Posted on 06/18/2005 8:13:17 AM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
Author, historian and former state representative Daniel W. Barefoot has written nine previous books, several of them covering former Civil War events and/or personalities. But he's well aware that his latest Let Us Die Like Brave Men: Behind The Dying Words of Confederate Warriors (John F. Blair) may stir some severe emotions and responses, particularly with its cover illustration that includes a soldier holding the Confederate flag. Yet Barefoot, who signs copies of his book today at the Hermitage Museum Shop, hopes that readers understand exactly what's he trying to do with this book rather than make assumptions depending on their own biases regarding the Civil War.
"My intention with this book was to look at some qualities that I felt were universal and timeless and expressed by the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy," Barefoot said. "I'm well aware of the irrational attitudes that many people have regarding the conflict, no matter what side you're coming from. But I felt that such qualities as honor, valor in battle [and] sacrifice, were things that make this nation great and special. I wasn't trying to do anything beyond recognizing this and the fact that they gave their lives in the war. Many of these soldiers were very young men, and many were poor. A lot of them didn't own slaves and they saw themselves defending their homeland and their relatives. It's not necessary to agree with their cause to acknowledge their bravery."
Barefoot's book offers 50 accounts of the final moments and words of Southern soldiers. Some are famous generals, and others are obscure privates, but each provides dramatic, impassioned accounts of the fighting, its impact on their families and their feelings regarding the sacrifices they made.
Barefoot's last account covers Capt. Champ Ferguson, one of the most vicious Confederate officers, who according to Barefoot's research killed at least 120 men, many in one-on-one guerilla attacks. Ferguson was hanged in Nashville in the fall of 1865.
"I think this is one of the few times anyone has gone into detail about exactly what he did during the war," Barefoot said.
"The hot button issues of slavery and the Confederate flag make rational discussion of the Civil War very difficult," Barefoot said. "You have a situation where there were myriad causes of the Civil War, but it is assumed that every Confederate soldier was a slave owner, when there were plenty of people in the North, including Gen. Grant's wife, that owned slaves. It's sad but inevitable that anyone who tries to write anything about Southern history and the Confederacy will be tagged with a label by those who don't want to even try and understand exactly what they're saying. It's also sad that the Confederate flag is only identified as a hate symbol because the Ku Klux Klan has used it as a rallying symbol. That's wrong and unfair and a misreading of Southern history.
"I'm hopeful that one day it will be possible to discuss these issues in a calm and intelligent fashion," Barefoot continued. "But I'm not optimistic that will happen anytime soon."
Saturday Dixie Bump
He's gonna get in trouble telling secrets like that.
Your right, and here's why:
The most accurate prediction of our present situation was made by Irish-born Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne in his January, 1864, letter which proposed the mass emancipation and enlistment of Black Southerners into the Confederate Army:
"Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision...The conqueror's policy is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them..."
Cleburne nailed it, didn't he !
I felt that such qualities as honor, valor in battle [and] sacrifice, were things that make this nation great and special. I wasn't trying to do anything beyond recognizing this and the fact that they gave their lives in the war.
He nailed part of it, He forgot the part about turning people loose on the world with no education, no jobs, no training other than cotton picking. It has taken nearly 250 years to bring the freed slaves up to snuff and even now we have to keep affirmative action open to keep them employed, and gerrymandered districts to get them elected..
A gradual freedom whereby education and skills were offered before wholesale dumping of the slaves out on their own would have been a better idea.
1. the US flag has ALWAYS been the klan's MAIN SYMBOL! (at the last klan rally in Washington, DC there were over 10,000 US flags & NOT EVEN ONE CSA flag!)
2. the CSA had slavery for @4 years. the USA had legal slavery for well over 2 centuries.
3. the WBTS ONLY became a "crusade against slavery" AFTER it seemed that the CSA would WIN the war AND that both GB & France would enter the war on the CSA's side.
4. the plan of the lincoln administration was to free southern slaves & KEEP northern slaves in bondage, PERMANENTLY.(lincoln, the TYRANT & cheap, scheming politician/shyster lawyer, offered to PERMANENTLY protect slavery by CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT in 1861!)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
You're joking, right? Slavery would be better than freedom for an undereducated population? Paging Mr. Mugabe...
Oh, and FYI American blacks were doing just fine by themselves "catching up" to society's average and would be that much better still after racial attitudes started to be turned around in the 1960's, before LBJ's "Great Society" and subsequent welfare state turned the clock on them back 100 years.
It's not necessary to agree with their cause to acknowledge their bravery."
Well said.
"Many of these soldiers were very young men, and many were poor. A lot of them didn't own slaves and they saw themselves defending their homeland and their relatives."
