"Mr. Lincoln, you know that General Grant drinks."
"Drinks, does he? Well find out what he drinks and send a barrel of it to all my other generals!"
This is probably a legend rather than a fact.
Even so, the War Between the States came down to two things;
The North had superior manufactoring capacity and more men.
In this clash of Titans, Lee was the superior general, but the North could replace generals at will. Lincoln finally found Grant. Not a genius, but true fighting spirit.
In the end, the war was basically a bad idea.
To quote Shelby Foote, a Southern historian; "The South never should have picked that fight."
I am getting into middle age now. I am Texan, but I have lived in the North, the South, and on the Left Coast.
I served for ten years in the USMC. With Yankees, good ol' boys, surfers, and kids from the Great Lakes. And a heck of a lot of Texans. They were all good Americans.
Today's battle is not South or North, it is between Americans and the remnants of the Communists and the rabid idiots who want to murder us in the name of some non-existant so-called god.
Let us all try to remember that.
The Civil War is over, long since.
One other thing. There is no wrong in a Southerner taking pride in his heritage and the valor of his ancestors anymore than there is wrong in a Yankee boasting that his great-great-grandfather fought to save the Union.
The war was misplaced, but the valiant men on both sides fought with honor (except for Sherman, and he died a long time ago).