re: #68 Atlas Fails

It’s kind of a source of family shame that we had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Being the history geek that I am though, I’ve always found it kind of cool to be able to trace my heritage to soldiers on both sides. Still, I don’t have any delusions about noble Southern warriors defending their homeland; they fought for slavery. Why anyone would want to celebrate this is beyond me.

One one side of my family, I have New Englanders who fought for the Union.

On the other side, I have my ancestors out West, who apparently spent the war selling really crappy merchandise to the Confederacy and suing some Confederate Colonel for some reason that’s never been made manifest. I don’t think it helped his court case that my great-great-grandfather’s nickname was “Cheater”. That’s back when they were pretending to be Armenian.

I think both sides did their part.