Yet Thompson's claim before the SCC was denied. The grounds: his brief time in the Confederate Army in late 1861—a service, the judge wrote, "which was in no way compulsory." This was technically true, since there was no draft before April 1862.

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Perhaps my ancestor thought a perfunctory appearance and a medical discharge (bogus ones weren't hard to get) would keep the draft board away. The denial of his claim on a technicality also fit Storey's findings. After the war, she wrote, a reconciliation-minded President Andrew Johnson quickly pardoned many Confederates and appointed them to state offices, where they were happy to use their power against the Unionists they despised.

Not long ago, my husband and I took our daughters to Harpers Ferry. We were looking at some exhibits when I became aware of a feeling—rather, the absence of a feeling. Before, I'd seen Civil War history with a kind of double vision: I'd felt loyalty to the region, distaste for the Dixie swagger that seemed to accompany any identification with it. Now, I realized, that double vision was gone; learning about my family's history had helped me ditch a lot of baggage. Now I simply felt affection for the region I call home, a bond made all the more poignant because of the tragedy that region has borne.

When I told Storey this, she laughed. "With my students now, I try to inculcate that kind of double vision in them. I ask them, 'If you're so willing to say the North was right, would you have fought then? How many things do you feel strongly about now that you're willing to sacrifice something for?' They tend to regard their history of the Civil War as a kind of inherited virtue."

I could understand that. It's easy to say that Thomas Thompson and his fellow Unionists were right, that our nation was better off undivided. I took some pride in that, until I realized the ridiculousness of taking credit for somebody else's actions. Courage, though, you can admire, and I admired his. Imagine facing winter with five kids to feed and an empty barn, surrounded by neighbors who despise you. Was he principled, or just crazy? How could he have known he was right?

Storey has thought about that, and her answer is: He didn't. Nobody can. "If history teaches anything, it's that people do not understand fully what they're experiencing as they are experiencing it," she said. The best we can do is "to understand the way human beings live with contradiction, and attempt to organize themselves so that they can be sane in the face of what is essentially a pretty divisive human nature."

That, I think, is what he did: He stayed sane. Corley's book has one picture of Thomas Thompson, a late-19th-century photograph of him and his wife. People in pictures of that era usually look grim, but Mary Samantha looks downright weather-beaten. Clearly, she had known hard times. Her husband, however, looks good-natured. If I didn't know better, I'd say there's actually a hint of a smile there. He looks like a man who, when he went to bed at night, had no trouble getting to sleep.

To find out how to search Southern Claims Commission records, see "Resources," P. 71, of the June 2008 edition of Civil War Times.

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