The kind words in your post are appreciated. This is a sensitive topic and I don't mean to come across as being disrespectful.

Allow me to take ownership of the remarks about Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain, a personal favorite about the little-known warfare that Southern civilians experienced behind the lines. A National Book Award winner in 1997, Frazier's novel is similar to a paper on "Home Guards" in Shelby County AL that I wrote for the Alabama State Historical Association. In the winter of 1864-65 nearly twenty residents of what is now Chilton County AL (best known today for its peaches) were murdered. Some of them were reportedly found stripped of clothing and dismembered. I wanted to know how this tragedy occurred, and who was responsible.

Your remarks about patriotism of the State Guards brought to mind the paper's opening paragraph. Hardships and deeply distressing events that our people experienced at home reminds us of certain hard facts. Here's one: sometimes those stirred by patriotic motivations can become highly frustrated and more than a little angry with neighbors who simply want to survive and want to be left alone. Here's a small part of the paper.

VIOLENCE AND CONFEDERATE RECRUITING EFFORTS: SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA, 1863-1865
Alan Pitts

Colonel West would soon be home. A 'faithful & energetic" officer of the 2nd Alabama Cavalry Regiment, John P. West had risen from captain to lieutenant colonel during his two year-career. West was forty-seven years old, in uniform despite being two years over the maximum age established for compulsory military service. Nothing but conscience and a strong sense of duty had kept him in the saddle these past twenty-five months. West's immediate superior endorsed his resignation with regret, but the young West Pointer at the next level of command valued leadership skills above patriotism. Without any reflection on Colonel West's 'zeal or good intentions,' he wrote, the man simply was not a first-class field officer.

[The main body has been omitted. Here's the conclusion of this paper.]

Violence was an unfortunate byproduct of Confederate efforts to enroll every white man who could shoulder a musket. Men like Colonel West felt completely justified in arresting deserters and their supporters. Patriots in the American Revolution had struggled with Tories as well as King George's men, and West followed time-honored practices by suppressing disloyalty in Shelby County. Victims were labeled Unionists, Tories, Lincolnites, home-made Yankees, or simply outlaws. As such, they did not deserve the usual treatment accorded to enemies taken prisoner on the field of battle, and could be shot or hung if captured.

No one really cared to chronicle these sad tales of anarchy and domestic violence. Grieving families must have been hard pressed to explain the loss of loved ones in these bloody events. Dying so far from famed battlefields, their story did not fit within the accepted framework of the Civil War. It had nothing to do with battles and leaders, or the prevailing themes of slavery and states rights.

In fact, broader issues emerge. The tragedy of Lower Yellow Leaf embraces envy, violence and retribution, the zeal and patriotism of West's home guard in conflict with individual conscience of the deserters, and the opportunity war offers men like Blackwell who revel in bloodshed. It involves the way people deal with sorrow and misfortune. Some choose to be guided by malice and hatred, while others who witness the indignity of violent death simply go about life. After burying her husband, her father and her father-in-law, Martha Langston dried her eyes and reflected on the experience. Trouble would not kill her. Having lived through this, she could weather just about anything.

Every year on the date of his death, descendants of Captain James Cobb gather on his homestead near Jemison, Alabama. Every year on the third day of June they renew old acquaintances, read inscriptions in the family cemetery and recall the dark days of 1865. They remember the perseverance and courage displayed by the Cobb women after the loss of their father and their home. The dogtrot house that James Cobb built is gone, but the site had been memorialized as "Cobb Confederate Cemetery". The old secessionist would have liked that.

Part of our fascination with the Civil War is its power to provoke strong emotional responses. For example, when I visited Shelby County to research this undocumented subject, a friend took me aside in an SCV meeting and quietly told me to shut up. He grew up there and understood that some folks didn't care to hear this topic -- something they simply mention as "The Killings" -- discussed in public. If I persisted, they would get mad, say nothing, and I would've wasted my time. To avoid controversy, he wisely offered to introduce me to people individually away from a group. One-on-one, they might be willing to share information about their ancestors that I wouldn't otherwise discover.

Ray, once again, the sensitive nature of this topic is well-understood and I mean no disrespect to your ancestors. Please let me know if you have other questions.

For other readers who haven't seen the film or read the book, the book is usually better than the movie. Cold Mountain is no exception. It's based on real characters, including the Home Guards. The Inman family lost four of six sons during the war, two that died at Camp Douglas, and William Pinckney Inman, killed by the Home Guard.

Here's a brief summary and a review:I

At the beginning of the story, Inman has two choices, both of which involve almost certain death: Heal and go back to the front (and remember at this point there was no end in sight to the fighting), or desert and face the wrath of the Home Guard if caught. Either way, he's dead and he knows it.

Whenever a nation is engulfed by war . . . there can be no safe choices. Whether you believed in the South’s cause or not, sitting out the war was not an option. If you fought, you would likely be killed in battle. If you tried to remain at home or return home in the midst of the war, you would likely be killed by the Home Guard. The only other alternative was to live in the mountains as an outlaw, and that too was fraught with danger.

http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1128336/content_130430045828?sb=1
http://history.knoji.com/wp-inman-cold-mountain-north-carolina-and-the-civil-war/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-203608/Cold-Mountain.html
"There are moments when it reads like a dark version of O Brother, Where Art Thou? as both works are clearly inspired by Homer's Odyssey; Inman and a fallen pastor even encounter their own peculiar sirens - in this case a shack-full of hillbilly hoydens who lead them to a kind of destruction."

Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, "Cold Mountain", 2003