Posted on 06/21/2005 2:42:35 PM PDT by CurlyBill
Totally agree and, the point that I was making before I became a target of our "southern gentleman" here. Fortunately our insult-belching blowhard is not representative of what most southern men are like.
I travel through the south every year and really do enjoy the people and places there. I find most folks to be friendly and accomodating,probably more so than in the north.
I agree, let's just be glad that the conflist ended as it did and that we are one country again.
Seems to me you are the one belching out hate-speech on this thread. Perhaps you had better look in the mirror.
Poor baby. It must really get under your skin that I can travel anywhere I damn well please. LOL
And by the way, nice dodging of the question. I believe I asked you to demonstrate where I ever stated or showed any "hatred" of the south.
had i lived in those days, i would (like my ancestor,PVT William James "Little Thunder" Freeman, late of the 1st Mounted Cherokee Rifles & Co. A, 4th MO Partisan Rangers) have ridden with COL Quantrell.
free dixie,sw
fwiw, every day that passes, more people in dixie cleave to the Cross of St Andrew & become SOUTHRONS, which is a far different thing than a "southerner".
free dixie,sw
I believe I'll stay right here, thank you. At least until you demonstrate for me where I EVER (darn 'caps' key again) espoused any hatred for the south or the people therein.
So glad you're just a pretend bouncer here! LOL
Frankly, I wouldn't have been surprised if Castro had tried to take over Gitmo. Of course he didn't because he didn't have a chance.
http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/gazette/History_98-64/hischp3.htm
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h98.html
The large number of Union troops taken at First Manassas were held in various prisons until they could be exchanged (usually by late 1861). Large numbers of Confederate prisoners weren't taken until the fall of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. They were held primarily at Camp Douglas and were gradually exchanged or paroled as battlefield conditions warranted. Federal quartermasters did provide Confederate prisoners with new uniforms (the production schedules at both the Cincinatti and St. Louis arsenals show periodic runs of Confederate uniforms "for prisoners.") Odd color and odd material, such as felt great coats, items that were produced in the early War period and not meeting regulation US Army specs were issued to Confederate POWs. A friend of mine in Missouri who reenacts with the 16th Missouri (CS) has quite a collection of original Confederate items, and one he is quite proud of is a black with red lining foot pattern greatcoat with pewter eagle buttons. It's a Federal manufacture item that was issued to a Tennessee soldier being held at Camp Douglas. The Federals were able to issue clothes and other personal needs to captured Rebs because they had the production capacity to do so, and in general did.
The problems in the camps on both sides came from different sources. At the top, the Commissary Generals of both armies (Winder on the Confederate side, Hoffman on the Federal) were notorious penny pinchers. Hoffman, it was said, took pride in being able to return money to the Federal Treasury at the end of every fiscal year....most of which came out of allotments for care of POWs. Winder was just cheap and had a tendency to ignore requests from camp commanders (Belle Isle and Andersonville in particular) for additonal supplies. I'm certain that if Winder hadn't died close to the end of the War, he, and not Wirz, would have faced a war crimes trial. By ignoring requests for supplies from his camp commanders, a case could be made for Winder acting with malice, but I'll leave that for someone else to decide.
Another problem in the camps was with the guards. Neither side had a dedicated corps of Military Police. Both had Provost Marshal Generals, and Provost Guards at divisional and Army headquarters, but no permanently assigned MPs who would handle the prisoners. This resulted in widely ranging treatment of POWs at the hands of guards.
In general, on both sides, guards who were from veteran infantry regiments treated prisoners better than those who were from green regiments or "home guard" units. In some camps (Andersonville, for instance) guards were given a thirty-day furlough if they shot a prisoner for attempting escape. The intent of the order was to make the guards more vigilant, but it had the effect of getting green guards to just engage in random gunfire at the expense of the prisoners. Members of Confederate line infantry regiments who did tours as prison guards were less prone to that sort of activity (shooting for a leave), as were members of the US Army Veteran Reserve Corps. The worst seemed to be Georgia Home Guard troops (again, Andersonville) and members of the USCTs (Camp Lookout). Combat soldiers had a high degree of mutual respect for each other, and that led to line infantry doing a more humane job of guarding than REMFs.
When the US House passed it's resolution to treat Confederate prisoners severely, that was after accounts of Federal prisoners being treated badly at the hands of the Confederates had made it north. Let's not forget that the Confederate House passed a resolution calling for the execution of US black soldiers and white officers in command of black troops immediately upon capture. Civilian poltitical leadership can often cause more trouble than it's worth in wartime.
