People were as they were, not not as he wished them to be. - Harry Turtledove

No wire with teeth reached out to trap him for enemy guns. The soldiers who marched with him had seen too much war to make a lot of unnecessary noise, but they grinned and checked their rifles. They knew what they were gaining here.

"Isn't this grand? Here I am, a nobody from a nowhere town in North Carolina, and now I've seen Richmond and Washington City both. Who'd've figured I'd travel so far? Must be close to two hundred miles down to Rivington."

Caudell nodded. The army had expanded his life. Before the war, outside of a couple of trips to Raleigh, he'd spent his whole life inside Nash County. Now he'd been in several different states and even though recalling it still came hard sometimes-a for eign country: the United States.

Whether in a foreign country or not, Washington was still the source of traditions he held dear, as London once might have been to an early Carolina colonist. ...The ordinary folk of Washington City did better at taking their occupiers in stride. Their principal complaint against the rebels was that they had too little money, and that in Confederate currency. Lee had issued an order that made the locals take Southern money in exchange for goods and services, but he could not

how could you go on thinking somebody was better than you by nature when he ran away for fear that you would blow him a new asshole with your Springfield? Wasn't he a man, just like you? Wasn't he a frightened man, just like you?