CHARLESTON, S.C. — On an artificial island 4 miles from downtown stands an unlikely reminder of the cost of national disunion, a granite monument to discord, both a reminder of the price of division and a warning to contemporary political warriors.
It is Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began and where, 164 years ago, a garrison of American troops struggled to hold out in the face of the secession of multiple Southern states and the creation of a parallel American nation, dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal.
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