Civil War Thread

[Spartan Squad]

The Weather Channel has this churning-sea graphic running near the bottom of the screen. When they go to a reporter, that shot shows the person down to the knee, then it looks like they're standing in the ocean with water all around them. It's horrible.

It's a metaphor that the South will rise again

 

[Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.]

A few weeks ago, my wife's cousin called her to say she wanted to get rid of these leather-bound books her grandmother and great-grandmother had collected. "We don't read; want them? We don't want to sell them, so you can have them. They take up too much room." I had a few that I've collected over the years - around six. We are both high school English teachers, so we said, sure, why not.

We went over with a box, thinking there were a dozen. Instead, the final count was 613. All between 1726-1938. So to our house they all went.

There were a number of Civil War books, but one that stands out is "Southern History of the War" by E.F. Pollard, editor from the Richmond Dispatch, from 1866. It is 1,258 pages and about four inches think, complete with pictures and maps. It appears to cover everything from pre-war until the end. I'm curious to see what angle this was taken, or if it is a straight account. I hope I can find time to find out, but life of a high school English teacher doesn't much allow for pleasure reading until the summer ...

 

[BTExpress]

We know now in enlightened hindsight that the Soviet bloc had huge productivity problems because of lack of incentivization for coerced labor, but this was not even considered as a serious factor within the USSR until the final death throes of the regime. The general attitude was, "the workers will improve productivity-- or else."

You REALLY need to talk to people who lived and grew up there.

The problem was centralized planning, not "productivity problems." Lots of "stuff" was produced, but things bogged down after that.

An example from Vladivostok, from the book "Lenin's Tomb":

There were two shrimping companies in the 1970s, one under Moscow control, the other not. They both produced a tremendous amount of shrimp. The one not under a central planning system got its goods to market fairly efficiently. The other one had to "wait from orders from Moscow" every step of the way, the result being a good portion of shrimp becoming rotten and having to be thrown out.

 

[dixiehack]

No wonder people still argue over the Civil War. We haven't finished paying it off yet.

Nation's oldest Civil War pensioner collects $73 a month from VA

 

[hondo]

This was a strong point in Foote's trilogy. I did read it, all. It's the best read of my life.

The Union won, but was never really threatened, militarily. The Union was expanding to the West at the same time, building a railroad, fighting Indians and getting into early industrialization. It was mobilized, but not like the South. The South was nothing but involved into the war. The entire CSA was devoted to a single cause, the Union otoh was a fully functioning nation.

And make no mistake, the fine gentlemen and ladies of the status quo ante bellum were the some of the most selfish, greedy and arrogant human beings since the fall of Rome. Using human bondage to enjoy a privileged life. Approx 32% of whites owned slaves in the slave states in 1860. Mississsipi and South Carolina it was nearly 50%. Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.

Foote said on Ken Burns documentary that the North fought the war with one hand tied behind its back. Had the South won key battles at Gettysburg or Antietam, the North would have pulled the other hand out and finished the job eventually. If there was ever a case of poor kids fighting a rich man's war, it was the Southern plantation owners and politician decimating a generation, most of whom had no connection to slave ownership. They brainwashed these kids into thinking they were fighting for the Glorious Cause and this misguided notion of the North invading the South (which by definition wasn't possible ... you can't invade your own country, plus the South fired the first shots at a U.S. fort, which was nothing more than domestic terrorism).

 

[hondo]

The history of Reconstruction was indelibly stamped by the shadow of Lincoln and everyone's hopes/fears/beliefs/delusions over what he would have done had he lived.

I know all about "malice toward none" and all that crap, but somehow I suspect Abraham Lincoln, long about, oh, let's say June 1866, getting reports of the Ku Klux Klan running amuck in the south, terrorizing and killing former slaves,would have said, "what the hell did we fight this war for anyway," and ordered Sherman to storm back South and finish the job with mass roundups of former rebels.

We would hope. I think Lincoln showed his compassion when he didn't stand Lee and his division commanders up against a wall 10 minutes after the surrender at Appomattox and had them shot for high treason ... which he was within his rights to do. But he gets killed, a guy from Tennessee is the president and he just sits on his hands and lets the South rise again to all but enslave blacks under a different system -- Jim Crow, voter suppression, the KKK, a one-sided sharecropping model and various other abominations.

 

[hondo]

Kate Chase.

6.

 

[YankeeFan]

I really like this song about the Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where they suffered massive casualties:

 

[Justin_Rice]

From this photo, turn about 120 degrees to the right, walk about a block and a half, and you're standing in front of my house.

 

[Buck]

From this photo, turn about 120 degrees to the right, walk about a block and a half, and you're standing in front of my house.

Cool. I'll be at your door in 10 minutes.

 

[Justin_Rice]

Cool. I'll be at your door in 10 minutes.

Man we've got a lot of Northern Virginia folks on this board ....

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

I'll wait for the rerun. It's coming soon enough. In color.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Fredericksburg is now considered NoVa? Where does the rest of the state start, Hanover County?

 

[MisterCreosote]

Fredericksburg is now considered NoVa? Where does the rest of the state start, Hanover County?

I’d say Fredericksburg is the cutoff for NoVa to the south. It’s where the 95 HOV lanes end.

 

[micropolitan guy]

OK, thanks. That area has exploded since I lived in the Commonwealth, and the DC southern burbs ended at Dumphries/Springfield/Quantico/Woodbridge. Once you got past there it was smooth sailing to the University of Three Chopt.

 

[Fly]

Doing genealogy, found a few lines on my father's side were in the Washington County Maryland area. One of my third great grandfathers lived in Sharpsburg in the mid-1800s. He was a cooper and it turns out his land was pretty much at the end of the Sunken/Bloody Lane. He was in his mid-40s during the war, did not fight. He died in April of 1863, about six months after the Battle of Antietam that was pretty much in his front yard. Mrs Fly found a flowery obit that said he was clearing shells and went through 99 safely but the 100th blew him apart. When we went through the area this summer, we spent a day there. Found a map re-creation in the bookstore on site, and discovered the information we uncovered about him was pretty much bang on correct.

We've found several folks in each of our lines who fought, including one who started with CSA before switching sides to the Union. Guess that happens when you have people who were in that Maryland/Virigina/West Virgina corridor in the 1860s.

 

[SFIND]

I have at least one direct ancestor -- paternal grandmother's paternal grandfather -- who fought for the Union. He was in Indiana Calvary and later moved to Ohio.

I live just a few counties away from where he's buried. There's a great many Union soliders buried in that county, and there's an ornate old theater there that was built in the 1870's. It has the names of all Union soliders who died in the war painted on a wall.

Confederate flags fly throughout the countryside there.

 

[Justin_Rice]

Fredericksburg is now considered NoVa? Where does the rest of the state start, Hanover County?

The south starts at the Rappahannock River, I’ve always contended.

Rural Maryland may disagree.

 

[Vombatus]

Just stay out of my neck of the woods.

 

[micropolitan guy]

I have a direct maternal relative, from my mom's little hometown, who served in the 154th New York and who was killed at Chancellorsville. One of his friends, Amos Humiston is the famous"unknown soldier of Gettysburg," a native of my dad's little hometown, about three miles away.

Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier