Defience is one thing, and practicality is another. Part of the allure of studing the War for Southern Independence is the Theatrics, Drama and yes even Romance that surrounds and is imbedded in the mythology that has grown up over the decades since the War.

And yes we even still engage in those same theatrics and defience when a man requests his ashes to be loaded down a reenactors guns and fired in a Northernly Direction. Sometimes it is not what we do that is important as is the symbolism and the message that it carries.

In Len's example, that started this thread, was it the Commanders defience, when he admonished his crew to load his leg and fire it at the enemy with his last breaths? Or his message that he gave them, of continuing the fight with the last ounce of their life and their resource, that was the most important thing that he left behind for those men? And even for us today.

Was he caught up in the moment and the passion of the fight? Or was he convienced of the rightness of the cause for which he fought and gave his life?

The same can be applied to those who study, and even reenact, the War today 145 years after the fact. Do we do it because it is "fun" and we enjoy it? Or is it an act of defience and protest? Or are some of us conviented of the rightness of the cause of the northern soldier? Or the southern soldier? What is the motivating reasonings behind what we do?