Well said! I wish some of the other people on these Comments Boards had your insight and intelligence. lol...

I wish that you and I had a chance to sit down and converse about this topic. I think it's interesting what you said about "people wishing to remember the best or heroic parts of their ancestors' lives"... (I paraphrase)... I have this conversation often with two of my cousins who like me, studied history in college. We find it interesting that people often attach the title of "hero" to anyone who happened to have fought in a War, and "coward" to anyone who chose not to fight. We think this is a tremendously simple and even naive understanding of history. Often men, especially in the Civil War, had no choice to fight. Many were rounded up at the point of a gun and taken away to fight. Others left their posts at the very first chance they had to do so to return home. But I've never assumed that these men were "cowards", just as I never assumed that an ancestor was a "hero" simply because he volunteered to fight and did so with his own free will. As a matter of fact, I have some ancestors who fought with the most famous generals of the Civil War, but when I discovered, through personal letters, how they really felt about their service, and what they thought of the Black slaves they hated, I can hardly call them heroic or feel pride for their beliefs or behaviors or war record.

That's the point to which I was referring in my original post when I admonished my own family members for too quickly putting our ancestors on pedastals simply for their willingness to fight in a war.

If you'd like to email me, please do, I'd love to continue our conversation. But as for this comment board, I'm gone. When the lady sent me Gov. Rector's speech yesterday to read, I couldn't stop laughing, and I realized these public comments boards are not for me. lol...