Patrons at the Blue Mill Tavern in New York City's Greenwich Village last Monday were greeted by a rare sight: the TV set in the bar was tuned not to Monday Night Football but to a documentary on PBS. On Capitol Hill, Senator Ted Kennedy, a Yankee Democrat, and Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican, were riveted by the same show. Across the U.S., people debated the battlefield tactics of Robert E. Lee, marveled at the letter-writing eloquence of Civil War soldiers and traded stories of ancestors who fought in the nation's great holocaust.
It may not quite have been another...