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.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge - which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark - isn't symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born.
I have not always been wrong. History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself.
Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and_x000D_ brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years?
Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.
It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.
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