the little writers, leaving of each only a disembodied narrative voice to comment distantly on the life it has surrendered to the rush.
This was an aspect of the secession crisis white Southerners shared regardless of political stripe. They were, all of them, at the center of the furious calm, safe for the moment but watching nervously as a storm raged about them, beyond their power and their ken. Men who had dedicated their whole lives to Southern independence pinched themselves as events they had set in motion took on a life of their own--and then slipped quietly out of their control. Others more removed from politics were altogether thunderstruck, exhilarated and dazed by turns. In diary after diary, unionist and disunionist alike document a reaction that seems a lot like shock. 'Things seem to progress in a slow but certain way,' Meta Grimball marveled from her South Carolina plantation. "Everything goes on as usual, the planting, the negros, all just the same; and a great Empire tumbling to pieces about us.' ...."
Excerpt from:
Berry, Stephen William. All that makes a man: love and ambition in the Civil War South. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.
"By December [1860] the subject was omnipresent, inescapable. 'Nothing was talked of but secession,' remembered one Southerner, 'in every company, at every street corner, whenever two people met that was the subject discussed.' How could Southerners not have seen secession coming, especially as they were, taken as a group, its architects? They did see it coming, of course. They voted and acted in ways that made it a likely, then an inevitable, then an accomplished fact. But they did not, could not, have foretold how it would feel.
And how did it feel? In diary after diary, letter after letter, Southerners describe themselves as being in a state of what might be termed political shock. The particulars and timing, of course, vary from state to state, family to family, person to person--but the trajectory goes something like this. Passing references to political affairs begin to lengthen, deepen, and become more personal; the abstract busy-ness of everyday life takes on direction and then energy, surging, swirling, and building, until the writers find themselves at the epicenter of something mammoth and unknown to them. It is a curious feeling, so immediate and strong, so much larger than the little bodies that seek to apprehend it, direct it, join it. Eventually, when political affairs have achieved sufficient gravity, time begins to warp. The months that stretch out between the election and Sumter become a hurtling calm, a furious wait. Finally, the wait--timeless and brief, exhilarating and terrifying--is over. If will be War. The mammoth something has swallowed up all the little writers, leaving of each only a disembodied narrative voice to comment distantly on the life it has surrendered to the rush.
This was an aspect of the secession crisis white Southerners shared regardless of political stripe. They were, all of them, at the center of the furious calm, safe for the moment but watching nervously as a storm raged about them, beyond their power and their ken. Men who had dedicated their whole lives to Southern independence pinched themselves as events they had set in motion took on a life of their own--and then slipped quietly out of their control. Others more removed from politics were altogether thunderstruck, exhilarated and dazed by turns. In diary after diary, unionist and disunionist alike document a reaction that seems a lot like shock. 'Things seem to progress in a slow but certain way,' Meta Grimball marveled from her South Carolina plantation. "Everything goes on as usual, the planting, the negros, all just the same; and a great Empire tumbling to pieces about us.' ...."
Excerpt from:
Berry, Stephen William. All that makes a man: love and ambition in the Civil War South. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.
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