Mike Wise finds some diaries from his grandfathers and states "It was a statement from Mamie Belle Stout, my father’s maternal grandmother, declaring that we had relatives who fought on both sides in the Civil War. My father had always told me he believed this to be true."
The Civil War tore families apart as they chose and they chose their sides and killed each other on the battlefield.
Letter from Lois Davis to her son, Henry Richardson, 6 June 1861. Henry and his brother Luther fought in the Union Army against the husbands of his sisters, Eunice and Ellen, who lived in Alabama.
They had to fight their relative to the death and destroyed their families.
Separation happened when Virginians did not join the Confederate army. Union general George H. Thomas was a slaveholder from Southampton County whose family had been forced to escape into the woods during the Nat Turner uprising in 1831. But when he decided to remain in the United States army in 1861, his family objected and cut off contact with him. He later reconciled with his brothers, but his sisters remained estranged from him until his death.
When George didn't join the Confederate he lost his contacts with his sisters and was against them.