Posted on 07/06/2006 7:01:52 AM PDT by SquirrelKing
It appears that the Northern invasion of the South is complete -- at least it is on a patch of land known as Delta Plantation in Jasper County.
There, a diehard rebel named Henry E. Ingram Jr. made his last stand against the onslaught of Yankees, only to be thwarted by a man from Long Island, N.Y., and now -- gasp -- a French Canadian.
Ingram promised to keep Yankees out of Delta Plantation in Jasper County when he bought 1,700 acres there in 1998. His resolve to keep them out still is strong, but the covenants he put on the land don't seem to have any teeth.
Those covenants did, however, scare Canadian-raised Bluffton resident Louise Legare a bit as she was close to signing a contract to buy a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on the land from Bluffton Home Builders.
The list of rules she got from the builders was missing the first pages, so she went to the Jasper County Courthouse to get the missing ones. There, she found the covenants, or rules, that Ingram demanded of buyers:
1. They could not be Yankees.
2. They could not have the last name Sherman (an obvious reference to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman).
3. And the land could not be sold or leased to those whose last names could be rearranged to spell Sherman.
Clearly, Ingram doesn't like Northern folk.
Now, however, Legare and Bluffton Home Builders are working with Ingram's son, Ashley Ingram, to remove the covenants. The former Delta Plantation is on both sides of U.S. 17, just north of the Georgia state line.
"When (Legare) brought it to us, we all kind of had a good laugh," said Jim Hobbs, a partner in the home-building firm.
In fact, Legare is buying the land and home from Bill Cook, another partner in the company, who happens to be a native of Long Island, N.Y. No one at Bluffton Home Builders had seen the covenants before Legare found the missing pages, and no one has ever tried to enforce them, Hobbs said.
If Henry Ingram had his way, he still would keep Yankees off of the 1,700 acres he once owned. His holdings on the plantation have dwindled to 10 acres.
Ingram, now a resident of Corpus Christi, Texas, said his son and attorney, who are both local, should be looking out for his anti-northerner wishes now.
"Yankees destroy everything they have up North, then they come down here," Ingram said. "When they destroy everything (in the South), where are they going to move next? Another country?"
Legare, who grew up north of Montreal, figures her far-northern upbringing must be especially abhorrent to Ingram.
"I must be more of a Yankee," she said. "I'm the person he really doesn't want to live there."
Amazingly, Legare is a much better choice to own Southern land than a New Yorker, according to Ingram.
"French people are much better and more desirable than a Yankee," said Ingram, who once owned video-poker casinos in Jasper County. "They don't stick their noses in other people's business."
The same feature drew Legare and Ingram to the land -- nature. Ingram said he's seen Carolina panthers, bald eagles and fox squirrels on the land. It is that quiet beauty Legare is after.
"I was raised in a very nature-like environment," Legare said. "I think the nature is beautiful in South Carolina."
Ingram, who says he is leaving Texas for Costa Rica soon, cites the boorish manners of Yankees as one of his prime dislikes for them.
"They look down their little pointy noses at the people in the South because we are polite and nice to them," Ingram said. "They think people who are polite and nice are dumb."
Contact Jim Faber at 706-8137 or jfaber@islandpacket.com. To comment on this story, please go to islandpacket.com.
have you EVER seen a mare bred??? (i suspect NOT, or you wouldn't make that statement!)
free dixie,sw
there were 3 "mostly coloured regiments". one from LA, one from MS & one from GA.
the VAST majority of Black veterans served in DESEGREGATED units, by mid-1862 & in the CS forces received FULL pay, by rank held.
in the union army, Blacks served under WHITE officers, in SEGREGATED units, at 1/2 pay of similar WHITE troops.
that too is FACT!
btw, the CSMC was totally DESEGREGATED by early 1862. the USMC was finally (partially) DESEGREGATED in 1944.
free dixie,sw
Full disclosure: My second wife is black, her family is from Mississippi. As they say "not a field hand in the bunch".
The relations between southern white men and slave women were very very close, and often amicable. Right up until the southern white men got a proper wife. Then she usually didn't care to see her husbands former paramours and toffee skinned children running around. Depending on the character of the southern white man (and that was quirky, to say the least) he would either establish them in busness outside of his wife's view, or sell them down south.
It was pretty common for white owners to show respect and concern for their servants. Being human, their servants responded well to it. Some, like REL's father in law, kept servants even when it didn't make business sense.
There was a reason why of the three people named as executor, only REL served as such. It was a tough job, and he was trying to avoid the all to common "sell the slaves south to pay off the debts". I can imagine that he worked up a righteous rage against the servants who ran off rather than work for 5 more years so that strings of naked slaves wouldn't have to be sold off, separating parents from children, husband from wife.
He was also trying not to sell off the property. Shall we agree that his motivations were.....complex?
By contrast, Grant lived a hand to mouth existance at Hard Scrabble, and inherited a slave. He gave that one his freedom within the week, when he could have sold him for 800 dollars. A noble deed, from a noble man.
