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 ...

   The bloodiest day in American History was the Battle of Antietam, near a small town in Maryland, Sharpsburg, on September 17, 1862. It was a horrific, stinking battle, highlighted by lunacy and incompetence on the Union side. It was like one of those World War I battles, in which all the fine young men , the best and the brightest, were force fed into the meat grinder of war, coming out on the other side, carnage. It was a battle in which the Gods intervened, allowing the Union a chance to not only win the battle  but the war. A chance muffed by the hesitation of the Union Commander, George B. McClellan. It was a battle in which Lee, greatly disadvantaged by this intervention of the Gods, showed his brilliance, and merit. It was the Battle which triggered the Emancipation Proclamation. At the beginning of the Battle, the Union Army, one of the finest armies in history, the Army of The Potomac, under McClellan had 80,000 troops; the Confederate Army, one of the fin...