Something that is usually overlooked is that the ethnic background of most of the population of the Confederacy, especially the mountain and pine barren folk, were Scot-Irish. They have a long history of defending their territory and their clans against outsiders from the Romans to the English and finally to the Yankee invaders.
bttt
Much of the mountain people of the South had little or no use for the lowland people's Confederacy. The Southern mountain people of West Virginia, East Tennessee, Northern Alabama, Western North Carolina and other areas were generally Union supporters. And they did endeavor to defend their territory from the incursions of the outsiders from the CSA and regarded the Union Army as their allies in the struggle for they homeland.
Cogent.
Nashville City Paper is usually pretty liberal.
I'm surprised at a fairly reasonable article
To some degree what you say was true but there was bitter dissension not unlike Missouri.
The biting irony is that today Southern Appalachia regards itself as serious Dixie and one will see CSA memoribilia frequently even though chances are their great great grandaddy was a Scalawag.
The loyalty divisions in the Mountainous South could be divided by something as simple as a ridgetop....as in extreme Southwestern VA or the valley that runs from Chattanooga to Knoxville and up to Roanoke. There was Union country as close to Nashville as 30 miles to the east or northeast.
In my homestate of Mississippi there was even the Free State of Jones....not really Unionist....third rail banditry more so.....and includes one of my ancestors even to be candid.
bump
1. The slaves had among them numbers of men who were trained in various work skills. The Tredegar Iron Works, the Confederacy's main foundry and armory, employed numbers of slaves. Every plantation of any rank had numbers of artisans among the ranks of its slaves, which has been shown by the excavation, in Texas, of Abner Jackson's plantation in Lake Jackson, in the lower Brazos River Valley bottoms, in the heart of the Texas cane plantation country. Brickwork done there by slaves shows up very well in comparison with the later bricklaying performed by state convicts after the Civil War.
Likewise, the work done in the freedmen's towns after the Civil War shows
Nevertheless, the open expression of African culture having been discouraged by slaveowners, a lot of the work attitudes and moral values of the freedmen's towns came from white society and Christianity, so that it has been claimed that American blacks are the "most American" population of all in terms of values -- which is why liberalism is rightly alarmed by the political inroads now being made by the GOP and conservatism more generally, in recalling the black community from the failures of state socialism to the more solid and workable foundations the black community left behind with those first generations in the freedmen's towns.
2. In the 140 years since emancipation, the black community has declined in many of its parts because of the evils I don't need to remind anybody about. Criminality, miseducation, and demoralization are everywhere, and the black community has served as a miner's canary for anyone still taken with the idea that liberalism can somehow work. Many thousands of blacks have paid for that idea with their lives, and many more with lives disfigured by want, disease, and the consequences of moral and educational decline.
3. Your endorsement of Bookerism would seem to be supported by history and results. The black community, in the wake of the moral anti-lynching crusades, chose to follow the NAACP and its policy of confrontation. Whether Bookerism would have ever produced a result like Brown vs. Board of Education is debatable, but even spotting the NAACP the court case, it's a more even question, whether Bookerism or confrontation in the longer run would have produced the better results. With Brown vs. Board, we got white flight and schools in decline -- that is incontrovertible, and it's equally incontrovertible that the NAACP and allied front groups were fully responsible for their role in the overthrow of educators' moral authority in the classroom and the consequent explosion of their ability to deliver results for anyone, which was what triggered white flight. It wasn't the admission of black students to formerly white schools that triggered white flight -- it was what happened afterward. That many whites saw it coming and withdrew before it happened, does not detract from the validity of the statement.
They were adherents of Andrew Jackson's vision for the United States who, being less educated, didn't or couldn't know that the essentials of Jacksonian Democracy had been politically overthrown in the North -- Jacksonian resistance to the Nicholas Biddles of Yankeedom and Jackson's alliance with conservative Democrats like Martin Van Buren of New York had been the mainstay of Jackson's party, and all of that was falling apart now as the Black Republicans united the political power of the North in a holy moral crusade to destroy the South and remove its Jacksonian opposition to their carpetbagging access-capitalism/pigs-at-the-trough plans for the whole country.
The mountain folk wanted to stay with the Union because
In any case, they wanted to remain with the Union because they were about 40 years behind the times.
Battleflag bump. Down with Waggery and Baggery and Pigs-at-the-Bankery! Down with Sheeple and up with the People, and long may they wave!
Dixie ping, y'all.
Black conservative ping, too, now that I think of it.
Great article. It contains many truisms about the modern debate over the war. Picking a one-liner to quote would be futile.
And what was the response? Jefferson Davis instructs Joe Johnston to order his generals NOT to discuss such proposals as "productive only to discouragement, distraction, and disgrace." Cleburne is ordered to destroy all copies of his letter, which he disobeys by keeping one copy. His career is irreparable damaged and he is never promoted again.
You're right. Slavery was sooooo much better.
