Rose: Thank you for your reply to my "Peters Family in the Civil War" posting. I hope you are doing well. I'll will preface my response in the manner that you ended yours. I mean no disrespect. Let me try & explain my feelings on the conflict I chose to call the War Between the States. (Thank you Pat Wood!) I did not or do not call it The War of Northern Aggression. That's a term I heard about 2 years ago from a cousin who is also a Franklin County researcher. I chose to include the "War of Northern Aggression" moniker because the relatives I mentioned in the posting fought on the side of the Confederate States of America. I am sure they saw the war that way. I do not have a degree in American History. But I believe that this war was fought over the rights of States vs. the rights of the Federal Government. It was a case of the Southern States not liking "Big Brother" telling them what they could & could not do. Some have said that the war was fought over slavery. I don't know if I agree with that take. If that was the case, then why did President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, that became law on January 1, 1863, only free slaves living in states that had seceded while leaving slavery untouched in the Union loyal border states. And why did Lincoln wait until 1863 almost two full years after the first battle of the war, Fort Sumter, to do this. I also understand why this war is called the "Civil War." Civil in this situation means "of or occurring within the state" as in civil disobedience. I also understand that this disobedience had to be put down, could not be tolerated by the federal government. Another definition of civil is "not rude; marked by satisfactory (or especially minimal) adherence to social usages & sufficient but not noteworthy consideration for others." The Geneva Conventions of 1906 & 1949 tried to give war a set of rules & make those playing it adhere to certain principles while displaying "sufficient, but not necessarily noteworthy, consideration for others." Granted, many regimes such as Germany, Japan & Viet Nam did not adhere to the principles of the Geneva Conventions during WW2 & the Viet Nam War. But the Geneva Conventions was an attempt, be it naive, to make war a little more civil. In your E-mail you state that no war is civil & that they are all antisocial & violent. Point taken. General William Tecumseh Sherman may have said it best when he said that "War is hell!" The point I was trying to make was any war that pits brother against brother, father against son & friend against friend is warfare at its worst. I pray that our sons & daughters never have to face such a conflict. Sincerely, Mike Peters npeters102@aol.com