Black Soldiers Are The True Patriots

Not specifically about the Civil War, but it must be read.

From the Seattle Medium: Black Soldiers Are The True Patriots

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – It was about time. More than 60 years after 20,000 African-American men donned United States Marine Corps uniforms and trained at the legendary Montford Point Marine Corps facility in Jacksonville, N.C., the United States government celebrated them for their service with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor.

“It’s a long time coming,” said retired Sgt. Ruben McNair, 86, during an interview with ABC News in Washington, D.C. after the House passed a resolution last year honoring the Montford Point Marines. “Something you look forward to, wonder if you are going to make it to live long enough to see it.”

More than 400 of the surviving marines and their families showed up in Washington recently for the ceremony. Some walked with canes others rolled in wheel chairs, all of them marching out of a shadowed history of the armed services and a time when Black men were still considered second-class citizens, denied the opportunity to serve as commissioned officers, and unceremoniously discouraged from re-enlisting.

The young men that flowed through the segregated Montford Point camp just outside of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, renamed Camp Gilbert H. Johnson in 1974, from 1942-1949 endured mosquito-ridden barracks, shoddy latrines that harbored swamp snakes and unsanitary mess hall conditions. Health care on the base was even worst, consisting of an all-purpose vitamin and brown syrup, mixed with mineral oil and castor oil.

Staph infections and salmonella plagued the Montford Point Marines for years. They suffered indignities at the hands of superior officers who often saw training Negroes to fight as a waste of time at best and dangerous at worst. Yet, historians say that those first Black marines of the 20th century knew that they suffered and sacrificed for more than proving their mettle in combat in foreign conflicts. They also saw the value in gaining skills that would make them more effective leaders in their communities.

“[The Montford Point Marines] still understood the importance of defeating fascism abroad and by doing this thing they would be better prepared to deal with racism at home,” said Hari Jones assistant director and curator of the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation and Museum. Jones said that their fight wasn’t just about one war. It was also about civil rights and making a better way of life for Blacks in America.

Although Jones, a former marine himself, cherishes the recent ceremony in Washington honoring the Montford Point veterans, he’s saddened that the United States Marine Corps fails to tell the whole story.

“With the Marine Corps, the most disappointing thing is whenever they talk about the first African-American marines they leave out the African-Americans that served in the Continental Marine Corps and that disappoints me,” Jones said.

But telling that story is more complicated.

Blacks participated in every single armed conflict dating back to their service in the Continental Marine Corps during the Revolutionary War. John Martin, the first known Black Marine, served on the USS Reprisal from April 1776 to October 1777, engaging in hard scrabble ship-to-ship fighting with the British fleet until the brig sank and his entire Marine platoon perished.

Although more than a dozen Blacks were identified in their service, historians estimate that many more took up arms, the final toll lost to records that often didn’t include race. The Continental Marine Corps disbanded in 1783. In 1798 when the U.S. government re-established the United States Marine Corps, it barred Blacks and Native Americans from enlisting.

“Telling the story of how African Americans were later forced out of the Marine Corps and let back in is just not a story that they have chosen to tell and that’s disappointing because we know that they were there,” Jones said.

Not only were African Americans there, they showed their valor in significant numbers at every opportunity, fighting and dying for the ideals of a young nation.

After suffering heavy losses during the first year of the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army lifted the ban on Black soldiers with help from Congress. Black sailors accounted for 15-20 percent of all enlisted men in the United States Navy.

During the American Civil War, when African Americans accounted for 1 percent of the northern population, they made up 10 percent of the Union Army and 15 percent of the Navy. Black soldiers earned 25 Medals of Honor for their indispensable service and bravery during the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that, “Without the military help of the Black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.”

Fifty years later, as the United States prepared to go to war with Germany for the first time, the U.S. government would again turn away from the descendants of those “freedmen” that helped to preserve the Union. It didn’t take long for the U.S. military to realize that their mission was doomed to fail if they excluded African-Americans from their war efforts abroad.

Even as young, patriotic African-Americans crowded into U.S. military recruitment centers to bolster those war efforts, their eagerness and patriotism was often met with disdain.

General John “Black Jack” Pershing, often considered a mentor to World War II generals such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall and George S. Patton, displayed this contempt for Black soldiers in a secret communiqué to French military in August 1918:

“We must not eat with them, must not shake hands with them, seek to talk to them or to meet with them outside the requirements of military service. We must not commend too highly these troops, especially in front of white Americans…”

American generals with roots in the South, including LTG Robert Bullard, commander of the American Second Army, were so adamant in their resistance to arming Black soldiers and employing them in combat on the frontlines that they sabotaged all-Black units such as the 92d Division with inadequate training, reduced their successes to rumor while holding their failures on the battlefield under a microscope.

Jones said that the efforts of some high-ranking U.S. military officers to disparage Black soldiers lasted for decades in a concerted effort to limit the combat training they received for fear of giving Blacks the tools and the know-how to fend off violent racist attacks at home.

“If I teach you how to use a weapon, if I teach you how to plan a defense, it’s going to be very difficult for the Klan to do what they’re doing,” Jones said.

According to records compiled by what was then known as Tuskegee Institute, 161 Blacks were lynched in 1892. In 1909, the year the NAACP was established largely to outlaw lynching and to agitate for racial equality, 69 Blacks were lynched.

Black soldiers leaving and returning home were not exempted from that venom; some were spat on as they boarded ships to Europe. Dozens of Black war veterans were lynched, some while wearing their military uniform.

Still, Blacks continued to enlist in droves donning that same uniform bloodied by foreign and domestic strife, to fight for the ideals of a country that failed to fully recognize their sacrifices.

It took two executive orders, Executive Order 8802 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 and Executive Order 9981 signed by Harry S. Truman in 1948, and the Korean War before the armed services fully integrated.

Jones said that Montford Point Marines and those who served in wars before them and after are the true American patriots who fought and died to hold the United States to the highest goals of the Declaration of Independence and the goals of the Constitution.

“The African-American patriots, despite being discriminated against, despite the spirit that would degrade them, they would rise superior to it,” Jones said. “They would become true patriots working for the ideal of the American dream when it wasn’t even real.”

JHS 100 years: Jamestowners in the Civil War

From  Jamestown Press:  JHS 100 years: Jamestowners in the Civil War

The conflict that took place in the United States between 1861 and 1865 is known by many names: the American Civil War; the War Between the States; the War of Northern Aggression, as some in the seceding states still call it; and the War for the Suppression of Rebellion and the Preservation of Constitutional Liberty, as it is called in the certificates of appreciation issued to returning Rhode Island servicemen. By whatever name, it was the bloodiest war in the history of the country. According to some calculations, almost 2 percent of the people living in the country died as a direct or indirect result of military actions.

The roster of Jamestown men in the Union army issued by the Rhode Island secretary of state in 2002 lists 15 names – about 4 percent of the island’s 400 residents – although more men actually served, many of them enrolling in other towns so that their place of residence was not recorded.
Capt. Isaac Barker Howland served in the 11th Rhode Island Infantry in the Civil War. Although Howland was born in Jamestown, he signed up from East Greenwich. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JAMESTOWN HISTORICAL SOCIETY They served in several different regiments. Two men died in uniform and one received a medical discharge.

Two Jamestown men served in the 2nd Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers, organized in June 1861 in response to the first call for troops to serve three years or for the duration of the war. The regiment fired the opening volley at the first Battle of Bull Run, was in line at the final scenes of Appomattox, and fought in most major engagements of the Army of the Potomac.

Jamestowners William A. Arnold and Thomas Wilson Dorr Lewis enrolled in this dedicated fighting unit. Arnold died of an unknown illness in an Army facility a year after enlisting. Lewis served his three-year term and reenlisted. He was promoted to corporal, then sergeant, then first sergeant after being slightly wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. When the regiment was disbanded July 13, 1865, having lost nine officers and 111 men in action, plus two officers and 74 men dead of diseases, Lewis was still there.
After the war, Lewis lived in Providence near his mother and siblings.

When the 4th Regiment of Rhode Island Volunteers was created in August 1861 – again with a three-year term of enlistment or until the end of the war – two Jamestowners answered the call: Daniel Webster Weeden and John W. Williams.