Before, during, and after the rebellion we had millions of immigrants landing on our shores, who didn't speak the language, who had no education, no jobs, and usually no training in any marketable skills. Nobody I'm aware of advocated selling them into slavery. They were allowed to make a life for themselves, and the overwhelming majority of them did just that. Their community helped them, the government did not. They worked and survived and their children and grandchildren thrived. One thing that they did not face, which the former slaves faced, was institutional racism on the scale that the former slaves faced and government legislation designed to ensure that they could succeed only as much as the white man would allow them too. And considering the legislation in place that kept the free black population in the south 'in their place' I have no reason to believe that conditions would ever have been different in the south regardless of when and how slavery had ended.
Why do you believe they took this approach?
But his idea did reach Richmond when a fellow officer who strongly opposed the idea of arming slaves sent a copy, along with his arguments against it, directly to Jeff Davis. Davis ordered that it was far too dangerous a topic to even discuss and ordered all copies of Cleburne's proposal to be destroyed. The following is from the Sons of confederate Veterans site.
Finally, after working its way through the chain of command (at least going back down anyway), General Johnston sent this final correspondence to those involved.Dalton, January 31, 1864
Lieutenant General Hardee, Major-Generals Cheatham, Hindman, Cleburne, Stewart, Walker. Brigadier Generals Bate and P. Anderson.
General: I have received a letter from the Secretary of War in reference to Major-General Cleburne's memoir read in my quarter about the 2d instant. In this letter the honorable Secretary expresses the earnest conviction of the President 'That the dissemination of even promulgation of such opinion under the present circumstances of the Confederacy, whither in the amry or among the people, can be productive only of discouragement, distraction, and desertion. The agitation and controversy which must spring from the presentation of such views of officers high in the public confidence are to be deeply deprecated, and while no doubt or mistrust is for a moment entertained of the patriotic intents of the gallant author of the memorial, and such of his brother officers as may have favored his opinions, it is requested that you communicate to them, as well as all others present on the occasion, the opinions, as herein expressed, of the President, and urge on them the suppression, not only of the memorial itself, but likewise of all discussion and controversy respecting or growing out of it. I would add that the measures advocated in the memorial are considered to be little appropriate for consideration in military circles, and indeed in their scope pass beyond the bounds of Confederate action, and could under our Constitutional systems neither be recommended by the Executive to Congress nor be entertained by that body. Such views can only jeopard among the States and people unity and harmony, when for successful cooperation and the achievement of independence both are essential. Most respectfully, your obedient servant, J.E. Johnston, General.
P.S. Major-General Cleburne: Be so good as to communicate the views of the President, expressed above, to the officers of your division who signed the memorial. J.E. Johnston.
So this remarkable idea was suppressed. All known copies were destroyed, and all officers privy to it were forbidden to discuss it. So effective was the suppression of this document that is was known only in vague terms by the participants until 1888. In that year, the copy given the Major Benham to prepare his rebuttal was found in his possessions after his death. The written copy was certified as being original by Major Irving A. Buck, General Cleburne's adjutant. It is from this one copy that all first-hand knowledge of the document is known.
Dixie Bump!
Thanks for the ping lg. Good article.
Those are some very old slaves.
Probably, but would it ever be forthcoming? The method in which slavery ended in this country was perhaps unfortunate. But what was the alternative? In the middle of a rebellion, with the Emancipation Proclamation issued as a war measure designed to deny the south the use of their chattel (and to get around the Fugitive Slave Laws) one could hardly expect the freed slaves to return to bondage so that they could be trained. Regardless, I still maintain that the freed slaves were just as capable of surviving and thriving as any recent immigrant in this country, perhaps more so since they spoke the language, if not for the persistant, institutionalized racism that existed in the North and the South. That, more than anything else, retarded their progress for over a hundred years.
Because the overwhelming majority of the southern leadership believed that placing any blacks in combat positions but especially slaves, was contrary to everything that the confederacy was founded on. It was a short path to abolition, and set a dangerous precedent. One of Cleburne's fellow generals in the Army of Tennessee, said that Cleburne's proposal would "ruin the efficacy of our army and involve our cause in ruin and disgrace." A Georgia politician said, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." North Carolina newspaper editors said, "[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down" and a "surrender of the essential and distinctive principle of Southern civilization."
you KNOW that your comments reference CSA soldiers/sailors/marines "of colour" is PROPAGANDA, pure & simple. you HOPE that your readers are too naive, ill-educated & DUMB to find out for themselves.
btw, did you bother to call the African-American Museum to ask them about the unit rosters??? and/or come to see the service records at the U S ARCHIVES, of the 100,000+ BLACK CSA veterans, that you deny exist???
