Posted on 10/19/2010 9:15:22 AM PDT by Bodleian_Girl
Shortly after 10 o'clock on a crisp Saturday morning two weeks ago, 75 folks solemnly clutching small American flags and digital cameras assembled in a grove of young pines at a modest farm in the Zion community, tucked into in the soft hills west of downtown Rockingham.
Their objective was to honor five forgotten Union soldiers who died in a skirmish only days before the end of the Civil War. Until now, the solders' remains have lain in hand-dug graves marked only by small piles of white stones for 145 years, their identities unknown.
The event, sponsored by the Richmond County Historical Society, was an unlikely memorial service to honor their service to country and unveil official grave markers for the newly identified deceased. Invited guests included ancestors of the dead soldiers from as far away as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, plus local citizens and history buffs and even a color guard made up of the Sons of Confederate Veterans from both North and South Carolina.
As local historian James Clifton reminded the participants, what happened at Lassiter Farm on March 7, 1865, was only a tiny incident in the bloodiest conflict in American history, a vast conflagration that produced more than a million casualties including 620,000 soldiers - an estimated 8 percent of all white males from the North and 18 percent from the South. More American soldiers died in the Civil War than in the next six wars combined.
Ironically, it was only the honor of a Confederate soldier that kept the memory of the five Union deaths from vanishing forever into the ether......
(Excerpt) Read more at thepilot.com ...
Interesting.
No it didn't. Here's what the New York Times, writing a few days after the Gettysburg Campaign, said:
The amount of havoc committed by the rebels in the various towns through which they have passed in represented by the citizens to be immense. They took whatever they wanted, and when so disposed, offered in payment Confederate scrip. A boot and shoe dealer in Mechanicsburgh was completely cleaned out of his entire stock, and all he had to show for it was $4,000 in worthless rebel currency. At Carlisle the people were made to furnish rations to 1,500 men. As would be naturally supposed, it did not take long to reduce the supply of provisions in that place to a small quantity. All the horses, cattle, sheep and swine in a vast section of country have been led away or slaughtered. It is related that a Copperhead resident of Mechanicsburgh, who has heretofore been loud in his assertion that the rebels were chivalrous, and would never think of disturbing private property, was especially sought after by them, and his house and furniture damaged to a heavy extent. His neighbors have an idea that perhaps he has learned to distinguish the difference between his friends and foes. If the rebels have only served all Copperheads they have come across in the same manner, the loyal people will be grateful to them.
A few of those Pennsylvania farmers managed to recoup some of their loss, though. They sold their worthless confederate currency to the victorious US soldiers as souvenirs.
As much as the author would like, living in Maine for a bit doesn't make him a Main-ah. Anymore than relocating from Maine to NC (as I did) makes me a southerner.
At best, he might be able to fool some of the tourists. :-) Good on the locals for taking him down a notch or two.
Can't blame him for wanting to move back to NC, though. No snow. Good food. (I'd never heard of hushpuppies and barbeque until I moved here!) No fools from Mass/NY/NJ everywhere you look. 'Tis a fine place to live, and I'm glad that the locals 'round these parts put up with me.
Now, if I can jut get my Mother in law to stop introducing me as "That Yankee Republican", I'll be all set.
Given the general devastation of the area, any silver or other valuables would be unlikely.
The term you are possibly looking for is “scorched earth policy”.
Brutal, but it works.
One of America’s great ironic decisions was not to visit upon the Moslim world the destruction they have earned ever since they began to follow MadMo.
Yet, we used “scorched earth” against ourselves.
“Yet, we used “scorched earth” against ourselves.”
Your opinion is correct, but not shared by the many who think looting under orders is somehow a respected American military tradition. Particularly odd behavior from those claiming to defend a “union”.
Wow. The New York Times! If the New York Times says it, it obviously is true. No one should ever disagree with the New York Times.
Even if it were true, paying for something with worthless script is not paying for it. But the fact is that Lee and his army seized most of what they took without compensation of any kind. I would refer you to "Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign" by Kent Masterson Brown for a detailed account of how Lee and his men took what they wanted.
Furthermore, the citizens in Maryland and Pennsylvania were much better off materially than those in Virginia during the end of the war. In several instances, the bummers were stealing from people in dire poverty.
War is hell.
But if you say it, without any support at all, it should be taken as gospel, right?
The New York Times of 1863 was not the New York Times of 2010, But I can find plenty of other support that the scrip the confederates handed out was considered worthless. Would you like to see it? How about this?
For nearly a week, Chambersburg and all the southern part of of Franklin county was occupied by the rebel forces, busy in gathering horses, which were regarded as contraband of war, and in seizing whatever goods of every variety that could be of use to them, pretending payment by delivering in exchange their worthless confederate scrip."--The Battle of Gettysburg, Samuel Pennington Bates, 1875
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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The states didn't rebel, they seceded from the Union as they had a perfect right to do. The Union didn't want them to so they pushed the South until a war started. The Union could have left the seceded states alone BEFORE a war started but they chose(or Lincoln did)to make sure a war started in order to force the states back into a Union they no longer wanted to belong to. If you join something you have the right to unjoin, but the Union didn't see it that way therefore there was a war, of the Union's making.
Actually, some of the undead themselves seem obsessed with racism and the confederacy, seeing shadows of it everywhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrcM5exDxcc
Nee...oh...Con...fed...er...ate!
In war, both sides feel victory is the only option. And, war is breaking the enemie’s things and killing the enemy.
All in all, a nasty situation. But there are worse things than war.
Thanks for that link.
You know, I'm not a nullification/secession/lost cause guy (as many here will tell you), but that video was hilarious.
I know, I love it. I’m pissed because that author, Tom Woods, is appearing here in Phoenix tomorrow evening, and I have the rare night project that night.
The reason it took me so long to reply is I just got back from the Perryville Battlefield. A friend of mine is down visiting and had never been to a Civil War battlefield, so I corrected this deficiency.
The spectacle presented by the battlefield was enough to make angels weep. - Corporal Henry Fales Perry, 38th Indiana Infantry, when asked to describe the Battle of Perryville.
Murtha was a marine. So was Lee Harvey Oswald. Defend them if you must.
Hell, the rules of engagement for the USA and Marines in Taliban occupied Afghanistan are more civil than Sherman's Marching Torching orders.
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