Fifteen thousand Union troops are buried at Andersonville....the equivalent of a division. Similar numbers died at Belle Isle, VA. Those were purpose built-POW camps, and had no barracks or shelter for the prisoners. Elmyra had just a stockade, but Camp Douglas and most other Union POW camps had formerly been training camps, and did have barracks. The barracks were cheaply constructed, and poorly heated, but the barracks I was in when I was in basic training was equally cheaply constructed and poorly heated (not like it would have mattered, I went through basic in summer), so little has changed since then. The difference is that the Union had space for POWs, the Confederacy didn't.
The true test of which side's captives were better cared for is how many returned to fight after parole or exchange: The majority of Confederates held in northern camps returned to fight after parole (and often before formal exchange). There are accounts of Reb prisoners who were captured three times and released twice. Most Federals held captive by the Confederates had to be discharged as no longer fit for service. It was the fact that paroled Confederates were returning to the line in no time at all that prompted Grant to cease paroling and exchanging POWs after he became commander of all the Union armies. He knew the Confederates couldn't make up the losses from captures, but the Union could. Very effective policy, although Federal prisoners in Andersonville and Belle Isle would suffer much longer because of it.
Hyperbole aside, the condition of POWs in the Civil War was pretty bad for both sides, but not because of stated policies. Poor supply and logistical systems did more to harm prisoners than House resolutions ever could have. Say what you want, but them's the facts. History is what it is, and I will still compare Elmyra to Andersonville because it's a valid comparison, but concentration camps? Not hardly. Poor planning on both sides, political malice on both sides, and inexperience on both sides. Neither side has clean hands. To state otherwise is to deny the facts.
Your fellas in gray look like worthy battlefield opponants (and some of the least farby Rebs I've seen in some time). I'd be equally proud to face them on the field then have a beer with them at sutler's row afterward.
15,000 at PLPOWC, alone.
aren't you ASHAMED or do you not believe the NUMBERS, which are WELL-documented????
free dixie,sw
i do NOT believe that to be a coincidence, as ALL 4 of the AmerIndian members of my family, who arrived alive/healthy at PLPOWC were DEAD within 30 days.
free dixie,sw
Note where I'm from. I'm an AMERICAN. Not a "Reb," not a "Southron," but an AMERICAN. Just as Lee was an AMERICAN, and Jackson was an AMERICAN, and "Pap" Thomas was an AMERICAN, as was John Buford. If you can't grasp that the Confederacy lost the argument, then there are Confederate colonies in Brazil you might be interested in. If you don't choose to join the other un-reconstructed Rebs, please don't sully the words of General Lee: "If you are as good Americans as you were soldiers, I will always be proud of you." or the orders of President Lincoln to the Armies: "Bind up the Nation's wounds."
The GAR and the UCV were having joint encampments by the 1880s, the best cavalry regiment in the Span-Am War was commanded by a New Yorker, manned with Texans, Oklahomans, New Mexicans and Arizonans, all under corps command of a former Reb from Alabama. The wounds were bound, the ANV had become good Americans again.....why do you want to rip them open and profane the sacrifices of those who died for their beliefs?
Neither did Davis. He just found out the hard way.
Impossibility, more like. Western Virginia didn't secede from anything. The recognized legislature of Virginia voted to split and Congress voted to allow them.
In response to a referendum, a convention gathered in Richmond on October 5, 1829, attended by such prominent Virginians as James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and John Tyler, to develop a new constitution. Eastern Virginian conservatives defeated virtually every major reform, including the most significant issue of granting the vote to all white men regardless of whether they owned land, and the election of the governor and judges by the people.Statewide, the new constitution was approved by a margin of 26,055 to 15,566, although voters in present-day West Virginia rejected it 8,365 to 1,383. Calls for secession began immediately, led by newspapers such as the Kanawha Republican. Over the next twenty years, the General Assembly eased some of this sectional tension. Nineteen new western counties were organized, granting greater representation. A number of internal improvements were made in the West, including the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike and the Northwestern Turnpike.
