"Brandy Station led up to the "highwater mark", July 3,1863 when we lost at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and even today, that so many lives were taken on both sides is a sad mark on the history of the Republic.
The northern soldiers could go home to abundance, good crops, and a nation growing even stronger with the westward expansion. Our soldiers had to come home to a land destroyed by war, a land which had lost a significant number of its young people, and start all over. And what they did in the next forty years, has never been fully recognized or honored. Being a proud southerner makes me understand how the Scots and Irish felt, thinking of the bravery of the men of the south at Brandy Station provides warm feelings.
Just as a side note, My great great grandfather, a Major in the Army of Northern Virginia, was a graduate of Harvard, and to this day, that Boston school will not honor nor recognize the men who were graduates and joined with honor, the Confederate Army. They do recognize and have inscribed in their chapel, the men who fought for the north. And this in a state that tried to secede from the union to avoid the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War!
