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My great grandfather was injured at Cedar Creek and Winchester at a time when he had 5 children at home. He contracted the measles during the war and was so ill that he was debilitated the rest of his life and died at 63 when my grandfather was in his mid twenties. My great grandfather’s wife had died 20 years earlier leaving him with 10 children.

My father was a bus driver and refused to enforce Jim Crow in the south. A few years later he was the manager of the Houston Bus Terminal and before the Civil Rights Act was passed, he shut down the “colored” waiting room and told the little restaurant in the terminal that he would shut them down too if they did not integrate. A bit later he was laid off and offered a transfer to anyplace north of the Mason Dixon line. We all ended up moving to Kansas. In other words, we were run out of town and the state. Maybe that’s not enough. I don’t think that there will ever be enough.

Many do not appreciate the deadly diseases to which soldiers were exposed during the Civil War. Not just the diseases themselves, but also the disabilities they often suffered as a consequence of these diseases if they somehow managed to survive.

My 2nd great grandfather ( company F 10th Regiment Vermont Volunteer Infantry ) suffered the deadly amoebic dysentery and as a result was also debilitated for the rest of his life. It is a historical fact that the ameobic dysentery killed at least as many Union soldiers as did enemy bullets.

I have it on an affidavit filled out by my 2nd great grandfather's cousin who served in the same company and regiment that even though my 2nd great grandfather was often as sick as a dog, he still did his duty between the frequent severe and untreated attacks, did not desert, served until the end of the war and was honorably discharged in Vermont when the war ended.

The consequences of amoebic dysentery that is not properly treated can be meningeal irritation and a crippling inflammatory arthritis. My 2nd great grandfather suffered these afflictions and was crippled to the degree that he was no longer able to carry out his trade in Vermont as a tack/harness maker. A letter to this effect was written on his behalf by a well-known Vermont lawyer named Ralph Orson Sturtevant who was later to become the author of the Pictorial History Thirteenth Regiment Vermont Volunteers War of 1861-1865. I have a copy of this affidavit among my other documents.

So if we are going to talk about "reparations...…"