The District resident just published the book “1861: The Civil War Awakening” in sync with the 150th anniversary of the war. This book started after you found some letters. What did they say?
They were letters from an Army officer who was a Southerner at the beginning of the Civil War trying to figure out if he was going to stay loyal to the Union or loyal to the Confederacy.
And how were they found?
They were literally wrapped up in a bundle with a silk ribbon that clearly hadn’t been undone probably since the 19th century. They were in an attic in an old plantation house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that’s been in the same family for 13 generations.
When did you get interested in the Civil War?
Like a lot of people who love history, I’ve been fascinated with it since I was a kid. How can you not love the Civil War if you love American history? But what didn’t interest me, I have to say, [are] those sorts of books that are all about whose cavalry went charging over which hill. … So my book is very much focused on characters and focused on places. I wanted it to read more like a novel.
As civil wars are being fought today, say in Libya, what resonants with you?
When I look at the civil war in Libya, I think of that moment when just everything changes overnight. And that’s what 1861 was for Americans. … Not only does the country as a whole face a moment of decision, but millions of individual people face very individual and personal decisions about what they’re going to do. The decisions have to do with things like patriotism and ideals and ideology, but they also have to do with things as simple as one’s interests or one’s career, one’s family loyalties, one’s friendships, one’s past experiences. –Kytja Weir
