Posted on 09/10/2007 7:48:32 AM PDT by meandog
OK, Try this excerpt.... “President Jefferson Davis studied the small, odd-looking object. A heavy, black iron casting, it resembled a lump of coal. What it was, however was a bomb fresh from the drawing boards of the Confederate Torpedo Bureau. This device, experts told Davis, could be spirited aboard a Union steamer and dropped into the ship’s load of coal. When heated in a boiler, it would explode and cripple the vessel. Turning the weapon over in his hands, Davis exclaimed, “Perfection herself!””
Doesn’t look like the “rebel” leadership dissaproved to ME!
There were NO conventions on the treatment of prisoners at the time, that I know of, but TODAY, such actions would be considered to be warcrimes.
Using landmines,etc. WOULD NOT BE......
Colonel George W. Adair, now living (1898) in Atlanta, Georgia, was intimately associated with Bedford Forrest during this period of his career. He says: " Forrest was kind, humane, and extremely considerate of his slaves. He was overwhelmed with applications from a great many of this class, who begged him to purchase them. He seemed to exercise the same influence over these creatures that in a greater degree he exercised over the soldiers who in later years served him as devotedly as if there was between them a strong personal attachment. When a slave was purchased for him his first act was to turn him over to his negro valet, Jerry, with instructions to wash him thoroughly and put clean clothes on him from head to foot. Forrest applied the rule of cleanliness and neatness to the slaves which he practised for himself. In his appearance, in those ante-bellum days, he was extremely neat and scrupulously clean. In fact, so particular was he in regard to his personal appearance that some were almost inclined to call him foppish. The slaves who were thus transformed were proud of belonging to him. He was always very careful when he purchased a married slave to use every effort to secure also the husband or wife, as the case might be, and unite them, and in handling children he would not permit the separation of a family."And this:
John Allen Wyeth, M.D., LLd., Life of Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908, pp. 20-21.
Old citizens, who remember so far back, unite in saying that he avoided and refused to allow the separation of negroes of the same family. He took in as a partner Robert L. Balch, who after ward was a private and still later became by election major of Forrest's famous regiment. If only from the motive of self-interest Forrest would have been kind to his slaves. He was a man of strikingly handsome appearance and dressed well; the negroes were proud to belong to him, for he required them to be neat and tidy in appearance, and of course they were well fed and housed.
Capt. J. Harvey Mathes, General Forrest, New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1902, p. 16
It's also interesting to note that in his book "Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography" Jack Hurst quotes Forrest as claiming in later life that he was part owner in the Wanderer...
No mention by Wyeth. No mention by Mathes.
No, try this one:
"Not all the opposition to the mines came from the enemy. Major General James Longstreet, who commanded a retreating division that had directly benefited from Rains’ Richmond mines, furiously condemned them and forbade any further use of them. But Rains lobbied the Confederate government for approval of the mines. The dispute grew until Secretary of War George Randolph announced the South’s official policy for employing the new weapon. "It is admissible to plant shells in a parapet to repel assault, or in a road to check pursuit," Randolph decreed. "It is not admissible to plant shells merely to destroy life and without other design than that of depriving the enemy of a few men.""
There were NO conventions on the treatment of prisoners at the time, that I know of, but TODAY, such actions would be considered to be warcrimes.
But you're calling the men of the time war criminals, not the men of today.
Mentioned by Ward in "River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the Civil War". Mentioned by Hurst in "Nathan Bedford Forrest". Mentioned by Huges in "Thirty Years as Slave". Mentioned in Thomas Hooper's pension file. But don't let that stand in the way of a good southron myth.
Huges (sic) in "Thirty Years as (sic) Slave". No mention of the Wanderer. Also no evidence that Forrest broke up families. On page 92 Mr. Hughes states that the family was taken to a southern market, and put in the "traders' yard" of Forrest. No evidence that Forrest purchased or sold the slaves. Pages 98-99, not purchased or sold by Forrest, or anyone else for that matter.
In River Run Red [p. 20] there is a "claim" that Forrest owned interest in the ship. In NBF page 318 there is an alleged account with a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, one in which Forrest desired to repopulate the South with African blacks and Yankees, and that there is no need of a war of races.
Bwhahahahahahahaha! Somebody imbibed way too many adult beverages. How about some real proof (Bill of Sale, ships' registry & ownership papers), not the account of some drunken reporter.
Well I’ll agree with Mr. Foote on one of ‘em.......General Nathan Bedford Forrest. :)
You Yankee's conveniently forget about the POW camp in Ohio where Union troops abused and frequently killed Southern POWs. Also in several instances blacks were among those captured from Confederate outfits, and they were summarily executed on arrival. No side has the moral high ground on this issue.
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