Free Republic

SUFFOLK — Russell E. Darden’s great-great-uncle Julius first reached out to him about 20 years ago, when a sudden stiff breeze blew through an old house in Southampton County. Darden, a Civil War buff and a historian, was visiting an elderly friend, a man whose father had served in the war. He remembers looking up, startled, as a bedroom door blew open in the wind. On the back, framed in plastic, were photos of soldiers in Confederate uniforms. Darden didn’t know it then, but the breeze had pushed open a door to his family’s past. Several months later, with the...

Pictures were colorized and enhanced using AI optimization software. For the audio, I remastered it using noise gate, compression, loudness normalization, EQ and a Limiter. Julius Franklin Howell (January 17, 1846 - June 19, 1948) joined the Confederate Army when he was 16. After surviving a few battles, he eventually found himself in a Union prison camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. In 1947, at the age of 101, Howell made this recording at the Library of Congress. Our new music channel - Life in the Music: Classic Collections 2-hour videos of music from the 1600s-1900s https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC24p... Audio has been restored...

Julius Franklin Howell (January 17, 1846 - June 19, 1948) joined the Confederate Army when he was 16. After surviving a few battles, he eventually found himself in a Union prison camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. In 1947, at the age of 101, Howell made this recording at the Library of Congress. Audio has been restored for clarity.

Recording made in 1947 when he was 101 years old as an oral history of the American Civil War, (or the War Between the States, as it is known in South). This man joined the 24th Virginia Calvary in 1862 at the age of 16 and and half. He was eventually taken prisoner in the Spring of 1965 at what must have been the Battle of Hillsman's House since her refers to Gen. Ewell's surrender. He was held at Point Lookout, Maryland until the end of the war. He is quite emphatic that the South didn't fight for "the preservation...