What I don't appreciate, from some on these threads, is the accusation that my ancestors were traitors and the assumption that the North held the moral high ground because it was fighting to end slavery.
I, on the other hand, don't appreciate the constant drumbeat that my two great-great-great grandfathers who fought with Illinois regiments--one of them losing a leg--were dupes of some yankee master plan to bring the south under their boot.
The north was definitely not fighting to end slavery and I doubt you could have found more than a handful of northern soldiers who would have said they were fighting for anything other than the preservation of the union. The confederate soldiers were among the most dedicated and patriotic soldiers this country has ever produced and they should be honored. If they were traitors I am not sure who they were traitors to, since they saw themselves as North Carolinians, Virginians, etc first and Americans second. I still think we can honor the confederate soldiers and how tenaciously they were fighting for their cause, which was a free and independent south, without trying to ignore the fact that slavery was a horrible institution and the fact the war ended it was a very good thing. My issue is with people who want to pretend slavery wasn't so bad or that slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the sectionalism that led to the war.
while both the union & USSR won the war, LIBERTY lost.
free dixie,sw