While we have been unable to uncover much information about them, Weeden and Williams may have been close friends. Both enlisted on the same day in Newport. Each re-enlisted when his three-year stint was up. Both were wounded in action in Petersburg, Va., on July 30, 1864, and both were mustered out the same day at the end of the war.

The only thing that distinguishes one service record from the other is that Weeden was promoted to corporal after his re-enlistment. He later lived in Newport.

As the war continued, the number of committed volunteers decreased as the need for soldiers rose. In the fall of 1862, enlistment in two Rhode Island regiments with only nine-month terms of service was aggressively promoted. Several things came together to make the promotion successful. Gen. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign had been a disaster, increasing both fears and loyalty. A signing bounty was offered as a way to avoid the need for a draft. The short term of service attracted those who wanted to avoid the longer service that might be required if – or when – a draft was instituted.
The 11th Rhode Island Infantry commenced recruiting early in September and left for the front on Oct. 6, with one Jamestown recruit, Isaac Barker Howland, who, although born in Jamestown, signed up from East Greenwich.

The 12th started recruiting in late September. Five young Jamestown men volunteered: William H.H. Brown, John Tew Carr, Alfred G. Hull, Henry Morris Hull, and Martin V.B. Knowles. They were mustered in on Oct. 13 and left for the front only eight days later on Oct. 21.

Not all of the 12th boarded the train on Oct. 21. It had been generally understood that the volunteers were to receive their signing bounty before leaving Rhode Island, and the enlistees of the 11th had received theirs. However, a number of them had taken the money and disappeared. The state decided to postpone the payment of the bounty due to the 12th until after the men arrived at the front. Some enlistees took exception to the change: they were quickly rounded up and rejoined the regiment in Washington, D.C.
All the Jamestown recruits served their nine months without incident, although two of them – John Carr and Henry Hull – spent more time in the hospital than in the field.

Allen Gardiner was a sergeant in the 1st Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery from March 1862 until May 1864 when he resigned to accept an appointment in the United States Colored Troops. The USCT were regiments of the U.S. Army that consisted of African Americans but were commanded primarily by white officers.

Gustavus Adolphus Clark enlisted in the Rhode Island militia for three months only five days after the attack on Fort Sumter, and after his service returned to Jamestown where he lived until his death in 1916. Whitman Dawley and Charles H. Grinnell both joined the 1st Regiment Rhode Island Cavalry in December 1861 and were honorably discharged after completing their service. Charles W. Gardiner died of typhoid fever in August 1863 after one year in the 7th Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers.

Jamestowner Charles E. King enlisted as an ensign in the Navy in 1864 when he was only 16. Daniel Watson, who later became an important real-estate developer in Jamestown, served as hospital steward on several vessels in the fleet that blockaded the southern ports. It is unknown how many other men from Jamestown served at sea.
This is the 12th in a series of articles chronicling the history of Jamestown in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Jamestown Historical Society

 

American Civil War Veterans shake hands, 1913

From Retronaut: American Civil War Veterans shake hands, 1913


“The 1913 Gettysburg reunion of 53,407 American Civil War veterans was for the Battle of Gettysburg’s 50th anniversary. President Woodrow Wilson’s July 4 reunion address summarized the spirit: “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valour.”“
- Wikipedia

 

Book review: Shaara returns to the Civil War with 'A Blaze of Glory'

From Deseret News:  Book review: Shaara returns to the Civil War with 'A Blaze of Glory'

"A BLAZE OF GLORY: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh," by Jeff Shaara, Ballantine Books, $28, 464 pages (f)

Jeff Shaara is perhaps best known for his novels “Gods and Generals” (1996) and “The Last Full Measure” (1998), which were the bookends to his father Michael Shaara's 1974 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, “The Killer Angels.”

Shaara went on to write novels set in the Mexican-American War, the American Revolution, World War I and recently a quadrilogy of novels set in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II. Shaara returns to his Civil War roots with his latest novel, “A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh.”

“A Blaze of Glory” begins in early 1862 as the Confederate States of America has experienced a series of defeats in the western theater. Forts Henry and Donelson have just fallen to the Union army under the command of Ulysses S. Grant, and Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston is desperately trying to secure the interior of the Confederacy.

