The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the transformation of American citizens into subjects of a federal government due to the Civil War.
H. L. Mencken's quote highlights the significant change in the American identity resulting from the Civil War, where individuals initially identified themselves mainly as citizens of their states. The war led to a shift in their status, implying a loss of autonomy and state allegiance, which Mencken suggests has never been fully restored, indicating a concern over the consolidation of federal power and the implications for personal liberties.
In practice
This quote can be used in a historical discussion about the impact of the Civil War on American society.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
History will tell you that borders are not inevitable, they hardly existed at the end of the 19th century.
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.
Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.
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