I will also point out that Red Jacket of the Seneca worked with a Mr. Morris to sell his tribes land. He got a great sum, and got every penny of it.
Handsome Lake, his nephew, had some visions condemning him for it, but the Seneca still live in NY. One of his descendants served as secretary and wrote out the surrender document at Appromatox.
Before we condemn the whites for taking Indian land, we must ask what did the Indians do to the people who lived on the land before them? Much the same thing. Since the printing press had not been invented, there is no record of the barbarity of the Indians to their precursors.
PITY that you listen to & evidently believe, LIES.
free dixie,sw
.."every time we go "north" Where? In the heart of Manhattan, or northern South Carolina? ....You are so full of it!
If any comments were indeed made, most likely they are solely directly at you, after you go on one of your insane public 'kill Yankee' verbal rampages. Try telling the truth for once, only once would be a miracle.
It's anti-Semitic, in relation to your invented version.
Now back to the real world of the here and now - not your 1860 existence.
Yes, I have done the bait and switch trick. I grew up in a small town, and often helped out on farms, back before illegal aliens were widely available.
fwiw, the last trip was to "oh, so PC & "liberal" NYC.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
You just have to have the right equipment.
We had wooden frames, so the Jack or Stallion wouldn't damage her. In that case, the mares often backed into the frame, "winking" furiously, eager to get the business accomplished.
I memory serves I called you out on that thead too. Facts are facts, census data is available, and it all serves to show that you claims of 100,000 free blacks serving in confederate ranks to be totally bogus.
General Lee's life is without blemish even though there have been numerous attempts to demonize the man (e.g. Alan Nolan's Lee Considered).
Yet, even though General Lee felt compelled to surrender at Appomattox and the yankees made every attempt to use this surrender to reduce Lee's stature, Lee became more popular with the general public, north and South, far surpassing his northern contemporaries, which chaffed the yankee politicians and revisionist historians to no end.
And it continues to this day.
So, meaker, it you have evidence that Marse Robert tortured women or children or even small animals (Lincoln doesn't count), then post that evidence here for all to see.
Don't work yourself too hard, meaker. We know you don't have any evidence to that end. You're just a typical yankee slinging schit and hoping some of it sticks.
Unlike the north, the South didn't segregate blacks and whites into racially divided units.
Segregation didn't exist in the South, in it's northern institutionalized version, until after Redestruction.
"How many Black soldiers served for the Confederacy in the War Between the States? Perhaps no one will ever know. Estimates run anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000. However, because the victors - the north - needed to give the world the impression the War was fought over slavery, a concerted scheme was put into motion to suppress the figures by destroying records, thus giving credence to heir 'the war was fought over slavery' mantra. While a large number of government records were distorted or destroyed, thousands of 'other' records in the form of letters and photos remain."
The significant numbers of Southern Unionists strike hard at the myth of a separate "Southern nation".
You're not listening, carpetbagger. We talk about 'em. They're called 'traitors'.
Then after The War, they were called 'scalawags'.
But, as you know, the majority of the so called 'Southern Union soldiers' were from the border states that never seceded, or, as in the case of West Virginia, seceded twice.
What planet are you from? Are you so brainwashed that you can't admit that there was a Confederate States of America?
Or are you just stuck on stupid.
My point is the war was begin by the south, over slavery. It was won by the north for Union.
Ending slavery was a means to end for the north. Retaining slavery was the end for the south.
Once the south has to offer freedom to slaves, to get them to fight, there was no reason for the rebellion, and the south quickly folded their tents.
The capture of black troops, which occurred more frequently than their murder, led to the breakdown of the prisoner-of-war exchange cartel, which had been a system of returning prisoners rather than imprisoning them. This policy shift, inaugurated by the Confederates, which led to the horrors of Andersonville and Northern prisoner stockades late in the war, injured the South far more than the North, because captured Union soldiers could be otherwise replaced—often by blacks—while the Southern manpower pool was nearing exhaustion. The reason for the breakdown was the Confederate insistence that ex-slaves were not free and equal prisoners. If they had escaped from bondage to join the Union army, they would be returned to it when captured.
In the fall of 1864, Robert E. Lee articulated this policy in an exchange of letters with U. S. Grant. On October 1, Lee wrote grant that with a view of alleviating the sufferings of our soldiers, he proposed an exchange of prisoners to the two armies operating in Virginia, man for man … upon the basis established by the [prior] cartel. Grant immediately inquired about the status of black United States troops. Before further negotiations are had upon the subject I would ask if you propose delivering these men the same as white soldiers? Lee responded that I intended to include all captured soldiers of the United States of whatever nation or color. Deserters from our service and negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange. Grant would not accept this, and he told Lee that the United States government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers. This being denied by you in the persons of such men as have escaped from Southern masters induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask. Grant then asked for further clarification from Southern legal officials, and soon Lee made it crystal clear: I have no objection to … exchanging prisoners, man for man, negroes included. Recaptured slaves of Confederate citizens will not be exchanged.
