Today is the 152nd anniversary of General Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox. Casualties during the Appomattox Campaign, March 25 – April 9, 1865 totaled nearly 39,000 men killed, wounded and captured.
My latest play “Carpetbaggers” examines the ways in which we are still engaged in a Civil War in the United States. A signed surrender and disengagement in armed insurrection did not end the values and beliefs that underpinned the Confederacy. In the wake of the latest presidential election, we can see these beliefs are alive and well in people’s hearts. The questions at the center of the war still occupy the nation, which has never truly gotten over that conflict. In other words, the war can still be lost.