In a message dated 11/3/2005 12:29:14 P.M. US Eastern Standard Time, dfinke@coin.org writes: I've been reading this list for years, and have found helpful information regarding how the Civil War (which I will call by that name... unless I call it what Congress called it back then, "The War of the Rebellion") affected my family. It does not sit well with me to see the phrase "War of Northern Aggression" lightly tossed out as though that were a self-evident fact. Rather, why not use the old southern euphemism, "The Late Unpleasantness"? Actually, civil wars are notorious in that we can never agree on what to call them: like in the present, one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter." I remember when a fellow Quaker was sent by our mutual employer to organize and administer aid to war victims in west Africa: one side called it "The Nigerian Civil War." The other called it "The Biafran War of Independence." Today, Canadians still refere to what went on here in the 1770-80s as the "American Revolutionary Civil War." By defition, an aremed secession will always be seen as an act of liberation by one side and an act of treason by the other. These things will never be resolved in the debates on this list. However, I do want to appeal to the readers -- and to the Moderator if there is one listening -- to please observe what ground rules there might be, and bring us some if that can be done. As entertaining as it may be (though it's getting tedious) to read various views and theories as to the origins and results of the Civil War, and as much as I want to respect the diversity of opinions expressed here, I'm starting to feel we've gotten beyond what really brings us together. Especially when we're getting long diatribes against public education, in what I feel are thinly-veiled "blaming the victims" attacks on minorities and those living in poverty, I'm ready to have someone say "enough, already!" I have no expectations that we'll ever have consensus, for instance, on whether Bloody Bill Anderson was justified in his depredations (I now live fewer than 20 miles from the Centralia Massacre), or whether Quantrill was a nobel figure upholding a heroic lost cause -- or, in the views of others, simply a psychopath acting under color of a commission. Nor will we have agreement on whether President Lincoln (for whom my great-grandfather gladly enlisted, served, and lost an arm) was a liberator or a despot. In a sense, the Civil War lives on today -- in our families' sense of heritage, and what we take pride in. None of us will change that. Whether 100 years from now the passions are still as intense, I'll not know. In a sense, the Crusades of nearly a millenium ago are still being fought out in the Middle East -- at least in how both sides from that conflict see what were the basic issues at stake. But what I can expect is that (1) the discourse will try to remain civil and mutually respectful, and (2) we will have some effort to stick to a topic. Moderator, can you please tell us again what range of issues are fair game for our contributions? Thank you, -DHF