He decides to attack the federal position at Pittsburgh Landing near the Old Shiloh Church in southern Tennessee in what is intended to be a large-scale spoiling attack. Such an assault, if successful, would also force the Union to fall back and abandon much of Tennessee to the Confederacy. The attack initially goes as planned with the Union army taken completely by surprise, but by the second morning Grant's forces are reinforced and begin to rally.

Shaara is a brilliant historical novelist whose ability to transport the reader to the battlefield is unmatched. One can taste the gunpowder and blood in the air and, just like his characters, can be overwhelmed by the fear and horrors of war. Shaara pulls no punches, never romanticizing the conflict, and manages to create a wonderful, horrifying, human narrative of the battle. He is particularly skilled in his portraits of historical figures like Grant, Johnston and William T. Sherman.

Shaara describes the desperate first morning of the Confederate attack from the viewpoint of a Union soldier:

“The screams were close and manic, rebel troops lunging straight into the blue line, while to one side, another battle line rose up from the ravine there, a surge of bayonets pouring hard into Allen's left flank. The orders came in hot shouts, but to the men in blue who had tried to stand tall, to hold their ground, the orders meant nothing at all. The weight that came over them crushed and dissolved the blue line …

“A Blaze of Glory” is a fine addition to Civil War literature and may be Shaara's best work since “The Last Full Measure.” Shaara has announced that “A Blaze of Glory” is the beginning of a new trilogy of novels that detail the fighting in the western theater, a cause for celebration given this book's achievement.

A minor disappointment to Utah readers, however, is that Shaara only mentions the Utah War in passing. Johnston had led the expedition to the Salt Lake Valley in 1857, only five years before the events in the novel. One would have hoped such an important episode in the general's career would have been given more room in these pages, if only as a memory. Perhaps one day Shaara will author a novel set during that historic conflict.

"A Blaze of Gory" contains realistic battlefield violence, but no foul language or other adult themes.

Cody K. Carlson has a master's degree in history from the University of Utah and currently teaches at Salt Lake Community College. He is also the co-developer of the History Challenge iPhone/iPad apps. EMAIL: ckcarlson76@gmail.com

 

Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War, by Megan Kate Nelson

From Strategy Press: Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War, by Megan Kate Nelson

Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Pp. xvii, 332. Illus., notes, biblio., index. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 0820342513.

While the destruction wrought by armed conflict is always mentioned in accounts of wars, it is not usually the primary focus of attention.  This is not the case with Ruin Nation, a volume in the University of Georgia Press series “Uncivil Wars”, which takes a look at the cultural and social effects of the destruction engendered by the Civil War on contemporary economic, cultural, and social institutions and norms, as well as on the physical environment, and, of course, on the people. 

Primarily a cultural, environmental, and literary historian, Dr. Nelson (Harvard) is also the author of Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp.  In Ruin Nation she uses letters, diaries, and images created by the people of the times to provide insights not only into their individual understanding of what was happening to them and their world, but also to examine how their experiences, suffering, and interpretations of these have been transmitted to us, often in highly sanitized or politicized fashion.  Although, as is often the case when non-specialists deal with military history, there are occasional errors in terminology, this work takes an important look at the effects of war.

An interesting read for those interested in the effects of the war on civilians and well as soldiers, and its longer term influence on society.

Coasties Clean Up Civil War Era Cemetery

From Cape May Country Herald:  Coasties Clean Up Civil War Era Cemetery
ERMA — Coast Guard volunteers are cleaning up an overgrown cemetery that was once the site of the Union Bethel Church and the first Black settlement in the south county.

Union Bethel Cemetery is the final resting place of Cape May and Lower Township's first African American families and Black Civil War soldiers. Located off Tabernacle Road, it has been covered by high grass and scared by fallen trees and limbs.

Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Daniel S. Kobs lives next door to the cemetery. A sign in his yard directs the curious to the Civil War era graveyard.

Kobs said a neighbor told him how nice the property had been maintained in the past. He said he was aware Coast Guard members had volunteered to clean up the cemetery some years ago.
“They transferred out and it kind of got forgotten,” said Kobs.

