The West (Episode 4)

Memorial Day task: watch THE WEST presented by Ken Burns PBS, Episode 4. ALL people in our nation, citizen or not, should watch and learn from this single episode. It presents a pivotal period that shaped, defined, and changed our nation, the effects from which we still burn today. It's a micro time-capsule of an era that we aren't as familiar with as we think. The topics will be familiar, the details will not. No, it's NOT details and images of slavery. At all. Not Abraham Lincoln, eloquent speeches, or explanations of divisions on the immoral economics of slavery. This is about the American West. But it was there the future question of a slave holding nation would unfold and begin to fully unravel our republic. You can gain insight, deeper understanding, and a palpable feeling for the intensity of the antebellum (pre Civil War) climate, mid 1800s, by looking at the American West. Events leading to both the Civil and Indian Wars played out in there quite dramatically, raw and vivid. Though the West had been thought to become a "safty valve" for national, social, and political, tensions - it instead exploded into bloodthirsty lawlessness and despicable violence surpassing that which would be seen in the Civil War. It indeed was about slavery, but you won't see slaves and it encompasses much more than slavery. What you will see are the souls of people and a history not long ago removed. Something to reflect on during Memorial Day weekend as we look to honor those who served and sacrificed their lives believing that there was something much greater than themselves at stake. And to remember with respect the ones who fought and were killed because they were plucked from life and placed in combat with their comrades, brothers in arms for whom anything would be willingly sacrificed. (...I'm far removed from any military. I have no experiences, directly or indirectly by those who have served. So I don't really know what I'm talking about with war. I try to open my mind, expose it to uncomfortable realities, out of respect and to gain the little I can process.)
Source:
The West (Episode 4)
https://youtu.be/7RvbfJCv6dQ
(For use by my students) “Time after time, Congress and the people in the East saw the West as a safety valve, a place where you could go and escape the prob...