In light of the fact that Alabama just beat Auburn two out of three games this weekend in baseball (GLOOM.), I've decided to title this little history email "The Bitterness of War," because I sure feel DANG bitter right now. Did you ever wonder what the Confederates thought of the invading Yanks? I offer this anecdote from the book "Shiloh -- in Hell Before Night" by James McDonough:

"In many cases relatives were coming [after the battle ended] to claim the bodies of their dead kinfolk. Among these was Samuel Stokes Rembert III, who drove a team of horses and a wagon from his farm in Shelby Co., north of Memphis, to Shiloh. Somehow he found the body of his eldest son, Andrew, a private in the Confederate army. Andrew's body was brought back and buried on the homeplace. Years later Andrew's brother Sam erected a monument to his memory. That monument, still a striking sight today, is in the form of a kneeling angel and stands 11 or 12 feet in height.

But more startling than the white angel suddenly looming up in the midst of a forested area is the bitter epitaph, which reads:

'Three Generations of Remberts. To my dear parents and loving sisters and my noble, gentle, brilliant, and brave brother, killed for defending his home against the most envious lot of cut throats that ever cursed the face of this earth.'"