Civil wars

I've always been interested in the American Civil War.  When I was little, we had a book in the How and Why series devoted to the Civil War.  At an early age I decided that the Confederacy was evil because they wanted to preserve slavery.  When I got older I decided that was too simplistic a view, but in recent years I've been returning to my original stance.

There have been a lot of good movies involving the Civil War. (Two of the more recent ones are Glory and Ride With the Devil.) But good movies about the American Revolutionary War have been fewer.  I really loved Ken Burns' PBS Civil War documentary, which I've seen many times without it getting stale.  The early photographs of the time are really illuminating, partly because people hadn't learned to "pose" for the camera.  And the contemporary music works well. (Burns also made a wonderful PBS special of people singing Civil War songs.)

In the United States they have a lot of Civil War re-enactments. (The Southern re-enactors outnumber the Northern ones two to one, while the actual war was the other way around!) People re-enact a lot of different periods.  I wonder if they do it here in Toronto?  I might be interested in getting into it.