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like Lawrence, Andersonville, or Ft. Pillow, or the extent of slavery--is all yankee lies.

Well, in large part they are. What often gets portrayed as a clear cut atrocity at all three of those oft-trumpeted locations is either premised upon substantial myth and a complete neglect of the whole story.

Take Lawrence for example. The "popular" version portrays a raid of merciless cavalry renegades on a bunch of innocent civilians. History, however, tells us it was a retaliatory hit on persons living in Lawrence at that time who had been responsible for a number of raids and injustices against the families of those in Quantrill's band, most notably the yankee imprisonment of their wives and sisters in a decrepit old building that collapsed killing several about a week prior.

Andersonville? Yes. By all measures it was a pretty rotten place to be. Almost as bad as Point Lookout for that matter. But if you look at the medical reports kept by the doctors on site who actually tended to the prisoners you will find that a solid majority of the deaths there were caused by stomach dysentaries and other bugs that induced vomiting and diarhea, thus making the afflicted unable to take in food or water and eventually killing him - not some willful scheme of starvation in an area already blighted by shortages of supplies and medicine (which, BTW, Point Lookout had plenty of).

Fort Pillow? It's arguably the most widely propagandized and fabricated incident of the north. What really happened there we may never know. Sift through all the hype and inflated stories by persons who were not even there and you get a general picture though: The confederates arrived on site and surround the fort with vastly superior numbers and more or less expected a surrender. Initial skirmishing takes place in which the fort's commander and several officers are killed unbeknownst to the confederates. Field talks ensue during the gaps. The highest ranking officer to survive lies to the confederates about his commander's death, purporting himself to be relaying his messages while Forrest states his demand for a surrender. The yankees refuse so, as promised, the confederates storm the fort. Barely a minute into the battle the entire yankee command collapses, largely because their officers were dead and the one guy still in charge was exceedingly inept. Conflicting simultaneous orders to hold the ground and to retreat to the river are given by low level yankee officers and mass chaos ensues. Some stay and fight. Some flee. Some flee while fighting. Some surrender. Some surrender, see others still fighting, "unsurrender," and resume the fight. And nobody on the yankee side gives any clear or coherent message of command of any form. Such is naturally a prescription for a bloodbath, which is what happens. The brutality is virtually all committed in the heat of battle and within a few minutes before the confederate officers arrive on the scene and tame their men down.

And yet there are plenty of first person accounts that conflict with each of these versions you present. At Lawrence, the tales aren't all of clean executions of the Jayhawker leadership. The stories are of 17 year old store clerks being ordered to open safes, then being shot. At Andersonville, the stories aren't about disease and starvation, but about guards tossing a bit of food over the dead line, then happily shooting the starving prisoner who went for it. As for Ft. Pillow, here's an except from a letter written home by one confederate soldier: "The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. The white men fared but little better.... I with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded but Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued."

The problem with all of these is that we don't really know what happened. Partisans for both sides make the other sound bad and absolve themselves of all blame. I fully acknowledge that the Union soldiers did bad things in conquering and occupying the south. But I can't accept the Lost Causers' refusal to acknowledge that the boys in gray ever did a single bad thing during the war.