What does any of this have to do with healing our nation? The answer is, 'nothing.' And that’s the point.  //:

You’d think the way some in the media talk about this country that they’re sad we’re still not fighting the Civil War. They would like us to fight a new civil war in our culture, day and night, without end.

I’d suggest to my colleagues that the Civil War not only gave us villains, it also gave us heroes and a more perfect union to love.

Maybe we should learn from those heroes. We should learn from Lincoln, who called our nation to unity at Gettysburg.

“It is for us the living,“ he told us, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced … to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” //

The Americans who visit these hallowed grounds, all across our country, want to know why this nation fought a war against itself — why brothers could not live under one flag together. We teach them there, in those places, how we became a better nation through the crucible of that terrible war. And we teach them there to be proud that we did so.