Posted on 12/08/2007 10:54:00 PM PST by stainlessbanner
The life of Ike Pringle has become a sort of enigma for local historians who are trying to figure out exactly what role the slave played in the American Civil War.
Born in May, 1841, Isaac, or Ike as he was better known, was owned by the Pringle family that lived and owned land around Vimville. Ike took on the name of his owners and was forever called Ike Pringle.
At an early age he was given to the grandson of the family, Frank Pringle. Not that far apart in age, the two basically grew up together until the Civil War began. At that time, Frank Pringle joined the 24th Mississippi. Ike Pringle followed him into service. Some say Ike Pringle followed on his own accord and out of obligation to Frank Pringle.
Both men survived the war and were in Atlanta when the last cannons fell silent. From that moment on, Ike Pringle was a free man. Frank Pringle gave him his freedom there and moved to Pensacola, Fla., according to records. But Ike Pringle decided to return home to Vimville.
In the years following the war, Ike Pringle built up a farm on 80 acres that originally belonged to the Pringle family. He eventually sold the land but even as he married several times raising a family while keeping up the farm, Ike Pringle routinely attended Confederate soldier reunions as a veteran. It has been noted that Ike Pringle was never wounded nor have any documentations been discovered to suggest he was a combatant or was always kept in the rear area.
Some historians would suggest Ike Pringle was indeed kept in the rear areas to care for Frank Pringle’s belongings and to serve his owner any way possible during the fighting. But the fact he was allowed to attend numerous Confederate soldiers reunions, such as the one in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1937, which shows him pictured with a group of other white soldiers, seems to tell the viewer he was at the very least accepted near the battlefield in some form or fashion.
A narrative written by Ike Pringle in 1937 said he had traveled to many such reunions. A photo taken on the front steps of the Lauderdale County Court House in October 1933 with the Walthal Camp of Confederate Veterans only reinforces the fact he was a member of Confederate organizations. Ike Pringle also appears in a photo of another such gathering in 1925.
Ike Pringle died on Feb. 28, 1938. No grave marker has been found for him in a nondescript cemetery in Lauderdale County although more recent stones have been found with other people named Pringle.
So what was the role Ike Pringle played in the Civil War?
Many of the details are still unknown at this time but whatever his role was, it was enough for the State of Mississippi to grant Ike Pringle a pension in 1920 for being a member of the Confederate army during the Civil War.
Well that's a new one, and is further evidence that one can never discount the imagination of the Southern contingent. But pray tell, who was Lincoln rebelling against?
The enlisted men? Absolutely. The officers, no. I believe that most, such as Albert Sidney Johnston, PG Beauregard, etc., all resigned their commissions, which was their right. But if an enlisted man had a term to fulfill, then technically, they could be shot for desertion.
The officers I was thinking of were those recent West Point grads who had not completed their required term of service. More senior officers were, of course, free to resign and go off and rebel.
How many did Youse guys have?
And yeah.........I’ll go along with The war of Southern rebellion too and don’t apologize for it either.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't try to classify the Union cause as a 'war of independence'. The Southern war was a rebellion, and it was launched to defend against what the South saw as a threat to the expansion of slavery.
I’m more perplexed by his stackable potato chip.
One can only wonder how big the massacre would have been if the population of Massachusetts or Connecticut had been 1/3 black in 1850. Guess that's why most blacks stayed right where they were when they were freed.
It was fought for economic reasons. Slaves were the second most valuable piece of capital in the south, after the land. They were worth billions (of 1860 dollars). The election of the Republicans was seen as a threat to that capital, so the south fought a war to protect that property.
Most history is wonderful and messy when told honestly. People prefer nice neat stories.
Interesting.
They didn't have much of a choice.
Does anyone know the percentage of soldiers in the Confederate Army who came from a slave holding family?
Depending on which Southern state you were in, the percentage of slave-holding families ran as high as half of all families in Mississippi or as low as 20% of all families in Arkansas. Overall about one confederate family in three had slaves. It would be safe to assume that the confederate army mirrored confederate society as a whole.
You have to back that up with something.
Also, you may be thinking of Harvey's Scouts.
So far as I've been able to find out, neither Harvey's Scouts nor Henderson's Scouts was a "BLACK MISSISSIPPI Confederate Unit."
According to one webpage, the monument reads: "To the memory of the good and loyal servants who followed the fortunes of Harvey’s Scouts during the civil War ... A tribute to my Faithful Servant and Friend, Willis Howcott, a colored boy of rare Loyalty and Faithfulness, Whose Memory I Cherish with Deep Gratitude."
