Memory.

All things end, and by ending not only find continuance in the whole, but also assure continuance by contributing their droplets, clear or murky, to the stream of history.  So it was for the Confederacy, and so one day will it be for the other nations of earth, if not for earth itself. Appomattox was one of several endings.  But at what cost — if not in suffering, which was immeasurable, then at any rate in blood — had the war been won and lost?

In round numbers, two million blue-clad soldiers and sailors were diminished by 640,000 casualties — more than a fourth — while the 750,000 in gray, all told, lost 450,000 — well over half. Of the former, 111,000 had been killed in battle, as compared to 94,000 of the latter... The butcher's bill thus came to no less than 1,094,453 for both sides, in and out of more than 10,000 military actions, including 76 full-scale battles, 310 engagements, 6337 skirmishes, and numerous sieges, raids, expeditions, and the like.

Out of 583 Union generals, 47 were killed in action, whereas of the 425 Confederate generals, 77 fell — roughly one in twelve as opposed to one in five. Approximately one out of ten able-bodied Northerners were dead or incapacitated, while for the South it was one out of four, including her noncombatant Negroes.

Not secession but the war itself, and above all the memories recurrent through the peace that followed — such as it was — created a Solid South, more firmly united in defeat than it had been during the brief span when it claimed independence. Voided, the claim was abandoned, but the pride remained: pride in the segment reabsorbed, as well as in the whole, which now for the first time was truly indivisible.

No wonder then, if they looked back on that four-year holocaust — which in a sense was begun by one madman, John Brown, and ended by another, John Wilkes Booth — with something of the feeling shared by men who have gone through, and survived, some cataclysmic phenomenon; a hurricane or an earthquake say, or a horrendous railway accident. Memory smoothed the crumpled scroll, abolished fear, leached pain and grief, and removed the sting from death.

Shelby Foote, from "Lucifer in Starlight"