Hey everyone, welcome to this special bonus episode of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all.

Thanks again for all those great five star reviews and ratings on iTunes.

So as promised, we're devoting this show to taking a look at what America was like on

the eve of the Civil War.

The writer LP Hartley started one of his novels with a line, The Past is a Foreign Country.

They do things differently there.

And Tracy and I thought that quote or that idea would be a good starting point for this

episode.

This as we look at what America was like before the outbreak of the Civil War, it's good

to keep in mind that the past is very much like a foreign country.

They did things differently there.

Now we can certainly broaden our understanding of the war by studying the circumstances

in which that tragic conflict took place.

But as we take this look backward, we'll do well to remember what may seem obvious that

America was a very different place back then.

As much as someone might like to imagine that we could go back in time to the America

of 1860 and that we'd fit right in, it would actually probably be more like trying to

fit a square peg in a round hole.

Even though 150 plus years separate us from that time, obviously we'd share some similarities

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