This is a well-worded statement. Before being allowed to post on the message board, people should be required to affirm that they have read and understood a similar statement.

Posts on this message board should concern topics related to wartime events in the State of Arkansas and people involved in those events. Posts also include citizens of Arkansas in military service outside the state. The message board welcomes information about soldiers from other places who came to Arkansas during the war and its aftermath. Preference is for posts which cite a source so information may be verified and used by interested parties.

Warning: facts often come with interpretation(s), and the reader must be able to distinguish fact from opinion.

As you understand, most people (present company included) prefer to preserve high-minded visions of long dead blood kin. Any evidence or suggestion that the truth might be otherwise will not be well received, and woe be unto the messenger.

As you mentioned, most folks try to make the best of a bad situation. Many times our ancestors must not have been pleased with the choices available to them. Too often I've wished for an opportunity to go back and make a different decision. Regret is common to all men and women who ever lived.

We will not really know many things this side of glory. Once there I have a number of questions for many people who lived in the past. Regardless of the answers, just meeting them will be wonderful. As John Esten Cooke wrote,

Oh, should we reach that glorious place where waits the sparklin’ crown
For everyone who for the right his soldier’s life lay down,
God grant to us the privilege upon that happy day
Of clasping hands with those who fell a wearin’ of the Gray.