History means life. If we are able, for a moment, to stop foraging for sustenance, to stop fighting for survival and pause, something uniquely human happens. For we have the capacity to reflect. When we consider what has gone before us, a brighter future materializes in front of us. The Civil War is filled with more moments of God Awful tragedy than can fill a thousand lifetimes of reflection. But this moment, this period of steam technology and post war putrescence offers something altogether special for our reflection. The ends of wars get little attention and the age of reconstruction sounds epic in its scale. Poets and artists talk with great solemnity and import about the going home of it all. The Sultana represents the cauterizing of the journey we all wish to take. They wanted to go home. Greedy people stopped over one thousand people from getting there. In the course of their jobs, it must have felt like skimming just a bit off of the top. The Hindenburg, The Titanic and countless other disasters even 9/11, where so many die, so quickly, etch themselves in our minds. The Sultana is different. Today, one of the biggest news stories is about how poorly Veterans are treated and prisoner exchanges. These soldiers suffered until the bitter end of their war. Their transport home was manipulated, hundreds of Soldiers were essentially misplaced. Then these brave American warriors were herded less like cattle and more like Auschwitz concentration camp victims, and floated gently into the night. Their fiery and sunken deaths are a black eye on the face of our nation. The silence that has engulfed their story hence is part of a pattern of forgetting. The Government wouldnt pay for even the most modest memorial. The Government should place a stone in our National Cemetery acknowledging this event. But, those who died were mostly poor. It is upon the heads of the mostly poor that many grave military decisions fall. Each of you made a pledge. As far as Im concerned, your pledges are a flickering light, that future generations may see. This documentary is being made with love and I thank you so much for making it possible. - Sean Astin {BA History & American Literature and Culture, UCLA}
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 05:57:37 +0000
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