Jim, my final comment is this: in several postes i clearly stated that the many if not most Union soldiers were racist, despised the idea of blacks as soldiers, were frequently repelled by the contrabands coming into their lines, even some who were always in favor of abolition, and that the emancipation proclamation might have been the single most cause of Union desertion for a time.

But then I said, in time the average union soldiers opposition and dismissal to black regiments turn to grudging respect and then into a type of self serving support when the white soldiers realized that more black regiments meant the burden of risk was more spread, and that it meant more of them might see home in one piece. Many Union soldiers had a turn around in their attitides because of that realization. It was a self preserving realism, not a moral judgement, a grudging discovery that their load would be lightened with the policy, not some anglelic blessing from on high that God had ordained them to sustain. To saw any of that if found in my posts is a pure myth. An invention.

Where in any of my posts is this imagined "glory halleluiah, God marches with us, the men of the Union are morally superior" that you say you see ? I am stunned the more I realize what you have said. I posted the EXACT opposite of how you have mis-characterized my words. I said the Union men were as racist as anyone, and you have me marching them to battle signing hymns of glory. It is just impossible to read that in my words. Impossible.

And it is no disrespect to say that. I find it incredible that people have been able to read so much that just IS NOT THERE into anything I have written here. There is something going on here that is very wrong.

I am just now realizing this is not the place to discuss anything of much value. I am very very sorry to discover that, too. Alan said in a post a few days ago, when I was rudely greeted, for me to be a bit tolerant, that sometimes it is easy for someone to misunderstand or misread a post, but I never expected things to be completely made up out of thin air, for very intelligent and literate and responsible men to claim I said something that I so clearly did NOT say, when anyone can read a post and see what is or isn't there.

It is impossible to make an inadvertant "misunderstanding" that wide.

I certainly expected the occasional rude yayhoos and over-wrought zealots, and some ocasional misunderstandings that in time could be worked out, but not such absolute falsification and mistatement and, again, pure invention, from supposedly lierate balanced knowledgable people.