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Ya'll are just as strident and self righteous as your ancestors we fought ever were.

LOL! Some of us are actually just plain righteous! ;-)

I want to answer you, but I put a LOT of time and thought into my posts, and I am just too tired to go further at the end of this day.

In the meantime, it's true about Joshua Chamberlain. I read his wartime diary some years ago, which was featured in Ken Burn's The Civil War. That's where I first met up with him. If you're interested, please take a look here. I realize it's Wikipedia, but IMO it's pretty accurate. BTW, I did sit through the entire showing of Gettysburg in a movie theater (before it was made into a series), and thought it was too short! LOL!

A telling passage from wiki:

On the morning of April 9, 1865, Chamberlain learned of the desire by Lee to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia when a Confederate staff officer approached him under a flag of truce. "Sir," he reported to Chamberlain, "I am from General Gordon. General Lee desires a cessation of hostilities until he can hear from General Grant as to the proposed surrender."[4] The next day, Chamberlain was summoned to Union headquarters where Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin informed him that he had been selected to preside over the parade of the Confederate infantry as part of their formal surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 12.[5]

Thus Chamberlain was responsible for one of the most poignant scenes of the Civil War. As the Confederate soldiers marched down the road to surrender their arms and colors, Chamberlain, on his own initiative, ordered his men to come to attention and "carry arms" as a show of respect. Chamberlain described what happened next:

Gordon, at the head of the marching column, outdoes us in courtesy. He was riding with downcast eyes and more than pensive look; but at this clatter of arms he raises his eyes and instantly catching the significance, wheels his horse with that superb grace of which he is master, drops the point of his sword to his stirrup, gives a command, at which the great Confederate ensign following him is dipped and his decimated brigades, as they reach our right, respond to the 'carry.' All the while on our part not a sound of trumpet or drum, not a cheer, nor a word nor motion of man, but awful stillness as if it were the passing of the dead.[6]

Chamberlain's salute to the Confederate soldiers was unpopular with many in the North, but he defended his action in his memoirs, The Passing of the Armies. Many years later, Gordon, in his own memoirs, called Chamberlain "one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal Army." Gordon never mentioned the anecdote until after he read Chamberlain's account, more than 40 years later.[7]

There were honorable men to be found on either side.