In April 1861 a shell burst above the ramparts of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor igniting the flames of a war that would sear the continent for four long years. It was not a war over slavery although the South's Peculiar Institution  would be consumed in the conflagration. It was a conflict between two distinct appreciations of the nature of the nation which had risen from the ashes of yet another war of separation between brothers. The men who raised the torches and led the mob against the Union and those who sought to extinguish the flames of rebellion were each convinced that they acted in defense of Constitutional rights and liberties.  The young men who marched off to fight the old men's war rose to defend their homes and families. It was a war in which brother slaughtered brother in the name of liberty.  The embers in the ashes of that fire still glow. Old men still debate whether the iron of a nation forged in the flames of war and annealed in the blood of brothers forms a piece of one fabric or a chain welded of separate links. The proud banners that young men bravely followed are too often waved by demagogues and scoundrels who would divide our one nation and are dishonered by their appropriation. We have become one people divided by a common heritage.  We study the American Civil War to neither glorify a lost cause nor exult over a prostrate foe, but rather to understand that men of good will and conscience might be gathered up in a passionate patriotism destructive of the very liberty they profess to defend. We study our yesterdays that we may embark upon the voyage of our tomorrows as one people in the knowledge that it is our differences and diversity of experience that form the very core of our common strength.