it's easy to vilify and try to make demons outta everyone who fought on the Southern side...By the time of Petersburg the Southern army was really down to the dregs... the Southern army would have killed any Union troop regardless of color...

You're disappointing me, Bobert- I had always thought better of you.

Plenty of atrocities were committed against Blacks long before the Siege of Petersburg. The Confederacy never condoned the massacre of White prisoners, as they did Black ones.

Nobody here, I think, myself included, is trying to "vilify everyone who fought for the South"- only to present the facts of what actually went on without recourse to subsequent "Lost Cause", "Redemptionist" and Neo-Confederate mythology, spin and invention.

On the other hand, you seem to be coming dangerously close to whitewashing and making excuses for things for which there really is no excuse.