In 1831, the issue of African Americans came to the forefront following Nat Turner's raid, which killed sixty-one whites in Southhampton County, Virginia. That same year, William Lloyd Garrison first printed his newspaper, The Liberator, marking the beginning of an organized national movement to end slavery, called abolitionism. Some abolitionists disapproved of slavery on a moral basis. Others, including prominent western Virginia political leaders, supported abolitionism because they felt slaves were performing jobs which white laborers should be paid to do. Washington College President Henry Ruffner, the son of Kanawha Valley salt industry pioneer David Ruffner and a slaveholder himself, wanted to end slavery in trans-Allegheny Virginia in order to provide more paying jobs for white workers. He outlined this theory in an address delivered to the Franklin Society in Lexington, Virginia, in 1847. His speech, later printed in pamphlets and distributed nationally, stated that slavery kept white laborers from moving into the Kanawha Valley. To prove this theory, Massachusetts abolitionist Eli Thayer established an industrial town at Ceredo in Wayne County, beginning in 1857. The laborers, white New England emigrants, were all paid for their work. The experiment failed when some of the investors were unable to contribute and a national economic depression restricted the availability of additional money.
In 1850, the year in which Congress adopted extensive compromises to ease the growing tensions between North and South in the country, Virginia delegates once again met in Richmond to settle problems between East and West in its own state. Eastern Virginian conservatives reached agreement with the West on the major issues remaining from the 1829 convention. All white males over the age of twenty-one were given the right to vote regardless of whether they owned property. The convention also approved the election of the governor and judges by the people. Delegates, including many from western Virginia, agreed to a provision allowing for property to be taxed at its total value, except for slaves, who would be valued at rates well below their actual worth. Many eastern Virginia slaveholders now paid less in property taxes than before, placing a greater burden on the western counties. At this Reform Convention, the West was represented by entirely new delegates, who had not participated in the 1829 convention. Several of these delegates to the Reform Convention rose to political prominence, including Joseph Johnson (the first Virginia governor from trans-Allegheny Virginia), Charles J. Faulkner, Gideon D. Camden, John Janney, John S. Carlile, Waitman T. Willey, Benjamin Smith, and George W. Summers.
Over the next few years, the state government tried to gain support from western Virginia by completing various internal improvements. However, the 1857 national depression defeated these efforts to improve the western Virginia economy. The salt industry in the Kanawha Valley gradually collapsed. Mills and factories throughout all of present-day West Virginia were forced to close. Yet, due to the new 1850 Constitution, eastern and western Virginians seemed closer politically than they had been at any time in history.
Everything changed with the approach of the Civil War. In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, with virtually no support from the South. His election resulted in the country's southernmost states leaving the Union. On April 17, 1861, days after Lincoln's order to seize Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a secession bill to the people. Led by Clarksburg's John S. Carlile, western delegates marched out of the Secession Convention, vowing to form a state government loyal to the Union. Many of these delegates gathered in Clarksburg on April 22, calling for a pro-Union convention, which met in Wheeling from May 13 to 15. On May 23, a majority of Virginia voters approved the Ordinance of Secession. It is not possible to determine accurately the vote total from present-day West Virginia due to vote tampering and the destruction of records. Some argue that secessionists were in the majority in western Virginia, while others feel Unionists had greater support.
Following a Union victory at the Battle of Philippi and the subsequent occupation of northwestern Virginia by General George B. McClellan, the Second Wheeling Convention met between June 11 and June 25, 1861. Delegates formed the Restored, or Reorganized, Government of Virginia, and chose Francis H. Pierpont as governor. President Lincoln recognized the Restored Government as the legitimate government of Virginia. John Carlile and Waitman T. Willey became United States Senators and Jacob B. Blair, William G. Brown, and Kellian V. Whaley became Congressmen representing pro-Union Virginia.
On October 24, 1861, residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state. The accuracy of these election results have been questioned, since Union troops were stationed at many of the polls to prevent Confederate sympathizers from voting. At the Constitutional Convention, which met in Wheeling from November 1861 to February 1862, delegates selected the counties for inclusion in the new state of West Virginia. From the initial list, most of the counties in the Shenandoah Valley were excluded due to their control by Confederate troops and a large number of local Confederate sympathizers. In the end, fifty counties were selected (all of present-day West Virginia's counties except Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo, which were formed after statehood). Most of the eastern and southern counties did not support statehood, but were included for political, economic, and military purposes. The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern border of West Virginia to provide a defense against Confederate invasion. One of the most controversial decisions involved the Eastern Panhandle counties, which supported the Confederacy. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which ran through the Eastern Panhandle, was extremely important for the economy and troop movements. Inclusion of these counties removed all of the railroad from the Confederacy.
