Lessons to be learned from the nation’s four worst years

We can’t say that we’ve never been caught up in the moment and suggested that the political divisions in the United States are as bad as we’ve ever seen.

And, to be sure, the growing polarization on major issues from wars, budgets, taxes and government service is cause for alarm.

But for anyone who is on the edge of despair, this is the perfect moment for a reality check.

Think not about what is happening today in Washington — or even what’s been happening in our lifetimes, as ugly as it can be some days — but think of what was happening 150 years ago today at Fort Sumter, S.C. There a garrison of union troops was in the final hours of bombardment by rebel forces. The nation was in its first full day of the Civil War, which would stretch out for four years and would be the deadliest war in U.S. history. Even though the raw numbers for casualties are close between the Civil War and U.S. involvement in World War II, by percentage of population the toll between April 12, 1861, and April 9, 1865 is staggering.

In a nation of 31.5 million people, an estimated 625,000 soldiers died, nearly 220,000 from combat wounds. For every soldier fatally wounded on the battlefield, two more died of sickness and other causes. One in 10 died of dysentery. Another 10 percent died in prisoner- of-war camps.

The losses today would have to exceed 6 million to approach the percentage of population.

Ohio, then a state of 1.5 million people, sent 310,654 of its sons to the Union Army. Some 35,500 did not return. By percentage of population, a comparable loss of Ohioans today would exceed 175,000.

Human rights

It is difficult to comprehend, but so much death and so much destruction grew out of a disagreement between one section of the country and another over the abhorrent concept that one man could buy, sell and treat as no more than property another man (or woman or child) based on the person’s race. Historians may argue over what other factors contributed to the War Between the States. But the political reality was that there were free states in the North, slave states in the South and the then-free territories of the Great Plains and the West, which were going to tip the balance of power.

A war that some on both sides foolishly thought would last but days reverberates 150 years later.

Those who referred to the “War of Northern Aggression” turned from Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party to the Democratic Party for nearly a century. A split between northern Democrats and Dixiecrats in 1948 and Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968 were pivotal points in moving Southern states from the Democratic column to the Republican. It should be beneath a country as blessed as this one to have based so much of its politics on race, and yet to varying degrees it continues.

The challenges facing the United States, challenges that we have sent our representatives to Washington to solve, require clear heads and men and women who are capable of reaching necessary compromise without compromising core principles.

However divided we may appear today, neither side subscribes to something as purely evil as slavery. Both sides aspire to solving the problems of one great nation. And that should be what sets the history being written today apart from the tragic history of 150 years ago.