Epilogue: Imagined Ideals beyond the Civil Wars

This epilogue describes what happened to constancy after the English Civil Wars, showing how the battle over language and values still persists in American culture. Noting how people’s belief in constancy rarely wavered during the English civil wars, despite the subjectivity apparent in the word’s use, this epilogue compares the civil wars’ battle over constancy to the battle over freedom in contemporary American political discourse. Like constancy, freedom has become both a beacon of creativity and inspiration and a site of conflict and exploitation. Ultimately, though, this epilogue calls for hope that our understanding of freedom will move past ugliness and oppression into liberation and empathy.