Posted on 12/28/2008 5:48:58 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
May he rest in the Peace of the Lord.
Ringgold is known also for their drive-thru wedding services.
That’s where my parents were married. Dad got off work on Friday afternoon, picked up my mom and also her sister to serve as a witness and got the deed done right then. My mom and dad spent the weekend at Chickamauga Lake and were back at their jobs Monday morning.
Any good BBQ around there?
Another advantage about a Civil War trip to Ringgold is the proximity of the Chickamauga battlefield. Ringgold Gap by itself might not be a draw for many but it becomes a nice addition to a visit to Chickamauga.
Watkins also wrote a interesting book titled 'Co. Aytch' about his participation in the WBTS.
Mr. Watkins was from the Upstate area of SC and, by all accounts, was a very tough fellow himself.
Hmmmmm....
That's funny. Perhaps I also should start a controversy because I am finding the deification of Barack Obama as the second coming of Lincoln to be an offensive reminder of Reconstruction.
Gotta start working on my NH Concealed Weapon Permit before I can go to Ga.
The General was also one of the first Confederate Generals to call for the emancipation of slaves, so that they could be armed and fight with the South against the Yankee invaders.
Importantly, it should be noted that many blacks fought on the side of the American colonists against Britain in the US Revolution, even though the British offered them their freedom. And 65,000 black men fought on the side of the Confederacy, with about 13,000 actually engaged in combat against Union forces.
However, from the end of the war, and especially after 1910, black men who had served as soldiers and were applying for pensions, had their occupation “soldier” crossed out, and either “body servant” or “teamster” put in its place. This is still evident on the preserved documents, and shows a systematic effort to rewrite history.
The next time you visit down there see if you can climb around the Interstate road cut at Ringgold Cut. I went fossil hunting there when they were building the Interstate. Lots of crinoid stem fossils. Here's a description from the web:
Interstate 75 crosses Rocky Face in a deep notch just west of Dalton and continues, crossing Taylor Ridge at the famous Ringgold Cut, where the subsurface rocks are highly visible and fossils are found in the wall of the highway cut adjacent to the southbound lane.
rustbucket, another fossil at your service
His death was a tragic waste in an attack that never should have been ordered.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention that Cleburne was also an early and pointed advocate of enrolling blacks into the confederate army.
Hell that’s where *I* was married. Neither of us wanted something fancy nor would we have had any money for it, so we went down and got it taken care of one rainy afternoon 6 years ago.
You can't really blame Reconstruction on Abe. Had he not been murdered it would have certainly been much different and probably a great deal more conciliatory towards the South. This was recognized at the time by most knowledgeable southerners.
"He was an ardent supporter of the South, yet called at one point for blacks to earn their freedom if they fought for the Confederacy. Other generals hated the idea. Historians think Cleburne’s plan cost him promotions."
His plan was eventually adopted by the Confederacy, something like six weeks before the war ended, at which point it had of course no impact on events. It can be seriously questioned whether a black man wearing a uniform and firing a rifle provided any greater support for the Confederacy than the same man driving a wagon or a plow. Every black man put into service as a soldier could not provide other essential services.
Fair enough. Lincoln's assassination certainly unleashed the worst impulses of the radical Republicans. But whatever he might have done had he lived it would have been small consolation for the damage inflicted during his reign on the Constitution and the rule of law.
There are those of us who believe Lincoln saved as much as he could of the Constitution and rule of law from those intent on destroying them.
If you think Lincoln was particularly aggressive or unlawful in how he handled opposition, even treasonous opposition, you might want to research how similar issues have been handled in other great civil wars. The US WBTS had far and away the least oppression and fewest atrocities of all such wars in all history. (Which unfortunately isn’t saying all that much.)
It all depends on what you consider to be treason. There are many, myself included, who believe that there is no higher form of treason than for a politician to elevate himself above the Constitution. It was under Lincoln that this became possible marking the realization of Benjamin Franklin's warning about the Founders' bequest of a Republic "... if you can keep it."
But don't think me unfair to Lincoln or blind in my faith in the Founders. You can argue with some credibility that it was their failure to end slavery at the time of the founding that paved the way for Lincoln and his ilk to destroy the independence of the States a generation later. And the end of the sovereignty of the States was the end of limited government.
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