Glenda --

Compare and contrast are useful methods to advance our understanding of unfamiliar topics. The similarities between the two civil wars are more numerous than most people imagine. Let me mention a few ways --

1) Determining the British government to be hostile to their interest, the colonists opted for a government of their own, just as the Confederates did.

2) The country divided between those who supported the Crown, those who supported the patriots and those who simply wanted to be left alone. Sound familiar?

3) The British decided that destruction of personal property and harsh treatment of civilians would break resistance by the colonials. People in Georgia and the Carolinas suffered at the hands of the redcoats and their American allies as they marched through the country. That should sound familiar, too.

All of us should be aware that Robert E. Lee won many more battles than George Washington, who rarely ever won a victory. Washington struggled to simply keep a viable army in the field. Given his hopeless circumstances, shouldn't Washington have just given up?

Just to keep us from veering too far off topic (which I would absolutely LOVE to pursue, let me suggest that you read this recent study of America's first civil war --

http://www.amazon.ca/Partisans-Redcoats-Southern-Conflict-Revolution/dp/0380806436

The author doesn't intend to make the comparisons suggested at the top of my posts, but as you read and consider what happened in Georgia and the Carolinas, they are hard to ignore.