1913 Gettysburg Reunion of Blue and Gray

Huntington News ^ | June 14, 2013 | Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.

[BigReb555]

A highlight of the reunion was the Confederate Veterans walk on the path of Gen. George Pickett’s charge that was greeted, this time, by a handshake from the Union Veterans.

[central_va]

To bad the South didn’t have a scorched earth policy too. The South was to weak to make it very far into the North. But a good fantasy would be burning New York and DC to the ground. It would be such fun reading how it was the burned by vacating troops and how war is hell just get over it we won so shut up with the truth. I would love to see the same slough off of history but going the other way.

[0.E.O]

What other city was burnd to the ground after surrender and hostilities ceased!

Chambersburg, Maryland by Jubal Early in July 1864. That was before Sherman took Atlanta.

[0.E.O]

Yankee ways and Yankee deeds never forgotten and still persist to the day! Never Forget!

That's the same kind of sentiment that modern day black leaders use when they blame slavery for all their ills and call for reparations.

[central_va]

The average Confederate soldier gladly took up arms against the New England puritan power structure. It had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with wanting a separation from haughty New England Yankee stranglehold on the USA. It was a cause looking for an issue. The slavery issue would due, heck any issue would do if it meant a free rifle, free ammo and the killing of Yankees. Heck the thought of killing Yankees right now has a lot of appeal to a lot of people in the South to this day.

[0.E.O]

How unfair of the North to take the fruit of the labor of those hard-working slaves in the South and slap high tariffs on it.

Huh?

[central_va]

we have bigger fish to fry today

You and that turd in your pocket?

[0.E.O]

There are some in the family today who are still want the horse back............not fourty acres and a mule.....a horse.

There's a very good chance that the horse is dead by now. Your family is aware of that?

[0.E.O]

But a good fantasy would be burning New York and DC to the ground.

They tried: Link. But being Confederate agents, stupid, and inept in that order their attempt failed.

[BroJoeK]

dsc: "If you had no prospects of ever owning a slave—as was true of the vast majority of southerners—would you go and fight for slavery, given the hardships involved?
I can’t think of any sane person who would."

First, it's important to remember that secession and Civil War proceeded in three distinct steps:

1. Step One: Seven Deep South states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana Georgia and Texas) declared their secession, solely for the purpose of protecting their "peculiar institution" of slavery against the perceived threat of newly-elected anti-slavery President Abraham Lincoln.

   At the same time eight other slave-holding states of the Upper South and Border States refused to secede just to protect slavery -- North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.

2. Step two: recognizing that his cause was hopeless if he could not get more states to join the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis provoked, started and declared war (May 6, 1861) against the United States.

   In response, newly inaugurated President Lincoln called up Union troops to suppress the rebellion and recover seized Federal properties (i.e., Fort Sumter).

3. Step three: Now that they were forced to chose sides in war, the four Upper South states which had originally refused, now switched to join the Confederacy: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.
   Four Border States still refused: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.

Second, it's important to remember that those categories of Deep South, Upper South and Border States correspond to average percentages of families which owned slaves:

1. Deep South: roughly 50% of white families owned slaves, meaning that those who did not were typically young-marrieds or perhaps poorer artisans in towns.
   Virtually everyone was closely related to somebody who owned slaves.

2. Upper South: roughly 25% of white families owned slaves, and many who did not were loyal Unionists whose young men served in Union units and who supported Union armies operating in their states.
   Many of these people received compensation for their expenses from the Federal Government after the war.

3. Border States: typically 10% of white families owned slaves, slave owners were a distinct minority, lacking enough political clout to force secession, and states like Maryland had as many free-blacks as slaves.
   While Border States also provided soldiers to both sides, ratios were typically two Union for every one Confederate.

Point is: the vast majority of Confederate troops came from Deep South states or sections of Upper South & Border States with very high percentages of slave-holding families.

Areas of Confederate states with low slave-holding percentages (i.e., western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, etc.) remained loyal to the Union and provided military units to Union forces.

[BroJoeK]

Einherjar: "The yankees stole my Great-Great Grandmother`s horse and denied her compensation.
The Southern Claims Commission said it was because her brothers were Confederates."

Thank you, I love that story!

It's true, the claims commissions were far more "hard *ssed" than we would wish today.
Basically, they required for you to be compensated for war losses, that your family had to have served the Union cause during the war, for example by supplying troops to Union units.

So far more applied for compensation than received it.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Chambersburg was an anomaly that is why it is always "remembered".
What are your OTHER examples?
For every example you come up with anyone could counter with 100 Yankee examples."

Of course, since most of the war was fought in Confederate states.

But not all, and whenever Confederate forces had the chance to invade Union states or territories, they did, including the long list of states I mentioned in post #74 above.

In every case, Confederate forces "lived off the land", taking what they needed and often leaving trails of destruction behind them.
Indeed, for many of these operations (i.e., in Ohio, Indiana & Kentucky), their purpose was to gather up as many Union supplies as possible to equip Confederate forces.

If you are truly interested in details, then simply google the words "Civil War" followed by the particular state or territory, and it will explain all the military operations there.

