George, I must disagree with you about finding "...THE TRUTH." Had you said, "... A TRUTH" I would not disagree.

Years after the fact, when you boil an historic event right down to as close as you can get to its very essence, "...THE TRUTH" does not exist - only A TRUTH.

There is only northern truth, Southern truth, George's truth, Craig's truth, David's truth, Chase's truth, Jim's truth, and so on.

It is my own view that when two posters do agree on A TRUTH, one or the other or both is really saying "I give up, your sources are superior to mine," or "that is about as close to THE TRUTH as I think we are going to get, so I quit," or "sounds good to me and I have no interest in researching it further," etc.

In short, George, historic truth of events over 140 years old (which is what this post concerns itself with) can only be, at best, an approximation of what actually happened or, in the case of an historic document, what today's reader thinks the writer intended to convey - since every on-the-scene viewer of the actual event is long since gone, but will have recorded it (for us to read years later) with all his/her personal biases, viewpoints included.

In short, HISTORIC TRUTH does not exist, only AN HISTORIC TRUTH, and there may be many of those for any given historic event.

Some may think I am beating a dead horse on this, but I believe an understanding of this is absolutely essential to this or any other board being able to function correctly without personal attacks and bomb throwing, to use Jim's term.