Any reading into the history of the American Civil War/ the War Between The States has to start much further back than 1860. The English (and Scottish) settlements and plantations of the 17th century, some consequent on the inability to pay off English civil war troops; how tobacco became the export crop; how the American colonies partly missed out on the English Enlightenment of the late 17th Century, and consequently got their enlightenment from France; the use of "Virginia" as a destination for criminals, and the relationship of the resulting poor Whites with Black slaves; the fatal compromises necessary to make the Revolution cohere; the unrequited love Mr Whitney had for Mrs Green and its unforeseen consequences; the ever- present reservoir of unlimited lands to the West; crooked judges and growing callous acceptance of "realities".

The battles are the least of it, a sad catalogue of egotism, rivalries, incompetence, brutality and utter waste, and finally an emancipation so deliberately botched that it took another century to free the slaves.