The album may be great but I'm ROFL mirthlessly over this:

"The songs that come out of that era are the most reliable history we have."

Really? More reliable than, say, the Confederate Constitution or the Emancipation Proclamation?

More reliable than any of the 70,000 books about the Civil War, many of them by participants?

Not mention analyses by professional historians of every stripe.

Jeez. I didn't realize all you need to know are the lyrics to smash hits like "Dixie" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

High-schoolers take note!