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Lincoln and Civil War Anniversaries Celebrated
(IRN)-Hope you are not tired of hearing about anniversaries. We're coming up on the 150th anniversaries of: the start of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's farewell to Springfield, and four years of everything else that happened between 1861 and 1865.

But Adam Goodheart, a professor and author, says it's all important to commemorate because the Civil War has such a strong hold on Americans, even all these years later. "Look around the world," he says, "and where else are people as fascinated with a moment from their country's past as Americans are with that four-year period 150 years ago? Where else in the world do tens of thousands of people go out on weekends and sort of obsessively dress up, down to the last button and stirrup, as the soldiers from a war in centuries past?"

Goodheart says up to one-third of all Americans are descendants of Civil War soldiers, meaning the next newly-discovered piece of history could be in your neighbor's attic, if not your own.

Goodheart, director of the Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., is the author of an upcoming book, 1861 – the Civil War Awakening.

(Source: Illinois Radio Network)
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