At the request of a relative, I began looking through old family genealogical records collected by my mother.

Both sides of my family, it appears, have been in North America since before the American Revolution. I read with interest the records of one ancestor when, as an old man, he applied for a pension for his service with the Continental army. He joined in 1777, took part in various battles as a “wagoner,” was captured at one point, but managed to escape, then rejoined American forces.

That’s the sort of ancestor you brag about.

Then I found another record. This Civil War ancestor “died of acute Laryngitis at Rock Island, Illinois, barracks as a prisoner of war. He is buried in grave 11170. Captured Oct, 1863 at Pinewood Factory, Company “A”, 24th Tennessee Sharpshooters.”

As I recall, rations for Confederate prisoners were decreased at Rock Island in retaliation for the inhuman conditions in Andersonville, Georgia, a prison managed by Confederates for captured Union soldiers.

According to family lore, the branch that produced my Confederate ancestor consisted of fairly well off Tennessee landowners. Probably my ancestor owned a few slaves. Perhaps he joined the Confederates to protect his property and his “right” to own slaves. Mostly likely he held racist views.

And I thought about the folly of slavery, growing in this country even as William Wilberforce and others in Great Britain were beginning the campaign to end the slave ships. That country was the enemy against whom my other ancestor fought.

The United States took an immoral turning in allowing slavery. And the war that brought those men to miserable deaths in fetid prisons was just as misguided.