[wardaddy]

My wife’s gg grandmother Virginia Barksdale Wade’s brother General William Barksdale was killed second day near the Plum Run by Willard’s New York “Harpers Ferry Brigade”...

Colonel Willard perished as well in his efforts

leading from the front has it’s drawbacks

We still tend to their family plot here in middle TN though the General is buried in Jackson MS where he and his brother had moved to start cotton and lumber and newspaper endeavors as well as a law practice

and lastly...Chamberlain even though later an eloquent speaker/politician said none of that modern day racial equality rhetoric attributed to him in the movie...likely Jeff Daniels and directors throwing a bone in the PC bowl for hungry dogs

[catfish1957]

and lastly...Chamberlain even though later an eloquent speaker/politician said none of that modern day racial equality rhetoric attributed to him in the movie...likely Jeff Daniels and directors throwing a bone in the PC bowl for hungry dogs

Believe me. As a genealogist, I have read volumes and volumes of 19th century text. There was no such thing as racial PC in 1863.

[donozark]

"Director's license." Hate it, but it is what they do. Just stick with the facts (as we know them). The movie was interesting. But as you say, they did wonder here and there.

Was the brief portrayal of Gen Barksdale close to accurate? Thinking maybe diaries. Letters?

[wardaddy]

no disrespect to Yankees who died brave and just as dead as my kin

but if you are raised in Mississippi and live in Tennessee then these battlefields are a ubiquitous reminder that a savage war was fought here

i grew up in places we would find relics...mainly bullets and minor things though serious hunters found larger intact pieces

i always had the fantasy of course ....finding a perfect saber

my grandfathers place on the Jackson-Clinton road had 20 acres and an old home and they found minie balls and small grape frequently

visits to Vicksburg were common for us given the bluffs were something of an anomaly and it was so close

we had redoubts all over

here in Nashville I lived near Shy’s Hill later in life and had redoubts on my hilltop

now I am just south of Franklin TN and can see the Winstead-Breezy Hill gap where Hood had his command post for his doomed assault on Schofield’s works

it's what forms our perspective down here that northerners except a few in Pennsylvania and Maryland don't grasp

I have been to Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Grand Gulf, Brices Crossroads, Iuka, Spring Hill, Chicamaugua, Lookout Mt, Okalona, Nashville, Franklin, Jonesborough TN, Fort Donelson, New Market, Pea Ridge, Champions Hill, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Stones River and Shiloh...likely forgetting a few....Selma...lots of little skirmish-battle spots

of those I think Shiloh wins easily as most interesting battlefield

Vicksburg sure has some big northern monuments though which are works of art by themselves

kids down here who pay attention and are raised right ...know these things...but I bet in another 100 years it will all be overshadowed by a New America that looks nothing like itself

just look how immigration transformed the North from those who fought for the Union in 1860s...I would wager a majority of northerners today have no kin or just one side who fought in the war whereas..us down here...the losers as we are commonly called...still have overwhelming genetic ties to those who fought and died

i actually had this conversation with a friend from Illinois yesterday of German descent

i'm older parent and my boys are up to snuff

but i watch Gen X and younger and I have my doubts...too much kool aid...too much time