He is a crewmember on the Coast Guard Cutter Dependable. Kobs said he mentioned the cemetery to fellow crewmembers and they agreed take on maintaining the property as a project.

Three years ago, Boy Scout Troop 87 based at Tabernacle United Methodist Church spruced up the cemetery.
Online research indicated the cemetery dates back to 1834, said Kobs.

They are family plots from the Turner family, which was the head of a family tree of many African American families in the Cape May area. Members of the Vance, Humphries and Hastings families are also buried there under tall trees.

“The grass was 2 feet high, three trees were down, you could probably only see about 15 gravesites and there are so many back there,” he said.

Kobs said his volunteers wanted to bring the cemetery up to “decent condition” and decorate it a bit. He said the soldiers and sailors buried in Union Bethel Cemetery were part of their inspiration to restore the property.
Kobs will be stationed in Cape May for two years and is planning to bring volunteers to the cemetery every few weeks to cut down weeds. The goal is sell firewood to fund the purchase of equipment to maintain the property, he said.

Six Coastie volunteers scheduled their first workday two weeks ago on a very hot Friday morning. Lower Township assisted with supplies for the clean up.

The crewmembers returned to the cemetery Fri. July 13. Kobs said one more Friday workday should put the property in order. The volunteers have about 50 hours of labor invested in cleaning up the historic cemetery.
Kobs said the volunteers need a riding lawnmower to keep the cemetery maintained now that the heavy work has been completed. Anyone wishing to donate a riding mower may contact Eileen at the Lower Township Manager’s Office at (609) 886-2005 ext. 132.

 

Civil War Exhibit Opens Next Weekend

From ABC13:  Civil War Exhibit Opens Next Weekend

Lynchburg, VA - The Lynchburg Museum is commemorating the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War with a new exhibit.

It's called the American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia.

The exhibit shows more than 200 rare objects and interactive programs to tell the stories of people who experienced the Civil War in Virginia.

The vast majority of the experience is focused on women, men, children, slaves, and soldiers.
It opens July 21 and will be here through November.

 

Misrepresenting the Civil War

From Charlotte Observer:  Misrepresenting the Civil War

David Goldfield’s article “Avoid the Carnage of War” (June 29 Viewpoint) may be provocative reading, but it is bad religious history. Goldfield does not like war, and he thinks the American Civil War could and should have been avoided. He labels the Civil War a “war of choice brought on by the insidious mixture of politics and religion.” In this thinly veiled screed, summarizing some basic ideas from his recent book “America Aflame,” Goldfield thus interprets the Civil War as a cautionary tale for America today.

Who was essentially to blame for the war? Goldfield demonizes Northern evangelicals and the group he sees as their political arm, the Republican Party. Driven by their need to expiate America’s sins, in particular slavery and the presence of the Roman Catholic Church, Northern evangelicals wrote the script for the Republicans and a “messianic” Abraham Lincoln.

Moralistic passion overrode rational thought, Goldfield argues, making political compromise impossible and war the result. Republicans “deployed evangelical dogma to raise the stakes of political discourse.” One does not have to read far between the lines to find the views of a politically motivated, anti-religious critic, and also – ironically – an effort to let the “Slave Power” off the hook.

It is quite a trick to throw bones to both the Lost Cause crowd and to those today who see “evangelicals” as a political bogey-man.

The most favorable review to date of Goldfield’s book asserts that “he sometimes seems to be writing as much about our own time as about time past.” But historians should learn early in their training the danger of such present-mindedness creeping into historical interpretation.
The dean of American religious historians, Harry Stout of Yale University, observes that “Goldfield detests Northern evangelicals so much that he does not really care to engage them on their own terms,” and judges the book a “failure” as religious history. Renowned Civil War historian James McPherson of Princeton University notes that in his book Goldfield “never defines precisely what he means by evangelical Christianity.”

Indeed, Goldfield fails glaringly to distinguish the evangelicalism of that era from what we term evangelicalism today. In his Viewpoint article, he applies a reductionist and deliberately simplistic definition of current evangelical faith to antebellum evangelicalism: “Accept Jesus Christ as your savior and you will be saved and go to heaven.” Earlier evangelicals, sitting on the “anxious bench” awaiting a movement of the spirit, would hardly have recognized such a characterization of their faith.