By the way, in post #74, I did mention two specific examples -- Chambersburg and Lawrence Kansas.
So far as I know, they are the worst, but others suffered to lesser degrees.

[BroJoeK]

Conserev1: "I did not see the word surrendered in your examples."

The undefended city of Chambersburg "surrendered" but still refused to pay the ransom demanded, so it was burned, again.

You're leaning too heavily on that word "surrender", FRiend, and it won't hold the weight of your case.

The truth is, the Confederacy had fewer opportunities to practice "scorched earth", but they did it on occasion, and long before Sherman marched into Georgia.

[tanknetter]

To bad the South didn’t have a scorched earth policy too. The South was to weak to make it very far into the North. But a good fantasy would be burning New York and DC to the ground. It would be such fun reading how it was the burned by vacating troops and how war is hell just get over it we won so shut up with the truth. I would love to see the same slough off of history but going the other way.

Salting the earth and burning Northern cities would have been directly contrary to the war aims of the South.

The South wanted to establish itself as an independent, sovereign nation. It knew that following any victory it would have to share a LOOOOONG border with the independent, sovereign nation it had just defeated in winning that independence. The Southern leaders (particularly the senior Generals) knew this and were trying to balance winning with preventing as much post-war bitterness and animosity as possible. That's why Lee and other Southern generals at least put on the appearance of being magnanimous (and in many cases they were magnanimous).

The North wanted to bring the South back into the Union and do so under circumstances where it would never want to leave again. Yes, Lincoln was genuine with his "Charity towards all, malice towards none" statement and philosophy, but it was predicated upon the South first being unequivocally (and brutally) defeated. The theory being that you pound your enemy into the rubble - making sure they know that they have LOST - and THEN extend the helping hand of friendship to help them get back up on their feet. The bad policies of Reconstruction and later the Treaty of Versailles show the wrong way to do this. The continued military pacifism of Japan and Germany following WWII show the right way to do this. IMHO.

[urbanpovertylawcenter]

If you think the death of the stolen horse is a problem, you need to read Mark Twain's version an a similar subject, “The Great Beef Contracts.”

It is not a problem.

[central_va]

Salting the earth and burning Northern cities would have been directly contrary to the war aims of the South.

The South fought a gentleman's war against a ruthless rapacious enemy. It should have been an eye for an eye.

[tanknetter]

The South fought a gentleman's war against a ruthless rapacious enemy. It should have been an eye for an eye.

Lee specifically rejected that philosophy as being counterproductive.

The only thing worse than the South having gone that way and losing (Reconstruction would have been magnitudes more brutal than it was) would have been the South having gone that way and WINNING.

Harry Turtledove did an excellent series - not without its faults and flaws, certainly (I don't see the South ever trying to implement a version of Hitler's "Final Solution" against the blacks, for instance) - of exploring that possibility starting with a Southern win at Sharpsburg/Antietam. In all likelihood the CSA would have aligned with the Brits and the French (who would have probably entered the war at that point), the USA with the Germans. In a scenario where post-war the USA still develops as the world's industrial powerhouse while the South has a difficult time evolving beyond the agrarian. Turtledove hypothesizes a further war between the USA/CSA in the 1880s, followed by escalating conflicts as part of WWI and WWII.

[BroJoeK]

O.E.O.: ""

Thanks for the link, great story!

I always suspected the NYC 1863 draft riots must have been helped along by Confederate sympathizers -- of whom there were many in New York.
Your link is the first I've seen of actual details of a New York plot.

I especially enjoyed this:

"After a few weeks in Canada, where they kept a low profile, the conspirators all left to return to the South.
However, Robert.. Kennedy, who had set the fire in Barnum's Museum, was captured after crossing back into the United States by train.
He was taken to New York City and imprisoned at Fort Lafayette, a harbor fort in New York City.

Kennedy was tried by a military commission, found to have been a captain in the Confederate service, and sentenced to death.
He confessed to setting the fire at Barnum's Museum.
Kennedy was hanged at Fort Lafayette on March 25, 1865."

Who would have ever thought, that Robert Kennedy was a Confederate Captain, hanged in New York.

And here all this time I thought Sirhan Sirhan had something to do with it... ;-)

[central_va]

I am tired of listening to your denigrations. Just leave it at that. The speculation is moot. I do it too. We now live in the aftermath(afterbirth) of Lincoln’s war. The republic is dead long live the empire.

[BroJoeK]

tanknetter: "Salting the earth and burning Northern cities would have been directly contrary to the war aims of the South."

You give way too much credit to Confederate "chivalry" or good judgment, or whatever you might call it.

The truth is that Confederate troops typically did as much damage as they could whenever they invaded Union states.
Indeed, that was usually a main purpose of their raids -- to secure supplies for themselves and destroy the Union's facilities.

Sure, the example of Lee in Pennsylvania is often cited, but it was more the exception than the rule for Confederate forces operating in Union states & territories.

[central_va]

The truth is that Confederate troops typically did as much damage as they could whenever they invaded Union states.

Not true, a fairy tail.

I personally wish that were true though....

If any US commander in Iraq or Afghanistan had mutterer the word, "make Fallujah howl" and had done any of the things that the Army of the Tennessee did on a regular basis to civilians, those would be considered war crimes.