We tend to think today, those of us who reflect back on it at all, that the War Between the States was simply a war of big battlefields and stirring changes, banners held on high, et cetera, ad nauseum. This reading of the war tends to convince us that it could never come again. But a closer reading of history reveals that this was not simply a war between the states but a war within the states, a true civil war of former friends and neighbors, made all the more ghastly by the nature of the personal associations of the combatants. Understand that, and then the spectre of its recurrence seems much more possible. Read, and learn.Yes, do so.
Mike Vanderboegh gives us a history lesson over at Mindful Musings.