As a young child, I encountered references to the Civil War so unexpectedly that it was mysterious and intriguing--even to an elementary school student. First time I ever heard of it was in some TV cartoon, where characters were talking about Rebels and Yankees. I asked my mother it, and she said briefly, "It was the Civil War," where people fought against their neighbors. We had relatives who were WWII veterans, so I understood war as something that happened far away, not in our own country. And I was troubled by the idea of neighbors fighting neighbors. We loved our neighbors. So whenever I ran across any further references to the war, I read whatever I could find. In the fourth grade, "The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War" held me spellbound. We had a terrific school library, where I also read biographies in a series for young readers and took a particular interest in Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and other figures in the Civil War and American Revolution. Ever since a family vacation to Gettysburg when I was a young teenager, I've been fascinated by human interest stories of the war. Moving to the Gettysburg area when I returned a few years later to attend college has continued to feed my fascination ever since.
Bringing the