The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Speaking about Robert E. Lee:

"When Virginia left the Union she bore his home away as surely as if she were a ship setting out to sea, and what was left behind on the shore was not his any more. So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, as wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own. And so he took up arms wilfully, knowingly, in perhaps the wrong cause against his own sacred oath and stood now upon alien ground he had once sworn to defend, sworn in honor, and he had arrived there really in the hands of God, without any choice at all; there had never been an alternative except to run away, and he could not do that. But Longstreet was right, of course: he had broken the vow. And he would pay. He knew that and accepted it. He had already paid. He closed his eyes. Dear God, let it end soon."

I thought I'd let the book speak for itself.

The Killer Angels

I am currently three fourths of the way through an amazingly well written historical-fiction novel called The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It is a story through the eyes of both the Union and Southern Army during the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Shaara gives a factual yet personal view of the battle itself as well as insight into the causes and effects of the Civil War.
There is a particular passage that had a personal meaning for me. (Keep in mind my entire family is from Virginia and fought in the Civil War on the side of the South and that my Grandmother married a preacher from Virginia.) "'Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. That's why they fall in love with preachers.'" (132) Spoken by one of the generals on the side of the South, General Longstreet, a wise and observant man.