How did you do?

[L Verge]

I'm sitting here staring at your Civil War and Reconstruction book right now. It's right beside your Old South one on my book shelves. Behind me is The Last Shot and Sic Semper Tyrannis. Last Confederate Heroes is at home.

I am not a military historian, but I was forced into being one (briefly) while teaching. My first year of teaching was 1965, at the time of the last year of the CW Centennial. Those battlefield games were all over the place! I would literally stay up the night before I had to teach a specific battle or battles to make sure that I could keep up with my male 8th graders (and a few females). It did not help one bit that my school was one mile from Andrews Air Force Base and all its military men. I even taught the niece of Gen. Westmoreland.

Years later, one of the parents of a boy I taught (a later version of you, I suspect) became a volunteer at Surratt House. She told me that the first week of school in 1965, she asked her son how he liked his teachers. She said I was his favorite (at least that week) because he had tested me with some CW questions, and I knew the answers. The Civil War gods were with me that day...