NO?? i thought not.
free dixie,sw
I wouldn't go so far as to say "much' of the mountain people although there were certainly pockets in many states. Texas had a good many Union sympathizers who were of German extraction--and paid for it.
But the bulk of the CSA army was not slave-holders but small landholders who cared more about defending their 'home folks" than any opposition to slavery--and that's why they signed up beyond all reason.
EXACTLY CORRECT!
about 94+ percent NEVER ever owned even ONE slave, as over 90% of dixie's "barefooted/hungry lads in gray rags" had GROSS ASSETS of LESS than $ 25.oo. (ours was a PEASANT REVOLT against "our self-appointed betters" & the PACSA was a PEASANT ARMY, led by a relative handful of professionals like LEE & JACKSON!)
the percentage of dixie soldiers/sailors/marines that DID own slaves was ABOUT the SAME as the percentage of northern soldiers/sailors & marines = 5-6%!
face it folks, the WBTS was about FREEDOM for dixie, NOT a war over a DYING "peculiar institution", as the REVISIONISTS & south-HATERS insist.
free dixie,sw
Now there's a gratuitous lowlander's attack on the people of the hills. Our people knew enough that the South the Yankees were going to destroy was not the South of the hills, but the South built on the bondage of the black man. Our people's South was not destroyed at all.
The people of the hills realized that they had more in common with the farmers of Indiana, Illinois and the rest of the Union than they did with the slave owners who began and ran the Confederacy for their private benefit. They rightfully feared the tyranny from Richmond more than any oppression from Washington. Too bad more poor people from the lowland South didn't realize they were merely suckers and cannon fodder to protect the peculiar institution for the benefit of the rich.
Never has so much courage been wasted on so ignoble a cause.
Oh, dear -- here we go. Want to rein that in a little, perfesser?
German immigrants arriving in the 18th century were, not a few of them, displaced artisans driven out of the slowly industrializing and massifying German society. They brought with them the skills of the locksmith, the clockmaker, the jeweler, the tinsmith, and -- very pregnantly -- the gunsmith. It was they who handmade the very first Pennsylvania rifles, that later became Kentucky rifles, that doomed the Black Watch and sealed America's ownership of the vast American interior.
The Italians who came to America were either piemontesi shepherds or small-town artisans and skilled workers, and some of them had mining experience that was immediately put to use in the coal mines.
The Irish and Scots-Irish brought strong backs and the knowledge of making whiskey; and the women made Irish lace and other people's beds. Scots-Irish women could make just about anything - they could make soap out of a sow's ear.
Please don't overgeneralize about broad backs and empty pockets. A lot of people brought sought-after skills as artisans, and some were professionals. Alexander Hamilton was only a teenager from Nevis, but he arrived in America with a scholarship in his pocket to attend King's College in New York -- now Columbia University. Before he turned twenty, he had also become an artillery captain in the Continental Army and General Washington's trusted aide-de-camp. There were a lot of stories like his. Not everyone got off the boat destitute -- especially people who were able to afford a steamship ticket in the first place.
Are you talking about Northern liberalism?
Or Gilded-Age bossism and plutocracy? Not much courage there.
""2. the CSA had slavery for @4 years. the USA had legal slavery for well over 2 centuries."'
I love that quote
Of course. That must be why Washington got burned to the ground by the power of Richmond tyranny, and not vice versa.
Too bad more poor people from the lowland South didn't realize they were merely suckers and cannon fodder to protect the peculiar institution for the benefit of the rich.
Too bad more Kentuckians didn't come down from their mountain hollers until it was too late and the Yankees they had sided with owned everything and derided the Kentuckians as hillbillies, fit only for manual labor, truck driving, and the draft. Or as Lyndon Johnson patronized them, "Appalachians". Lot of good their Jacksonian patriotism did them then, when the federal government and rich Yankee banks stood over them like colossi and treated them like street urchins.
So who was the fodder then?
No, it just stagnated up in the hills because the lowland economy they were connected to was destroyed instead.
Mountain poverty in the 1960's was caused by guessing wrong in the 1860's. They broke their States, broke their economies, and broke their own futures. That's why so many of them wound up getting into cars pointed north, from 1942 on.
The natural alliance would have been a agrarian states rights, strict-constructionist coalition between the South and the West. Sort of like the Douglas democrats. That would have been best for everybody except the slave interest. But we know that in Dixie the slavers' tail wagged the dog. The Confederacy first and last was soaked with slavery. Had they really cared about the Constitution and not slavery they would rallied around Douglas and the West. With their allies in the West, the South could have won all battles except that of slavery. But then again, slavery was what the CSA was in business for.
I agree that most the soldiers fought to defend their home areas. The Confederate army was filled with brave men of honorable purpose. I do think they were badly used by those who led the secession which I consider one of the most shortsighted and self-centered acts in history.
BTTT !
Difficult only for irrational people.
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