Thread: Dixie

MO Slab, one of the reasons I made the study of the Civil War my profession is because I was fascinated how the lives of the combatants intertwined like Mosby and Grant. Other examples include how James Longstreet, Robert E. Lee's most trusted general, served as best man in U.S. Grant's wedding before the war. Grant and Longstreet went on to slug it out on many battlefields. Jeb Stuart's father-in-law commanded the Union cavalry and chased Stuart's Confederate cavalry around Virginia (unsuccessfully) early in the war. General Joseph E. Johnston, who fought against William T. Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign, died from pneumonia he contracted while serving bareheaded as an honorary pall bearer in Sherman's funeral after the war. Union general Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate general Lewis Armistead were best friends before the war. At Gettysburg, Armistead led a brigade in Pickett's Charge against the very position on Cemetery Ridge that Hancock defended. Armistead died as a result and Hancock was badly wounded. The stories go on and on.