History is what is is, I suppose and we need not suffer too much today struggling figure out the rightness or wrongness of events that happened lifetimes ago. Still, it does get into the blood, doesn't it -- and it's hard to lay something like the shooting of these deserters aside and sleep well, whatever the circumstances that brought them to this tragic end.

The Confederacy began to come apart almost as soon as it was formed and these microcosmic events we are talking about are but symptoms of the larger ailments. I find myself more and more at odds with the whole idea of an independent confederacy of states and more often than not, understand why the south lost, although I love and honor the fighting men who stuck with it to the end (and the others, too).