[cowboyway]

I'm not sure they're any more enthusiastic about the message as y'all are.

Perhaps they know a snake oil salesman when they see one.

My dear mom once gave me a hot lecture about "yankees" when I dared to point out the Civil War unionists in her own family tree.

Besides embarrassing the poor old dear you drug up a painful past. Not many people like their dirty laundry hung out.

Here's a link to a Google book of a contemporary (1866) book on life in East Tenn. during the war:

Here's a better one: Jack Hinson's One Man War

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I looked at the preview of the Hinson book and may even go ahead and buy it to get both sides of the story. But as the Hurlburt book I linked shows, there were mean savages on both sides.

And I'm sure you'll be happy to know that as my mom got older and I got wiser, I quit teasing her about her unionist relatives and focused more with her on the fact that she did have some true bonnie blue Confederate forbears who fought the good fight that she could be proud of.