I would like to wade into these waters and put forth the idea that history
is not just what is and has been written down in books, but also that which
is remembered and passed on from one generation to the next. I mentioned to
this List, a week or so ago, that my 4 grandparents were all born in the
South (Virginia and North Carolina) in the decade or so  following The Wah.
Two of those grandparents lived to be astute and alert and active people who
reached the ages of 100 and 102 years old;  I was blessed to have them and
their wisdom for well into my 40's.
They were able to related to me stories about what life in the South was
like before the War, during the War, and after the War.
That period of American history......living through a horrible, terrible war
that was fought in one's own back yard, and then living through the hell of
Reconstruction, being at the mercy of an occupying enemy army, left an
INDELIBLE impression on those who experienced it.
During the Viet Nam war, my grandmother was STILL talking about the Civil
War.
Unless Professors Forsythe and Finkelman and others like them were close to
someone who could give them the benefit of first hand experience, all they
know is what they have read or been taught by someone else who probably
wasn't there.
Deane Mills
Yorktown VA


> War aims, collective political identity, the locus of patriotism, and
> many other great questions of history, cannot be resolved by a
> single quotation or a single item of evidence.
>   The earlier post, referring to the defection of slave states from the
> Confederate cause, and the pro-Union stance of so many free
> whites in states that had formally withdrawn from the Union, should
> give us pause in even claiming that the white South, let alone the
> black South, was unified on any question during the period 1860-
> 1865.
>
> Harold

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