I found that a distant cousin had deserted his position (at least according to the official paperwork of him housed at the Natl. Archives) at the end of the Civil War and headed off to Texas. I sent this info off to a current member of that branch who was also researching him....She quit writing to me.
That's as with people claiming to recall past lives. Always a glamorous past life. Never a coward or the guy who cleaned the stables.
My 5x great grandfather was a MacGregor (the Mafia of Scotland) who left Scotland one jump ahead of the law and changed his name when he got here (or before he left - at one point in Scotland they tried to fix the problem by outlawing the name MacGregor -- kind of like the Atlanta city fathers trying to solve the crime problem on Stewart Avenue by renaming it Metropolitan Parkway).
And one of my Civil War ancestors was accused of stealing a horse -- although he denied it and nothing ever came of it. He said he found it loose on the battlefield, and he probably did. Another of my Civil War ancestors actually DID steal horses -- in one of his letters he remarked to his wife, "I didn't let the captain see the horse this time." Although maybe he figured he had just as much right to it as the captain . . . .