Posted on 06/18/2005 8:13:17 AM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
Author, historian and former state representative Daniel W. Barefoot has written nine previous books, several of them covering former Civil War events and/or personalities. But he's well aware that his latest Let Us Die Like Brave Men: Behind The Dying Words of Confederate Warriors (John F. Blair) may stir some severe emotions and responses, particularly with its cover illustration that includes a soldier holding the Confederate flag. Yet Barefoot, who signs copies of his book today at the Hermitage Museum Shop, hopes that readers understand exactly what's he trying to do with this book rather than make assumptions depending on their own biases regarding the Civil War.
"My intention with this book was to look at some qualities that I felt were universal and timeless and expressed by the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy," Barefoot said. "I'm well aware of the irrational attitudes that many people have regarding the conflict, no matter what side you're coming from. But I felt that such qualities as honor, valor in battle [and] sacrifice, were things that make this nation great and special. I wasn't trying to do anything beyond recognizing this and the fact that they gave their lives in the war. Many of these soldiers were very young men, and many were poor. A lot of them didn't own slaves and they saw themselves defending their homeland and their relatives. It's not necessary to agree with their cause to acknowledge their bravery."
Barefoot's book offers 50 accounts of the final moments and words of Southern soldiers. Some are famous generals, and others are obscure privates, but each provides dramatic, impassioned accounts of the fighting, its impact on their families and their feelings regarding the sacrifices they made.
Barefoot's last account covers Capt. Champ Ferguson, one of the most vicious Confederate officers, who according to Barefoot's research killed at least 120 men, many in one-on-one guerilla attacks. Ferguson was hanged in Nashville in the fall of 1865.
"I think this is one of the few times anyone has gone into detail about exactly what he did during the war," Barefoot said.
"The hot button issues of slavery and the Confederate flag make rational discussion of the Civil War very difficult," Barefoot said. "You have a situation where there were myriad causes of the Civil War, but it is assumed that every Confederate soldier was a slave owner, when there were plenty of people in the North, including Gen. Grant's wife, that owned slaves. It's sad but inevitable that anyone who tries to write anything about Southern history and the Confederacy will be tagged with a label by those who don't want to even try and understand exactly what they're saying. It's also sad that the Confederate flag is only identified as a hate symbol because the Ku Klux Klan has used it as a rallying symbol. That's wrong and unfair and a misreading of Southern history.
"I'm hopeful that one day it will be possible to discuss these issues in a calm and intelligent fashion," Barefoot continued. "But I'm not optimistic that will happen anytime soon."
Saturday Dixie Bump
He's gonna get in trouble telling secrets like that.
Your right, and here's why:
The most accurate prediction of our present situation was made by Irish-born Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne in his January, 1864, letter which proposed the mass emancipation and enlistment of Black Southerners into the Confederate Army:
"Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision...The conqueror's policy is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them..."
Cleburne nailed it, didn't he !
I felt that such qualities as honor, valor in battle [and] sacrifice, were things that make this nation great and special. I wasn't trying to do anything beyond recognizing this and the fact that they gave their lives in the war.
He nailed part of it, He forgot the part about turning people loose on the world with no education, no jobs, no training other than cotton picking. It has taken nearly 250 years to bring the freed slaves up to snuff and even now we have to keep affirmative action open to keep them employed, and gerrymandered districts to get them elected..
A gradual freedom whereby education and skills were offered before wholesale dumping of the slaves out on their own would have been a better idea.
1. the US flag has ALWAYS been the klan's MAIN SYMBOL! (at the last klan rally in Washington, DC there were over 10,000 US flags & NOT EVEN ONE CSA flag!)
2. the CSA had slavery for @4 years. the USA had legal slavery for well over 2 centuries.
3. the WBTS ONLY became a "crusade against slavery" AFTER it seemed that the CSA would WIN the war AND that both GB & France would enter the war on the CSA's side.
4. the plan of the lincoln administration was to free southern slaves & KEEP northern slaves in bondage, PERMANENTLY.(lincoln, the TYRANT & cheap, scheming politician/shyster lawyer, offered to PERMANENTLY protect slavery by CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT in 1861!)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
You're joking, right? Slavery would be better than freedom for an undereducated population? Paging Mr. Mugabe...
Oh, and FYI American blacks were doing just fine by themselves "catching up" to society's average and would be that much better still after racial attitudes started to be turned around in the 1960's, before LBJ's "Great Society" and subsequent welfare state turned the clock on them back 100 years.
It's not necessary to agree with their cause to acknowledge their bravery."
Well said.
"Many of these soldiers were very young men, and many were poor. A lot of them didn't own slaves and they saw themselves defending their homeland and their relatives."
Something that is usually overlooked is that the ethnic background of most of the population of the Confederacy, especially the mountain and pine barren folk, were Scot-Irish. They have a long history of defending their territory and their clans against outsiders from the Romans to the English and finally to the Yankee invaders.
bttt
Much of the mountain people of the South had little or no use for the lowland people's Confederacy. The Southern mountain people of West Virginia, East Tennessee, Northern Alabama, Western North Carolina and other areas were generally Union supporters. And they did endeavor to defend their territory from the incursions of the outsiders from the CSA and regarded the Union Army as their allies in the struggle for they homeland.
Cogent.
Nashville City Paper is usually pretty liberal.
I'm surprised at a fairly reasonable article
To some degree what you say was true but there was bitter dissension not unlike Missouri.
The biting irony is that today Southern Appalachia regards itself as serious Dixie and one will see CSA memoribilia frequently even though chances are their great great grandaddy was a Scalawag.
The loyalty divisions in the Mountainous South could be divided by something as simple as a ridgetop....as in extreme Southwestern VA or the valley that runs from Chattanooga to Knoxville and up to Roanoke. There was Union country as close to Nashville as 30 miles to the east or northeast.
In my homestate of Mississippi there was even the Free State of Jones....not really Unionist....third rail banditry more so.....and includes one of my ancestors even to be candid.
bump
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