The civil war is a complicated subject. Modern day apologists crow about States' Rights, but the particular right that they were crowing about was the right to own another human as a slave. Which, as I wrote about earlier, was a right that they never really had in the first place. The framers decided that they had to make a choice between making a stand on slavery or getting the constitution ratified, and they chose the latter. Some might take exception to that characterization of things, but I stand by it, and will attempt to post a more detailed exploration of that particular aspect of the constitution's history at another time - particularly in light of the fact that many of the framers owned slaves themselves - but for now, I wish to talk about that forgotten and often despised hero of the War Between the States - the confederate soldier.