Moreover, Goldfield lashes Northern evangelicals for their anti-Catholic “bigotry,” conveniently shielding Southern evangelicals from such charges. Yet as Stout notes incredulously, “even a cursory reading of Confederate sermons reveals a mentality equally anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant among that group.”
Good history would not deliberately omit such evidence. Neither would it fail to mention that anti-slavery activists were not simply anti-Catholic “bigots” but had become disillusioned with the Catholic hierarchy largely because it was virtually unrepresented in the movement to abolish slavery.

The suggestion that the North was guilty of an unwillingness to compromise and a “rush to war” borders on the absurd. The sectional conflict had been building for decades, with repeated efforts to reconcile deep differences. Lincoln sought to prevent slavery’s spread to the territories, not to abolish it, and his deeply sincere, often-repeated hope was to save the Union. If anyone was at fault for a failure to compromise, it was the southern firebrands.

Goldfield is guilty of one misrepresentation after another. His claim that Republicans were “avowedly evangelical” would have been news to the many Unitarians, Quakers and free thinkers in their ranks. Republicans were also “proudly sectional.” But which section of the country broke away to form the Confederacy?

Also, as McPherson observes, Goldfield claims for Lincoln words that were actually written by an anti-slavery farmer. Such misattribution becomes more likely when one tries to fit the evidence to one’s argument, rather than vice-versa.

The assertion that “self-righteousness eroded the vital center of American politics” underscores Goldfield’s general carelessness. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the phrase “the vital center” to mean something quite different. He objected vociferously when President Clinton tried to employ it as a weapon against political extremism.

In this Viewpoint piece, Goldfield misrepresents with abandon critical aspects of antebellum American history in order to bolster his ideological agenda. He condescendingly reminds us that the Constitution is “America’s Scripture.” But which side seceded and wrote its own new constitution? Far from offering a genuine scholarly reflection, Goldfield’s article is the anti-war statement of an over-imaginative scholar twisting history to promote his own political vision.

Ann Lee Bressler is an historian of American religion who lives in Davidson. She is the author of “The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880” (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/14/3381519/misrepresenting-the-civil-war.html#storylink=cpy

 

Tarantino unlocks "Django's" chains at Comic-Con

From Chicago Tribune:  Tarantino unlocks "Django's" chains at Comic-Con

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Quentin Tarantino unlocked the secrets of his upcoming action flick "Django Unchained" at Comic-Con on Saturday with explosive clips of the slave revenge movie, which takes place in the pre-Civil War U.S. South.

The director entered the pop culture convention's main hall in his trademark quirky sunglasses and a fedora, and was given a raucous welcome by some 7,000 audience members, some of who waited overnight to hear him speak.

"Django Unchained," due in theaters this coming December, is the latest from the maker of "Kill Bill" and "Pulp Fiction," who was joined in a panel by actors Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Don Johnson and Walter Groggins.

Until Saturday, little was known about the film and no footage had been seen in public. Tarantino said he still had one last week of shooting. He revealed that Jonah Hill is playing a racist and confirmed Sacha Baron Cohen will not be appearing.

The story follows Django (Foxx), a black slave freed by a rebel dentist-turned-bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Waltz). The pair embark on a bloody bounty hunting expedition to rescue Django's captured slave wife, Broomhilda (Washington).

Fans were treated to an eight-minute promotional film reel showing scenes of Foxx and Waltz taking down villains, including Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio. The gritty footage featured the director's trademark violence fused with sharp humor and Western music.

"One of the fun things was to take the Western genre that we know so well and place it in the Antebellum South and put a black character in the middle of it. Do the Western clichés, but do them in the South," said Tarantino.

In a twist from his villainous part in Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds," Waltz plays a complex good guy opposite Hollywood hero DiCaprio, who plays evil plantation owner Calvin Candie. Waltz told reporters prior to the panel that Tarantino had written the role with DiCaprio in mind.

In the convention hall, Foxx talked about his experiences with racism when he grew up in Texas and explained how he used his past to tap Django's emotions.

