All Civil Wars are fierce and feral; but in their own way clean and pure, for Civil Wars are not fought over land nor money nor trade routes but VALUES. Consequently Civil Wars are Biblical, Shakespearean and Homeric in nature. And fascinating. The American Civil War is one of the most fascinating wars ever fought, trivia alone makes it fascinating. The first bit of trivia which intrigues one is that the Union Calvary Reserve in the Seven Days Campaign was commanded by Brig. Gen. Philip Cooke,  who was Jeb Stuart's father- in- law. Stuart was the legendary Confederate Cavalry commander.  Confederate General Jeb Stuart, had been so incensed that his father- in- law stayed with the Union, that he renamed his and his wife's, Flora, months'-old son, Philip St. George Cooke Stuart, after himself, James Ewell Brown Stuart Jr.  People took Civil War very seriously in those days. Jeb was mortally wounded in 1864. The Yankee father in law died in 1895, at the age ...

  In May, 2024, there is much talk that America's democracy is in a fraught and perilous position. Perhaps. But not as fraught or as perilous as in May, 1863; when the Union General, the Commander of the Army of the Potomac, "Fighting Joe" Hooker, declared that; after he defeated the Confederates, he would assume the role of Napoleon, and march on Washington D.C. to overthrow the government and declare himself a military dictator. Hooker had a plan.  In May, 1863, one of the most significant battles in American history, was fought; the Battle of Chancellorsville, in which the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under General Robert E Lee, defeated the Union Army of the Potomac under General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. 1-The battle is significant on a purely military level for it was an astonishingly stunning victory by Robert E. Lee, against all odds, an American Agincourt, a victory of the  few over the many. If you consider Robert E. Lee an American General, (and h...

  “ Before he died, the great Southern historian ,  Shelby Foote, in the mid 1990s,    gave an interview with PBS about the Civil War. The interview was replete with Proustian moments; Foote was Proust with a bourbon mellowed Southern drawl.   He took note that after the Civil War ended in Union victory; the white Southerner was bitter. But eventually, a compromise, a GREAT COMPROMISE,    was worked out with the victorious North; the South would accept that it was best for all that the Union won; however, the North had to acknowledge that the South had fought valiantly; which is why so many military bases were named after defeated Southern generals.   He gave insight into his bewilderment as to why Black Americans were bitter about slavery; he noted that Hebrews acknowledged their slavery and had risen above it. He never addressed that perhaps Hebrews were still bitter about their bondage, in the time frame of less than two hundred years from the ...

   Mississippian William Faulkner once famously said that the past is never really dead; it is not  even past. Two men hover over America's past, making it not even past, Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.  Without Lincoln, there would not have been an American Civil War; without Lee, Lincoln would have won the war in less than a year; without Lincoln, Lee would have won the war in two years. The 700,000 Civil War American dead are a direct result of the deadly Lincoln-Lee historical placement in the same time and place. General Lee is not dead; he is not even past. We know that from the frenzied fetish the current protesters have shown in trashing, vandalizing and tearing down his statues. The protesters validate their vendetta against stone replicas of Lee because they call him a traitor. He was; he thought so himself. When he arrived at Appomattox to surrender to the Union General Grant, he wore his best uniform because he thought he would be arrest...