This section of my website is designed to host the various interests I have with the American Civil War.

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Introduction

This may come as a shock to my friends and family, but I have an admission to make. I may be a Civil War junkie. I know this may come as a "Duh moment", especially from my son Ben White. My passion for the the Civil War is something that gradually developed. When I was younger, I purposely avoided studying the Civil War. As best as I can explain now, the Civil War was almost like a thing to be ashamed of as an American. While some things did happen in the Civil War that were shameful, on both sides, there is much good that came out of it. My interest in the Civil War was germinated when I began to collect and document my family history and found that my GG Grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Simmons I, had been a soldier in the 34th Texas Cavalry of the Confederate Army in the Trans-Mississippi Department. I later found scores of other ancestors and cousins who had also served, on both the Confederate and Union side.

Most of my relatives who served in the war, returned home afterwards and obviously had families and lives. However, some of my relatives paid the ultimate price of patriotism. One great-uncle died assaulting Culp's Hill in the Battle of Gettysburg. Another died at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Other relatives were killed by bush-whackers and "Home Guard" units. It is fitting, and I think appropriate and necessary to learn and understand why these people made the choices they did and what they were willing to sacrifice to stand up for their beliefs. It is only by studying the past, that we can understand the dynamics of the larger macro situation and the various smaller, micro situations and apply those lessons the realities we live today and in the future.

Lessons to be Learned

In the era preceding the Civil War, during it and after it, hatreds were allowed to breed, driven by radical people on all sides. Dislike of institutions or regions gradually grew into full fledged hatred of people, not because of who they were individually, but based upon who they were racially and/or regionally. It appears to me that we are developing, and some might say, we already have developed, almost the same levels of ideological hatred between Americans that existed in the Civil War era. Now, it is not abolitionists versus states rights people, or Northerners versus Southerners. We now have pathological hatreds spewed on radio, television and in the written press between people identified as Liberals or Conservatives. One cannot listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Air America Radio, to see the outright, ideological demonization of each other's side. While I do not think this could result in another Civil War breaking out, and I sure hope I am right, the hatred being spewed is not a good thing for our nation. This kind of demonization results and did result in the 1800's, in people willing to destroy others, instead of working and compromising to find peaceful means to settle disagreements in the political arena.

In my opinion, we as Americans need to remember what hatred led to, the costs it inflicted and the hatred it further engendered, which in some places still exist. Like in the Civil War, neither side now (Conservative or Liberal) are totally correct. The world and universe do not operate on a binary system of one or zero, of total good or total evil. The world and universe is rather one of grey areas, where compromise is required and working together is a necessity. The alternative to this results in things like 50,000 men falling between the hills south of Gettysburg. In my mind, the greatest lesson taught by the Civil War, once it was over, is that we were all Americans. The armies sat down the very day they stopped fighting and shared food, coffee, medical supplies and embraced each other as brothers........brothers who had lived through the hell of combat together. By and large, it was the people who had not done the fighting, who kept up the hatred on both sides. No more poignant example is that Confederate Lt. Joseph Johnston, who was a pall bearer for Union Lt. General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Epilogue

I am not a Confederate or Union partisan. The war has been over for nearly 150 years and it is a part of history. No one alive today, on 20 February 2008, was alive during the time, and probably very few are alive who were born immediately after the era. I am a Texan, born in Texas, raised in Texas and live in Texas and I am an American. I have no abiding love for the Confederacy, nor do I think the Northern Union states were pure either. The Civil War was a very uncivil war and many people in the south remained opposed to secession and the Confederacy and in like manner, many people in the north were Confederate sympathizers. It is for us today to learn from their experiences and not to make the same mistakes they did, while remembering and honoring their sacrifices.