You Know You're Preoccupied By The Civil War When;

Yesterday, I was driving and saw a building with the abbreviation NBF on the side. I immediately thought, "Oh, Nathan Bedford Forrest." Actually it stood for New Beginnings Fellowship. . . .

When you're in a work meeting and your mind is focused on the tense moments leading up to Longstreet authorizing Pickett to send the troops forward.
I was subjected to an unpleasant phone call at work on the afternoon of July 3rd this year, and all I could think of was Pickett's Charge as I suffered through it.
 
About 7th or 8th grade, we had a well-meaning, but slightly misinformed, substitute teacher who told us the reason the Confederates lost at Chattanooga was because Missionary Ridge was so steep, when they tried to put the cannonballs in, they would keep rolling out because the barrels had to be depressed at such a severe angle. Of course I since learned that Bragg didn't ensure his engineers laid out the defensive works of the Confederate Army very well, and indeed, much of the defensive line was located on the "geographic" and not the "military" crest of the ridge, putting the attacking Federal troops in defilade for much of their attack. So ever since that time, whenever I'm on the road in a new or infrequently visited location, every hill I see, I try to determine where on that hillside the military crest would be located in relation to the geographic crest. I only rarely actually stop to get a closer examination of the geography however. :wink:
 
When my three children were growing up we usually went on vacations where there were civil war museums, battlefields, etc. We recently had a family gathering where we reminisced about family vacations. My daughter laughed and said, "I never had a problem coming up with an essay at school asking me to write about, 'What I did during my summer vacation' because Mom always took us to something involving the civil war. I had plenty to write about." My daughter is not as much a civil war buff as I am but she has taken our grandson to Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry, and our local NP Appomattox Court House. My two sons aren't as interested.
 
When you pepper your conversation with Americanisms & Civil War era phrases, as if you're doing FirPer at a re-enactment.

Folks look at me funny when I say stuff like 'it's all gone up', 'in a horn', 'spondulicks', 'nary' etc. I think I've mentioned before that I pronounce 'vehicle' as 'veee-hickle'. When I do a quotation/estimate for a client, I finish the costing with 'All Works before tax' as if I'm planning on building earthworks under their home :whistling:
 
Last night I beta-read a chapter of the fanfiction my sister is currently writing. That chapter mentions Shreveport, Atlanta, Richmond and a couple other cities as well as the Red River. I couldn't resist commenting with Civil War facts on these places with the header "history lesson!" :whistling:

Her reply: "Golly! What am I supposed to do with history lessons?" :D
 
When you go further from the main 1861-1865 Civil War and look into the January-September pre-Compromise of 1850 period by reading America's Great Debate and On the Brink of Civil War and realize that the Civil War could have easily started a decade earlier by the U.S> military garrison in New Mexico firing upon Texas' militia and other Southern states such as Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri rally to that state and create the Confederate States of America.
 
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