And always, in keeping with our promise, we have sought to avoid romanticizing a war in which 600,000 young Americans lost their lives. They and their comrades would be the first to caution that there is nothing very romantic about a .58-caliber Minié bullet to the belly, or a slow, lingering death from dysentery. While we remain awed by the courage, fortitude and self-sacrifice of our Union and Confederate forefathers, we have not shied away from the uglier aspects of the war: the prison death camps at Andersonville, Ga., and Elmira, N.Y.; the Union burning and looting of the Shenandoah Valley; the revengeful Confederate burning of Chambersburg, Pa.; the savage border skirmishes in “Bleeding” Kansas and the murderous little war-within-a-war between John Singleton Mosby and George Armstrong Custer. We have watched good men die in great battles and small skirmishes (see the story in this issue on Lieutenant John Meigs’ lonely death on a muddy mountain road, P. 8), always keeping in mind something the editor’s father, a World War II combat infantryman in Europe, told him many years ago: “When someone is shooting at you from behind the next tree, every battle is a big battle.”

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With this special, all-cavalry issue, America’s Civil War enters its second decade. Many thanks to the thousands of readers, subscribers, advertisers and contributors who made the first decade such a happy–and humbling–experience. You have enabled us, the ACW staff, to spend countless hours in the company of our betters, the heroic men and women of the Civil War who fought their big battles and won their big victories–peace, reunion and reconciliation–in a country truly “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

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