Posted on 08/31/2006 9:07:31 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
On Sunday afternoon at Old Union Cemetery in southern White County, over 180 people gathered to pay a debt owed nearly 80 years. The group included members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans, family and friends, all there to memorialize the service of Pvt. Henry Henderson, a black Confederate soldier.
Henderson was born in 1849 in Davidson County, NC. He was 11 years old when he entered service with the Confederate States of America as a cook and servant to Colonel William F. Henderson, a medical doctor. Records show Henry was wounded during his service, but he continued to serve until the war's end in 1865. He was discharged in Salem, NC, age 16.
After the war, Henry married Miranda Shockley, of White County, TN. The couple raised five children.
"We're here to honor him," said his great-grandson, Oscar Fingers, of Evansville, IN. "I think he would be proud his family has come this far and to know all we have done." Several other family members made the trip with Fingers from Indiana for Sunday's ceremony.
Sons Dalton and Lee received Henderson's first and last Tennessee Colored Confederate pension check upon their father's death in September 1926. The check provided enough funds to bury their father, but not enough to buy a headstone for his grave.
The 60,000-90,000 black Confederate soldiers are often called "the forgotten Confederates," but through the concerted efforts of the Capt. Sally Tompkins Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy along with the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, several graves have been found in the Upper Cumberland and have been or will be marked.
Pvt. Henry Henderson's service was finally recognized and his grave officially marked on Sunday, all to the snap of salutes from the grandsons of fellow Confederates, volleys of gunfire and cannons shot toward the distant hillsides of his final resting place.
Official U.S. government grave markers are available to all Confederate veterans. For additional information, contact Barbara Parsons, 484-5501.
Well a few days have passed by and my introduction seems to be complete. You are absolutely right the poster in question has an unbelievable ability to twist and distort words, while simultaneously failing to comprehend any logic.
It was a most amusing introduction!
Your obvious sarcasm not withstanding it always seems unfair to me to judge people of yesteryear's, by the standards of today. If we did that to some monumental people, even in recent history, few would measure up.
One case in point would be FDR, not just for the internment of US citizens and the stealing of their property (under the guise of 'failure to pay taxes), but also for the economic policies he both implemented in some cases and other policies that he failed to implement. His actions combined led this country down a decline which has no comparable economic catastrophe in modern (post 1900) times. Yet we honor this man with a memorial?
I consider the Presidential performance of FDR from 1933 to 1941 to be probably the worse Presidential period in history and any Right thinking person on this board should concur.
As to Davis, his actions regarding the treatment of slaves, was not only legal at the time, but was far ahead of his colleagues.
And if the man had failed him, Davis had the power to sell his wife and kids and make sure he never saw them again.
Yes, all slave owners had that power, Washington, Jefferson among them. However, Davis denied himself that power and issued instructions that families not only not be broken up, but that they also be housed together.
You seem like a fair person (unlike some others on this thread), you should take the time to buy the book (I receive no commission [ ;) ]) and improve your knowledge on the subject, it may open your eyes a bit.
Yes. The quickest surest way to victory would have been:
1) Follow up First Manassas with an attack on Washington DC.
Alternatives:
Have Stonewall teach 10 other high ranking officers (Colonels probably) his tactics as used in Western Virginia in the early days of the War. Assign 2-3000 troops to each of those 10 men and send them on multiple excursions into the north with guerilla like attacks on indutrial factories, RR lines or briges and other official structures in Maryland, PA., Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and others. Quick, destructive and then retreat back into the south only to attack again a week later 100 miles further away.
This policy would have resulted in a huge outcry from the North to stop the war. It was also a tactic rejected by Robert E. Lee as being contempt-able and cowardly.
And yet a huge number of people in the country recognized slavery as an evil at that time, and had for years. Read Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration, where he cites slavery as one of the evils perpetrated on the Americans by the Brits. There's no real basis for you to claim that people in 1860 didn't recognize slavery as a moral evil.
As to Davis, his actions regarding the treatment of slaves, was not only legal at the time, but was far ahead of his colleagues.
The problem is that kindly slave owners were still slave owners, complicit in a system that was, then as now, evil. This is actually one of the main themes of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I made no such claim. I stated that slavery was legal and constitutional. I am well aware that there was a significant number of people opposed to slavery.
But you did say that we can't judge Davis by contemporary morality, which would seem to mean, in context, that the 19th Century didn't find slavery to be a moral evil.
free dixie,sw
ONE of the "DY coven" members actually said some months ago that the BLACK vets were TOO STUPID to understand WHAT they were fighting for!
free dixie,sw
Complete rubbish. Are you suggesting that geographic conditions existed that prevented the south from growing...trees? ...or that the South lacked natural harbors?
The truth is NOTHING prevented the South from competing with the North for trade and shipping, EXCEPT ingenuity and hard work.
With all due respect, that transition in thought is one that was not intended, nor one that I would agree with.
Slavery was legal and in the USA, no doubt the majority approved of it. But times were changing and it was inevitable that slavery was going to be eliminated.
My point was simply if one is living in a times when certain behavior or acts are accepted, then it is wrong to then condemn that person for those acts.
Oh my. Where do I begin? I guess that was my fault, cotton was to simplistic of an example.
Let's try this:
Why did Detroit become the center of the automobile industry in the US?
Answer: That was where the talent was.
Similarly, the shipping industry developed in the NE for many reasons, but simply put, that was where the people who knew best lived.
That's absurd. You preempt any moral judgement simply because something is legal and accepted. There are plenty of examples of things that can be morally condemned, yet are legal and accepted. Abortion immediately springs to mind.
But earlier up the thread you cite Johnson as claiming that the fact that northern industry didn't build factories in the south was part of a sectional conspiracy to keep the south down.
He enlisted, held the rank of Private and was discharged. Doesn't sound like a slave to me.
We are comparing apples and oranges. The shipping industry started and was strongest in the North for many reasons. While the general industry Johnson refers to are machining complexes and other industrial manufacturers who when given the opportunity to expand chose not to expand to the south but instead to the west.
1) Seen by whom? Some free blacks did indeed try to join the rebel army and even tried to drill together, they were not accepted into the Confederate.
2) Some free blacks did indeed offer their services to the rebels at the beginning of the war, but none were accepted. The Governor of Tennesse DID NOT authorize blacks in the rebel army, in June 1861 or any other time. Please provide a link to information indicating that he did. Please provide a link to a Confederate order of battle listing them. In any case, blacks in the rebel forces were expressing banned by Confederate law until March 1865.
3) Free blacks in Louisiana did indeed form two regiments for the Confederacy, but the rebels refused to accept them so they joined the Union Amry when General Butler captured New Orleans. If you want to count them as rebels, knock yourself out.
4) None of those blacks who were formed into rebel companies at the end of the war were ever armed, even in drill, and none saw combat.
He was a slave. Slaves are, by definition, not free and do whatever their owners force them to do, whether to cook or to pick cotton.
There are hundreds of websites listing every Confederate regiment that fought in every battle of the Civil War, and not one of them lists a regiment of black rebel soldiers. Not one. Why? Because they did not exist.
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