. . .300,000 Yankess lie stiff in Southern dust; we killed 300,000 before they conquered us. They died of Southern fever, of Southern steel and shot, but I wish we got three million, instead of what we got. . .
That was one gruesome war, and it slaughtered the flower of American manhood across two generations, something 700,000 or more. Freakin' ghastly. I heard Lee said the greatest regret of his life was taking a military education.
When I was a little kid, late 1950s, living in SW Virginia, the war of northern agression was freash, real, and had the immediacy of recent events - people were around who had fathers, granfathers, etc. who fought in it.