In terms of the constitution itself, the subject of slavery produced the most controversy. Delegate Gordon Battelle proposed the gradual emancipation of slaves already in the state and freedom to all children born to slaves after July 4, 1865. Although some delegates opposed Battelle's position, they knew they could not create a pro-slavery document and gain approval from Congress. Following much debate and compromise, the provision written into the constitution banned the introduction of slaves or free African Americans into the state of West Virginia, but did not address the issue of immediate or gradual emancipation.
The United States Constitution says a new state must gain approval from the original state, which never occurred in the case of West Virginia. Since the Restored Government was considered the legal government of Virginia, it granted permission to itself on May 13, 1862, to form the state of West Virginia.
When Congress addressed the West Virginia statehood bill, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner demanded an emancipation clause to prevent the creation of another slave state. Restored Government Senator Carlile wanted a statewide election to decide the issue. Finally, a compromise between Senator Willey and Committee on Territories Chairman Benjamin Wade of Ohio, determined that, after July 4, 1863, all slaves in West Virginia over twenty-one years of age would be freed. Likewise, younger slaves would receive their freedom upon reaching the age of twenty-one. The Willey Amendment prohibited some slavery but it permitted the ownership of slaves under the age of twenty-one.
The United States Senate rejected a statehood bill proposed by Carlile which did not contain the Willey Amendment and then, on July 14, 1862, approved a statehood proposal which included the Willey Amendment. Carlile's vote against the latter bill made him a traitor in the eyes of many West Virginians and he was never again elected to political office. On December 10, 1862, the House of Representatives passed the act. On December 31, President Lincoln signed the bill into law, approving the creation of West Virginia as a state loyal to the Union without abolishing slavery. The next step was to put the statehood issue to a vote by West Virginia's citizens. Lincoln may have had his own reasons for creating the new state, knowing he could count on West Virginia's support in the 1864 presidential election. On March 26, 1863, the citizens of the fifty counties approved the statehood bill, including the Willey Amendment, and on June 20, the state of West Virginia was officially created.
In May 1863, the Constitutional Union party nominated Arthur I. Boreman to run for governor. Boreman ran unopposed, winning the election to become the first governor of West Virginia. The Restored Government of Virginia, with Pierpont continuing as governor, moved to Alexandria, Virginia and eventually to Richmond following the war. Pierpont ordered an election to allow the residents of Jefferson and Berkeley counties to determine whether their counties should be located in West Virginia or Virginia. Union troops were stationed outside polling places to intimidate those who might vote for Virginia. Despite local support for Virginia, residents who actually filled out ballots voted overwhelmingly to place both counties in West Virginia. In 1865, Pierpont's government challenged the legality of West Virginia statehood. In 1871, the United States Supreme Court awarded the counties of Jefferson and Berkeley to West Virginia.
The new state of West Virginia had sectional divisions of its own. While there was widespread support for statehood, public demands for the separation from Virginia came primarily from cities, namely Wheeling and Parkersburg. As a growing industrial region with improved transportation, northwestern Virginia businesses desired a more independent role in government. With the extension of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to Wheeling in 1853 and Parkersburg in 1857, the northwest depended much less on Richmond and eastern Virginia markets.
See? All nice and legal.
Up until 1863 he sure had everybody fooled. Bunch of barefoot dirt farmers whipping the big blue industrial machine.
Not at all. From The Law of Land Warfare, Chapter 6, Occupation
358. Occupation Does Not Transfer SovereigntyBeing an incident of war, military occupation confers upon the invading force the means of exercising control for the period of occupation. It does not transfer the sovereignty to the occupant, but simply the authority or power to exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. The exercise of these rights results from the established power of the occupant and from the necessity of maintaining law and order, indispensable both to the inhabitants and to the occupying force.
It is therefore unlawful for a belligerent occupant to annex occupied territory or to create a new State therein while hostilities are still in progress. (See GC, art. 47; par. 365 herein.)
359. Oath of Allegiance Forbidden
It is forbidden to compel the inhabitants of occupied territory to swear allegiance to the hostile Power. (HR, art. 45.)
And when were those adopted? Just curious.
Nonsense. The confederacy started losing from the very beginning. Losing forts and armies and territories and men that they couldn't replace. The outcome of the rebellion was never in question, just the timing of the inevitable confederate defeat.
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