Aren't these supercilious moral absolutist in-your-face presentist  
attitudes that completely miss the point of the post a brilliant  
depiction of just why folks get to the point where they fight wars in  
the first place?

Lyle Browning, RPA


On Jun 17, 2007, at 10:39 PM, Paul Heinegg wrote:

> Rick Paddock wrote, "The Civil War devastated families, and my  
> ancestors in Henderson CO, TN, were not spared. One of them was a  
> woman of means before the War but destitute during and after. One  
> of her brothers was killed in fighting in Georgia. The family had  
> hardly assimilated this news when word came that another brother  
> lay languishing in a primitive field hospital in Vicksburg.
>
> Gritty and determined, she gathered provisions, a feather mattress,  
> her
> grandmother's quilt, and put them into a wagon. All the horses on  
> her farm
> had been commandeered earlier by General Forrest, leaving her with  
> one mule
> and a cow to pull her wagon. But that didn't stop her. She enlisted an
> elderly member of the the freedmen who had stayed on out of loyalty  
> and
> served as houseman, and set off for Vicksburg, some 500 miles to the
> south-to bring her brother home."
> ------------------------------
>
> Do I understand you to say that this "gritty and determined"  
> woman's family did not free any of their slaves but instead fought  
> a war to maintain slavery, and we are supposed to feel sorry for  
> her that she faced such a hard time without the slaves and the  
> horses commandered by the millionaire slave-trader Nathan Forrest?
> Paul