*nods* I love Westerns, and now I'm thinking I should start watching this, because based on your description (there's an anti-hero? My kind of crack, dude), I'd love it.

And I'm really intrigued by your discussion of it as a Confederate viewpoint of the Civil War/War Between the States (I may be a Yankee, but I do my historical reading, dammit), since history from the point of view of the defeated is rare, for obvious reasons. My favourite books on the Roman Empire are about the native tribes that got swept up into it, and how they persisted, even if feebly.

Happy birthday, by the way; I hope it was all you could have wanted it to be.