I suppose for most children it would have seemed strange to be spending their birthday at the former home of a pre-Civil War president. To me it only seemed like a long-awaited treat. My Uncle Alex was an amateur Civil War historian with an infectious love of learning. Alex's sickness took the form of believing that late 19th century American history was more exciting and more worthy of our attention than any other period of human existence. It would prove to be an illness that soon held me under it's spell also. It all started when Alex bought me an Abraham Lincoln action figure for my 4th birthday. I remember unwrapping the gift paper, revealing the strange gaunt figure as my Uncle described to me in hushed tones who this man was and what he had done for our country. The real gift that Alex gave me over the years, however, was that he never acted as if it were odd for a young boy to have a keen interest in history. Because staying up late debating whether or not Stonewall Jackson was a hypochondriac was treated as perfectly normal, perfectly normal it became.