People without a penny to their name managed to migrate from across the sea to America. Ditto for people in the Eastern part of America, who moved West. Why couldn't blacks mass migrate to the North? To this day, the descendants of the freed slaves still live mostly in the South. Either they weren't treated that badly down here, or they knew they'd be treated exactly the same way by New Yorkers and Vermonters and, yes, Kansans.
There was no significant movement of blacks to the North until after WWI, when industrial jobs attracted poor blacks and whites both to some Northern areas. And what was one of the first things blacks did when they arrived in their new locale? It was to charge the local whites with "racism".
Ever hear of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, KANSAS?
In Detroit (which you once noted was part of the United States, though we might wish it wasn't), black kids grow up being told that the city was run by racists until blacks took the place over during the years 1968-1972, when the white population largely fled to escape black violence.
Well, I'll be the first to admit that any welcome the freed slaves received up North would not have been welcoming. But a major reason why they didn't leave wasn't the result of love and kindness on the part of Southern whites as much as Black Codes and other laws restricting their movement.
Ever hear of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, KANSAS?
I did, actually. In fact, I've gone further and read the decision. If you had done so, you would have discovered it was a combination of a number of cases, which is why the proper name is Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, et.al. The et.al. were schoolboards in Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina, and D.C. As it turns out, Topeka had taken steps to end segregation even before the Supreme Court handed down it's decision and by 1956 the entire district was integrated. Without demonstrations. Without the Klan. Without the governor proclaiming "Segregation forever." People here accepted it. Much the same happened in Delaware. The majority of the people in that state accepted the ruling and schools were integrated.
It was different in the other areas. Prince Edward County in Virginia, who was one of the defendants in the case, did away with the public school system rather than integrate it. In South Carolina, the minister who led the black families in the case in that county had his church burned and he was shot at. The people who filed the suit lost their jobs and couldn't find employment. The whites in the county abandoned the school system rather than attend with blacks.
So sure, I'll talk Brown v. Board of Ed with you. The entire case.
Depending on the size of the black population in a given area, people accepted the Brown ruling. In my area of East Tennessee, where there are few blacks, there was no trouble. I doubt there’s a massive black population in Topeka.
But in places with lots of blacks, North or South, people didn’t accept it. That’s why the public schools in those areas became almost 100% black. Whether it was Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, or Philadelphia, or even Boston, once the integration order came down, the whites either moved across the county line or put their kids in private schools.
I’m glad to talk Brown with you, too.
“...so the south fought a war to protect that property.”
Wrong, my friend. The South seceded because of tariffs and what it saw as the unequal allocation of tax money. The South paid the vast majority of the revenues that made up the federal tax base (in those days there were no federal corporate taxes, no federal income taxes, no federal sales taxes, etc.). Rather, the federal treasury was funded primarily through the revenues from tariffs. Since the South was a far, far bigger trading partner with the rest of the world than the North was (because of cotton and tobacco, especially), its products and goods generated the vast majority of federal revenues. However, the vast majority of those revenues were spent in the North. The South, rightfully, thought it was getting screwed, since its interests funded the federal treasury but little or none of those revenues were spent on anything in the South (in a nutshell, the South didn’t see why it had to fund and financially support the North, while the North contributed nothing to the South. It’s kind of like over-taxed American citizens getting riled up about having to fund liberal wet dreams of welfare and all the other touchy-feely scams the federal government trots out to take care of the unproductive and dependent). The federal government, which was dominated by Northern states because of the population imbalance, sought to increase the tariffs, and thus hit Southern interests particularly hard. The South believed that the actions of the federal government were not only oppressive to Southern interests, but violated the Constitution. When the South saw that it was not going to get any redress or see any change in what the federal government had in store for it, it had no choice but to void the compact with the Union and secede. Slavery was pretty much a non-issue as far as the North was concerned (else, why was slavery still legal in many states in the North, though not practiced to the extent it was in the South?). The so-called Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in January, 1863 (more than two years after South Carolina had seceded, by the way) in actuality freed no one, because it only applied to states that “were in rebellion against the Union.” It did not apply to the alve-holding neutral border states, and, most telling, did not apply to those areas of the Confederacy that were under Union occupation (such as parts of Louisiana); thus, the Proclamation didn’t even free the slaves over which the Union held control!
On what? If the South paid the vast majority of revenues then that must mean they consumed the vast majority of imports. What was it they were importing in such huge amounts?
However, the vast majority of those revenues were spent in the North.
For example?
Slavery was pretty much a non-issue as far as the North was concerned...
But it was very much an issue for the South, was it not?
The so-called Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in January, 1863 (more than two years after South Carolina had seceded, by the way) in actuality freed no one, because it only applied to states that “were in rebellion against the Union.”
Which were the only states it could be applied to. For the rest it required a constitutional amendment, which Lincoln also supported through the House and Senate and to the states.
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