As a very young child, probably in kindergarten or first grade, I saw something on TV that I didn’t understand, a reference to Yankees or Rebels, or something about soldiers in blue and gray. I asked Mom, and she answered in a casual, offhand way that it was during the Civil War. The Civil War? I'd never heard of it. Americans fought Americans, she said. Neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. I was incredulous and baffled. Why would Americans shoot other Americans? We were friends with our neighbors. Why would people want to shoot their neighbors? But I didn’t ask any of those questions. I went on to third grade, in a school that had a wonderful library, where I found The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. I pored through it. Two pictures stuck with me, I think because both were beyond my comprehension. One was a crowd of naked, starving prisoners at Andersonville. How could Americans treat other Americans that way? The other was the portrait of Edwin Jemison. How could a boy not much older than I was become a soldier and be killed in a war? And what could make a child look like that? I’ve been fascinated by human interest stories of the Civil War ever since.