The die being cast, the Rubicon was crossed. The battles are over, the flags are furled, the last trumpet has sounded, many men are dead and the those who are left are weary of fighting and are making their way home, returning to the fields of their fathers. Those long-gone-by events have been dissected microscopically by thousands of books and articles written, many done with a wisdom and an objectivity acquired from the study of these events from a distance of 150 years and some are even done with an absence of North-South bias. Any attempt to compare modern circumstances, that are a reflection of our cultures that have been modified over a century and a half of continuing evolution, usually degenerates into a modern political debate for which there exist various Rootsweb Lists for discussing (endlessly some would say) the economic differences which led to the factions whose leaders took our ancestors into the Civil War and that war's influence on modern day politics. A vote was not taken (it never is) to see if our ancestors who fought and died wanted war or not, rather various demagogues (some call them leaders) whipped each side into a frenzy until the inevitable first shot was fired which "let slip the dogs of war." Perhaps not even the demagogues anticipated the fury unleashed by their rhetoric. During the French Revolution a man looked out the window and exclaimed, "there goes the mob, I must join them, I'm their leader!" Our modern cultures, both North and South, East and West, reflect the myriad changes that have taken place in our laws and morés, and the resultant changes to our perspectives -- perspectives which do not reflect the perspectives of those men who fought and died back in 1861-65. On this list let us leave mouldering by the side of the road the modern results of that war and instead help one another across cultural, racial, and political barriers to find our dead ancestors and when we discuss the events that transpired in those times, let us do it in the context of those times. "The good men do is oft interréd with their bones, the evil lives after them, so let it be with Caesar" Mike Ruddy Civil War List