Grant insisted that by becoming Union soldiers, escaped slaves had become persons to be treated equally with all other captured troops. After he had been fully briefed by the Richmond authorities, Lee argued back to Grant, quite to the contrary, that Negro slaves who through compulsion, persuaion, or of their own accord leave their owners and are placed in the military … service of the United States [remain] a species of property. … The capture or abduction of a slave does not impair the right of the owner to such a slave, but that right … attaches to him immediately upon recapture [and] will be restored like other recaptured property to those entitled to them. Lee wrote that he would treat free black Union prisoners just like white men, thus asserting a kind of color blindness. However, as for escaped slaves, the rights of property—the nonpersonhood of black slaves—superseded any consideration of them as Union soldiers. This belief led Lee to employ captured ex-slave Union soldiers in digging trenches around Petersburg, to which Grant responded by putting white Confederate prisoners at the same risk reinforcing his trenches. While arguing that he had not exposed black prisoners to fire, which was not precisely true, Lee withdrew them, without abandoning the proposition that he had every right to use them this way.
In response, Grant then withdrew Confederate prisoners from such dangerous duty, and wrote Lee that
I shall always regret the necessity of retaliating for wrong done our soldiers, but regard it as my duty to protect all persons received into the army of the United States, regardless of color or nationality. … All prisoners of war falling into my hands shall receive the kindest possible treatment … unless I have good authority for believing that any number of our men are being treated otherwise. Then, painful as it may be to me, I shall inflict like treatment on an equal number of Confederate prisoners.
In effect, Lee had conceded that he would not use escaped black Union prisonrs as he used other slaves, but neither would he send them back as prisoners of war: things they had been; things they remained. Because of this impasse, the exchange cartel was never repaired and tens of thousands of prisoners of war, on both sides, mainly white, died of cholera and typhoid fever in hellish prison camps.
—Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000), pp. 203-208 http://feministblogs.org/tag/robert-e-lee/
Custis's will was probated on December 7, 1857. Although Robert Lee Randolph, Right Reverend William Meade, and George Washington Peter were named as executors along with Robert E. Lee, the other three men failed to qualify, leaving Lee with the sole responsibility of settling the estate, and with exclusive control over all of Custis's former slaves. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", Lee found himself in need of funds, and decided to make money by hiring out the slaves to neighboring plantations and eastern Virginia during the five years that the will had granted him control of them. The decision caused dissatisfaction among Custis's slaves, who had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died. In 1859, a few of his slaves decided to leave and fled for the North; an 1859 letter to the New York Tribune records that they were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and returned to Lee, who had them whipped and returned to his Arlington plantation, after which he hired them out in the area surrounding Richmond. The three slaves turned out to be a man named Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs; in 1866, Norris recounted the incident in an interview:
My name is Wesley Norris; I was born a slave on the plantation of George Parke Custis; after the death of Mr. Custis, Gen. Lee, who had been made executor of the estate, assumed control of the slaves, in number about seventy; it was the general impression among the slaves of Mr. Custis that on his death they should be forever free; in fact this statement had been made to them by Mr. C. years before; at his death we were informed by Gen. Lee that by the conditions of the will we must remain slaves for five years; I remained with Gen. Lee for about seventeen months, when my sister Mary, a cousin of ours, and I determined to run away, which we did in the year 1859; we had already reached Westminster, in Maryland, on our way to the North, when we were apprehended and thrown into prison, and Gen. Lee notified of our arrest; we remained in prison fifteen days, when we were sent back to Arlington; we were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to “lay it on well,” an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done. After this my cousin and myself were sent to Hanover. —Wesley Norris, interviewed 1866; reprinted in John W. Blassingame (ed.): Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, and Interviews, and Autobiographies. ISBN 0-8071-0273-3
There are no references in any of Lee's letters to slaves of his own and until the rediscovery of his will in the records of Rockbridge County, Virginia, it was not positively known that he held any servants in his own name. That document, written in 1846, showed that he then owned a Negro woman Nancy and her children, who were at the •White House plantation. He directed that after his death they be "liberated as soon as it can be done to their advantage and that of others" (Rockbridge County Will Books, 1870). http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/1/21*.html
REL was a man of the south, with all its quirky mixtures of honor and cruelty. That is neither complement or disparagement. Just fact.
He surmounted victory at Chancellorsville by giving all the credit to Jackson. He surmounted defeat at Gettysburg by taking all the blame to himself. He fought hard and well, but the generous terms written out at the direction of Grant, could have been gained at any time before then, at great savings in money and lives. Lee recognized his responsibility.
"The great popular heart is not now and never has been in this war. It was a revolution of the politicians, not the people."
The number of Southern Union soldiers understated Unionist sentiment as it was often many miles to reach the Union army and understandably many did not want to leave their families defenseless against local reb thug regimes.
On the other hand, much of the reb army was conscripted without conviction. That's why the reb armies melted away so rapidly towards the end. Most of the relatively few true believers were dead or incapacitated by then.
Even the Confederates' own laws betray a lack of national conviction. Large slaveowners got an exemption from service. Many of them couldn't tear themselves away from beating their slaves long enough to protect their own interests.
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