Our still-haunting tragedy

One hundred and forty years after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, the Civil War continues to fascinate and repel us with its mix of audacity, stupidity, horror, heroism, cowardice, high moral purpose and brutal tactics.

The novelist Leon Uris, in his final book, “O’Hara’s Choice,” referred to the Civil War as the great American tragedy. If so, it’s a tragedy whose dimensions seem to grow with the passage of time.

If Abu Ghraib shocks you, try Andersonville, the pesthole where 13,000 Union prisoners were left by their fellow Americans to rot and die.

If the carnage on the streets of Fallouja seems horrific, try Antietam, where nearly 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded on a single day.

Then again, if you are impressed by contemporary youth answering their nation’s call to fight in a far-off war with what many consider to be murky goals, consider the purposefulness of those who fought to free a race of people held captive for 300 years and to preserve an experiment called the United States.

To commemorate the end of the Civil War, the History Channel on Sunday begins a five-day “Civil War Secrets Week.”

If not quite in the Burnsian or “American Experience” league, it is nonetheless a solid effort with good reporting and narration and good use of dramatic re-creations and interviews with scholars. The topics and styles range night to night, so some media consumerism is in order to pick the night of most interest.

Three of the episodes are specifically for the series. And four are Civil War themes from ongoing History Channel programs: “Mail Call,” “The Conquerors,” “Modern Marvels” and “Wild West Tech.”

On Sunday, for example, the redoubtable R. Lee Ermey, host of “Mail Call,” joins re-enactors to discuss Civil War weaponry and equipment. On Wednesday an episode of “Modern Marvels” explores innovations in communications, battlefield medicine and warships.

But the episodes done specifically for the week will probably hold the greatest interest for the general audience, particularly the young and the non-buffs: Daring missions on Sunday and Monday, Andersonville on Tuesday, and slave catchers and slave resisters on Thursday.

Inevitably it is the episode about slavery that holds the greatest wallop. The topic is not new, but it has lost none of its power or relevance -- not as long as race remains the nation’s unfinished business.

“If you could cope with the moral obscenity of it, you could become extremely rich” through slavery, says Peter Wood, a professor at Duke.

By the early 18th century, slaves outnumbered Europeans in areas of the South. Rebellions were sporadic and bloody, giving rise to the job of slave-catcher, the ur-bounty hunter.

Troops who should have been part of the war against the British had to be kept close to home to prevent slaves from escaping. Patrick Henry, of “give me liberty or give me death” renown, ordered an increase in slave patrols as governor of the commonwealth of Virginia.

Two groups of Americans were fighting simultaneously for freedom: the white colonials from the British, the black slaves from their masters.

That the colonials could not see their own struggle mirrored in the determination of their slaves is an ongoing mystery and shame.

During the Revolutionary War, an estimated 100,000 slaves escaped as slave patrols formed by planters and impoverished whites found themselves outnumbered. Of 187 slaves owned by Thomas Jefferson, 20 fled.

In America, one group of people kept another in ruthless illiteracy, burned their churches, and sold them to owners deeper inside the zone where escape was less likely. The phrase “sold down the river” had a frightening meaning for slaves, notes scholar James Horton of George Washington University.

Those are the kinds of things a nation doesn’t soon forget and shouldn’t.

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‘Civil War Secrets Week’

Where: The History Channel

When: Sunday through Thursday. Check daily listings.

Ratings: Varied