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This is a photo of my oldest and likely most valuable bottle. It’s hard to see, but it pictures two hands coming together over a protractor and the word “union”. This bottle was made post-Civil War, likely the 1880s during a period of time when those who fought each other...
... started coming together to reconcile the Civil War. They did not want to fight each other, but they were forced to. It ruined families, some were destroyed forever but the man who fought came together after the war to celebrate being unified again. They shared a common goal:
To unify and heal the country, coming together again as one in union with each other. This went on for years, with parades and ceremonies and gatherings on battlefields where the veterans who fought each other would get together and share stories and talk about the war.
There’s a major problem with the current climate that is going to prevent anything like this from ever happening if we ever do have a Civil War again in this country. The reason? We do not share the same goals. Those men, although they fought each other, shared the same goals.
That was to secure a union of states that would work under the constitution having a federal government to provide oversight and protection from larger enemies which might come to invade us. There are two sides in this country who are ready to fight each other to the death.
The problem with that is one side wants to shred the constitution and tear the entire system down and start over and make this a communist country. The other side still believes in the constitution. We don’t have the same goals. So if we fight, we will fight until no one is left.
There will be no reconciliation. If one side wins, the constitution will be destroyed as we know it. If the other side wins, the constitution will survive but our land will be bloodied and covered in the corpses of those whose families will never reconcile with those who won.
Here’s that bottle again in a different setting so that you may see it better. The protractor is a Masonic symbol, it was likely because a lot of the men were Masons but that has less to do with the overall message that we are a country divided with little hope of reconciliation.
