Reply #6: I read history for many reasons,

[TayTay]

one of them is a sort of internal compassion check. The whole battles of Lexington and concord don't stir just patriotic pride in me. I want to remember to feel compassion for the British soldiers who marched out of Boston on this death run. Those soldiers were terrified of what was going to happen. Some of them were just kids, 18 years old or younger. (I believe one fifer for a British regiment died that day. He was 15 years old)

The accounts of Lexington and Concord taken from records of town histories of this area report on the feelings that the men, and women btw, who mustered felt about those events. There was an enormous amount of sadness and horror. Terrible things happened that day, on both sides. Some people felt that the "Old North Bridge" area was haunted because a soldier who had been shot there was scalped by an American minuteman. (The Brit and a comrade were buried where the present day monument is.) There were many folks from that area who would not go near the bridge again because this British soldier had been treated so badly. That was an atrocity, a war crime, and it led to savage behavior on the other side. That was a terrible day here in MA.

There are so many lessons to learn from real history. We don't engage in war crimes or mistreat enemy soldiers because it can come back and bite us, as it did in Lexington and Concord. So sad.

We read history, or at least some of us do, to check our internal compassion meters. If I can wave away the layers of propaganda and feel the human side of what happened and feel the sorrow and loss in these events, then maybe I have a chance of hanging onto my humanity when bad events happen in my own lifetime. This is why I study history because it has so many things to teach me.

That lesson is way, way beyond Sarah Palin. I know that and I wouldn't expect her to know it. But I have to believe that I can still be touched by it and that maybe others can be as well. History, real history, matters. It touches our souls.