George Santayana, the author, wants to express that whenever the human beings forget or leave their history of meaningful situations behind, they have more chance to repeat bad decisions made, or cannot reproduce the good things learned, so they will need to "repeat the lesson again", until it is well remembered and cherished in their minds and hearts.
It is related to the Civil War (and actually, any war, conflict, and even any interpersonal situation) in the fact that there were many incidents that triggered this, that should be deeply analyzed in the present and future to avoid repeating the history in a different context. See the causes and consequences of Civil War, below:
- The political control and the economics produced by slavery, and states´ rights were the central topics of the conflict.
- The Southern states wanted to impose authority over the federal government so they could abolish their laws so they could keep their slaves. The South wanted to take them West and the North wished to keeping them open to white labor alone. This also added to the fight, for territory expansion.
- The election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860 - who was Republican - made clear that the Southern states had lost influence, since Lincoln gained big support from the republican movement at that time. This led to secession, after the South felt excluded from the political system. This led to war.
After the war, there were many consequences:
- Many cities and plantations were destroyed.
- Much of the South had problems recovering economically from the war, since their economical activities were based upon agriculture.
- The freeing of he slaves and the efforts for the social and political Reconstruction, exacerbated the slavery positions in many ways, and there were groups rising, such as the Ku Klux Klan which opposed to slaves freedom and contributed to place black population at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, along with the "white" predominance in Washington at that time.
