“There will never be anything more interesting in America than that Civil War.” 

Horwitz choses to begin the first chapter with an epigram from Gertrude Stein in regard to how the American Civil War seems to be a topic of unending fascination for generations of Americans, despite the passage of time. The epigram speaks to the underlying themes and notions that Horwitz will return to throughout the book, namely that the Civil War is different things for different people, and yet there appears to be an infinite curiosity surrounding the war’s events, backstory, characters, and subsequent fallout. It serves as the focal point of American culture and politics, and even when unspoken, still manages to inform much of the conversation around American life and what it means to be American. 

“Historians are fond of saying that the Civil War occurred in 10,000 places. Poke a pin in the map of the South and you’re likely to prod loose some battle of skirmish or other tuft of Civil War history.” 

One of the points that Horwitz book emphasizes is the ubiquity of the Civil War, specifically in the South, where most of it was fought. The War is so central to the Southern mindset and memory that it informs nearly every aspect of Southern life both literally and metaphorically. Here, Horwitz refers to the specific archaeology that occurs when one goes looking for physical remnants and artifacts associated with the war, but it also speaks to the way in which the war remains vivid in the consciousness of many Southerners, who, like the land, seem to be ready to allude to the war and its consequence at a moment’s notice.