[rustbucket]

The Union army did not behave close to the Mongols. But like Charleston, war is rough. Reading of Civil Wars throughout history, I don't recall any where the victors behaved with such kindness and forbearance towards the vanquished as the United States did toward its defeated rebellion.

Some of my wife's grandparents saw Sherman's troops come through their Georgia farms when they were young. Their children, my wife's parents, hated Sherman with an absolute passion that shocked me.

When you read about Sherman's troops suspending people by ropes until they almost choked to death in order to find out where their valuables were, taking prized possessions, leaving families without food, burning down their home, etc., perhaps you will understand better. Such behavior may have indeed helped to win the war, but it left its victims hating the North.

I believe that most Dixie whining about Sherman over the years was caused by soreloserism and embarrassment over the poor showing of the CSA is the rebellion.

You frequently talk about the bad behavior of Confederates toward the Union sympathizers in East Tennessee. They were indeed mistreated. Do your comments constitute Union whining?

In your discussions about East Tennessee, you forget to mention mistreatment of Confederate sympathizers by the East Tennessee Union folk after the Union troops gained the ascendancy in East Tennessee.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

It is all unfortunate on both sides. My mention of the confederate mistreatment of southerners is to disprove any moral superiority of the reb cause and to try to deflate what I see as the pretensions and myths of the CSA, but I don't mean top say that the Union conduct was perfect either.

But when war came, wickedness and suffering were released on the land. It comes down to who lit the match to start the holocaust, and legality of secession, I think it's clear was no impairment of the liberty of the southern people that warranted a dissolving of an old and good union.