BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER

The Civil War has been described as many things, the least of which is actually civil. Men who once offered to lay down their life to defend their brothers in arms were again called upon to make the same sacrifice, only now they were willing to die trying to take the lives of those they may have once saved.

I grew up just north of Atlanta, in Marietta. I spent years hiking the trails and running across the battlefields at Kennesaw Mountain and Kolb's Farm. I knew that the beloved city of my birth had been burned to the ground only to rise from the ashes reborn. I knew the history I was taught, I learned the basics about the battles, I have always found the the war to be a fascinating subject. A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon at the Marietta National Cemetery and thought it interesting that there seemed to be endless rows of Union soldiers from Ohio buried there, many more it seemed than from other states. A couple of years later and six hundred miles to the north I found myself staring at a restored, but still battle and age ravaged flag with some very familiar names on it.

The Ohio Historical Society currently has on display a collection of Ohio regimental flags from the civil war that are part of a huge restoration project. As I walked through the gallery in awe I started to really look at the details of each display. It had info on where the men of that particular group would have originated from, where exactly they marched and which battles they fought in. Many of the flags had been embroidered with the names of the battles after their return, names I did not often come across in the middle of Ohio, names I was well familiar with, names that brought back memories of humid summer evenings hiking past old cannons and monuments. There were stories of lost regimental and captured Confederate flags, I was wide eyed....and then teary eyed as I retraced my steps back through the gallery and started to notice that so many of these men had converged on Atlanta. These men were in part responsible for the total destruction and burning of my birthplace! Soon, however, a new perspective took hold. How many of these men lost their lives, so far from home, in the city of my birth? How many times had I as a child run over a battlefield, crossing the very spot where these men took their final breath on this earth?  Brother against brother these men fought on both sides for what they believed to be right at the time and many a sacrifice was made. These flags represent a legacy of both sides of these beliefs: the good and bad, dark and light, beautiful and ugly.

Another couple made their way through the exhibit, quickly glancing at the names on each flag before moving on. To them they may have just been words, meaning absolutely nothing. To me, they mean everything.