That war notwithstanding, personal friendships and mutual esteem persisted on both sides...
YEAH You could tell by the treatment in the prison camps :)
How the #### can the author say that with a straight face?
I love how the past is always glossed over when it suits a lousy writer’s needs
I do not think you have read a great deal about the Civil War. The author is absolutely correct that friendships continued during the war. Officers on both sides were often saddened to hear of the death of a former comrade who was on the other side.
Well, he cites the relationship of two generals. It's always the generals who have the luxury to maintain such feelings, and it's the grunts who get put into wretched camps by their enemy and end the war with deep hatreds.
This song was widely known in the South:
O I'm a good old rebel,
Now that's just what I am.
For this "fair land of freedom"
I do not care at all.
I'm glad I fit against it,
I only wish we'd won,
And I don't want no pardon
For anything I done.
I hates the Constitution,
This great republic too,
I hates the Freedmans' Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
With all his braggs and fuss,
The lyin' thievin' Yankees,
I hates 'em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankees nation
And everything they do,
I hates the Declaration,
Of Independence, too.
I hates the glorious Union-
'Tis dripping with our blood-
I hates their striped banner,
I fit it all I could
I followed old mas' Robert
For four year near about,
Got wounded in three places
And starved at Pint Lookout
I cotch the roomatism
A campin' in the snow,
But I killed a chance o'Yankees
I'd like to kill some mo'.
Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is still in Southern dust,
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot,
I wish they was three million
Instead of what we got.
I can't take up my musket
And fight 'em now no more,
But I ain't going to love 'em,
Now that is sarten sure,
And I don't want no pardon
For what I was and am.
I won't be reconstructed,
And I don't care a dam.
Because in the War Between the States of 1861-1865, it was a pretty common occurrence. Most of these general officers knew each other and were friends back in their West Point days and in their formative years as young officers.
It was a more genteel time on a personal level between opposing commanders. In the trenches and fields in the heat of battle, not so much.