Posted on 02/15/2005 10:05:11 PM PST by SAMWolf
I disagree with this. Most of what you say is right about the whole thing being very sordid. I may be reading the post wrong - you may be speaking about the feelings at the time of the Civil War.
However, as a person from MO and have travelled quite a bit throughout the state, I have found that the people who care about this stuff today are still angry. Many are bigots, pure and simple. These same people vote democrat and live in rural areas of MO.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
This passage is taken from the beginning of the book Noted Guerrillas published in 1877 by John Newman Edwards, Gen. Shelby's adjutant during the Civil War. After the war he was a journalist and an ardent defender of those who served the lost Southern cause in Missouri, especially his friend Shelby and the guerrillas. It is typical of Edwards' florid prose style.
"They had passwords that only the initiated understood, and signals which meant everything or nothing. A night bird was a messenger; a day bird a courier.... They knew the names or the numbers of the pursuing regiments from the shoes of their horses, and told the nationality of troops by the manner in which twigs were broken along the line of march. They could see in the night like other beasts of prey, and hunted most when it was darkest. No matter for a road so only there was a trail, and no matter for a trail so only there was a direction. When there was no wind, and when the clouds hid the sun or the stars, they traveled by the moss on the trees. In the day time they looked for this moss with their eyes, in the night time with their hands. Living much in fastnesses, they were rarely surprised, while solitude developed and made more acute every instinct of self-preservation. By degrees a caste began to be established.... Free to come and go; bound by no enlistment and dependent upon no bounty; hunted by one nation and apologized for by the other;... merciful rarely and merciless often; loving liberty in a blind, idolatrous fashion, half reality and half superstition; holding no crime as bad as that of cowardice; courteous to women amid all the wild license of pillage and slaughter; steadfast as faith to comradeship or friend; too serious for boastfulness and too near the unknown to deceive themselves with vanity;...starved to-day and feasted tomorrow; victorious in this combat or decimated in that; receiving no quarter and giving none; astonishing pursuers by the swiftness of a retreat, or shocking humanity by the completeness of a massacre; a sable fringe on the blood-red garments of civil war, or a perpetual cut-throat in ambush in the midst of contending Christians, is it any wonder that in time the Guerrilla organization came to have captains, and leaders, and discipline and a language, and fastnesses, and hiding places, and a terrible banner unknown to the winds?"
I'm of the opinion that men such as Anderson, Clement and Pool were the exception in their terrible ferocity and lust for yankee blood. They were driven by vengence and the horror of murdered friends and family. They wern't born that way they were made to be that way. Capt. Anderson and the others were either your best friend or your worst nightmare.
there are 2 sides to every story.
as my mother (the family genealogist) says, "Little Thunder" was either a dashing southron partisan freedom-fighter & HERO OR a damned rebel & bloody-handed outlaw. it just depends on which side you favor.
free dixie,sw
see #45 too.
i revere the memory of my G-G-grandfather, as one of dixie AND our tribe's heroes. may his memory live forever, as he fought the GOOD fight for LIBERTY.
free dixie,sw
A mean assed war I am talking about here.
nonetheless he was a self-taught GENIUS at finding & exploiting the enemies weaknesses. MORE dixie leaders should have copied his style, imVho.
the WBTS, was LOCICALLY, a massive guerrilla war with a FEW set-piece battles. (GEN Jackson's Valley Campaign & Chicuamauga come to mind)
at all costs, fights like Gettysburg & Franklin should have been avoided like the plague!
otherwise, GEN Lee & a number of the other senior officers should have been directing the overall war, rather than being field generals.
since our war for independence was essentially a "peasant revolt", use those strengths = control the NIGHTS, damage/sabotage the union's rolling stock,assassinate senior yankee officers whenever possible,burn the northern cities, use ambuscade & deceit to the maximum, etc. AND avoid doing things that the "peasants" could NOT do successfully, without massive amounts of military training, infrastructure & supplies.
could that have meant a longer, meaner war? YES, but we could have WON that sort of war (maybe by the election of '64!). we southrons had NO chance to win the other kind.
free dixie,sw
University of Kansas cheer: "Rock chalk Jayhawk, Kaaayyy U!" We were about as fond of bushwhackers on our side of the border as they were of jayhawkers.
Today's read was somewhat brutal. It's certainly a part of history that merits study and comment. I'm at a loss for words . . . but I7 provides a noteworthy summary . . .
The sort of violence done in Missouri, and in other places, is very much par for the human course.
To borrow a line from the movie "Cold Mountain", "there will be a reckoning."
On the lighter side, this one's for you Snip & Sam . . .
LOL. It's perfect. We need seed money, too!
Hiya ct. All is well in Oregon. We are anxiously awaiting longer days of sunshine so we can sell some product!
Rest assured, Anderson did not have any "imbedded" reporters with him.
Afternoon SZonian. Not exactly a part of our history worth bragging about.
Have to admit nylons are a lot sexier than poantyhose.
I've seen "Ride with the Devil" and thought it a pretty good movie about this time period.
Afternoon Snippy.
Oops! That's Feather.
Hi PE.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.