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“What is all this for?”

“What is all this for? Why this array of armies? Why this fierce meeting in mortal combat? What is all this carnage and slaughter for? Why the prolongation of this conflict? Why this lamentation and mourning going up from almost every house and family from Maine to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic and Gulf to the Lakes, for friends and dear ones who have fallen by disease and violence in this unparalleled struggle?

The question if replied to by the North can have but one answer.”

Alexander H. Stephens, 1863, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. I, pg. 175. 

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Circa1865

This is an informational website created and maintained by North Carolina historian and author John Bernhard Thuersam. Born and reared in New York, he a graduate of Villa Maria College at Buffalo, the SUNY Buffalo, and graduate school at the University of Georgia. His 2022 book, "Rather Unsafe for a Southern Man to Live Here: Key West's Civil War was published by Shotwell Press; his 2022 book "Plymouth's Civil War: The Destruction of a North Carolina Town" was published in 2024 by Scuppernong Press. For the latter, Mr. Thuersam was awarded the 2025 "Douglas Southall Freeman Award" from the Military Order of the Stars & Bars.