re: #53 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

It never ceases to amaze me that the music of the Civil War, both now and at the time it was happening, is nearly always concerned with chivalry, gallantry, ‘honor’, and other such bullshit; while destruction, chaos, hostility, and murder on a vast scale are pretty much ignored. When it’s addressed at all, it’s draped in coy euphemisms.

The subject of the song was principally the work of William Tecumseh Sherman, who was not taken in by “chivalry, gallantry, ‘honor’, and other such bullshit;” and who was certainly not given to coy euphemisms.