Washington is the latest actress to join Tarantino's roster of talent in strong female roles, including Uma Thurman and Diane Kruger. But she puts a royal black twist on her Broomhilda character. "She is the princess who is rescued from the tower and particularly for a black woman, that's not really an experience that we've had historically," said Washington, who learned to speak German for the role.

From the look at the film clips, Tarantino adds a touch of love, too, as the human tale of a man attempting to recapture his woman is a central thread in the story.

"So much of the institution of slavery was about breaking up families and not making it possible to have healthy marriages, so the idea that in this world of slavery, that love could conquer this evil institution and that a man could rescue his wife outside the chains of slavery, I thought that was so beautiful and important," Washington said.

 

Birth of 'Battle Hymn' retold

From the Spectrum:  Birth of 'Battle Hymn' retold

During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers sang varied versions of “John Brown’s Body,” often in mocking and amusing tunes.

One side sang in admiration of John Brown, the American abolitionist, and one side sang in admiration of his death. Enter Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) to bring a precedent of peace.


President Abraham Lincoln invited Howe and her husband Samuel to Washington, D.C., because of their avid involvement in the Sanitary Commission. Most members of their group knew Howe published plays and poetry, and as the party visited a Union camp near the banks of the Potomac River, James Freeman Clarke, a clergyman in the company, asked Howe to write an inspirational new song benefiting the war effort to the music of “John Brown’s Body.”


Howe tells how she went to bed that evening, but awoke just before dawn with the words coming quickly to her mind. She knew if she failed to write the lines immediately she would lose them.
She recalled: “I searched for an old sheet of paper and a stub of a pen … and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking … I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling that something of importance had happened to me.”




The Atlantic Monthly published Howe’s poem in 1862, and when put to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” it became an anthem — the most popular song of the North during the Civil War.



Howe’s spiritual faith resonates with Biblical images from both the Old Testament and the New Testament as she focuses on the principle of putting an end to America’s slavery issue. Since that time, the music and messages of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” have inspired many people with its symbolic, triumphant vision of Christ’s millennial advent.

 

Text of ex-slave's letter to his former master

This letter only surfaced this year, from what I can discover. And frankly...it sounds phony to me. Sounds like something Mark Twain would have written. The heavy irony in it is not something a recently emancipated slave would write. And why would his former employer write him a letter asking him to come back after having shot at him?

http://www.racialicious.com/2012/02/01/the-ghost-writer-jourdon-anderson-and-his-letter-from-the-freedmens-book/ is one site that talks about it.

And considering what the man writes in this letter...would its recipient have actually kept it for 150+ years, or destroyed it?

From the Huffington Post:  Text of ex-slave's letter to his former master

The famed letter written by an ex-slave in response to his former master's request that he return to the plantation, soon after the end of the Civil War. Different versions of the letter bear various spellings of the writer's name.

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy – the folks call her Mrs. Anderson – and the children – Milly, Jane, and Grundy – go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve – and die, if it come to that – than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.

 

Georgia: Civil War artifacts on display locally

From News and Sentinel:  Civil War artifacts on display locally

MARIETTA - The upper floor of Campus Martius Museum is host to Civil War artifacts obtained from all across Ohio, including a cot where a field surgeon died and the pike that John Brown used on his raid at Harper's Ferry.
The exhibition, titled "Touched By Conflict: Southeastern Ohio & the Civil War," opened Saturday and showcases hundreds of items grouped in a loose chronological order, with the purpose of telling the individual stories of southeastern Ohioans and their impact on the war.
Historian and Marietta resident Bill Reynolds has worked at Campus Martius for about 40 years, and worked with the Ohio Historical Society to set up the exhibition.

"The Civil War was the worst conflict that ever occurred on American soil," Reynolds said. "Millions of people's lives were affected. Even here locally, the contributions of people were enormous."

According to Reynolds, southeastern Ohio contributed much more than 2,000 troops to the war effort, including Rufus Dawes, father of the U.S. vice president Charles Dawes.

"We were looking for something different for people to see, and that would be timely...something that would resonate with the local area," said Reynolds of the exhibition, which coincides with the Civil War's sesquicentennial anniversary.

Part of the collection came from Dayton resident Larry Strayer, who collects Civil War artifacts. His pieces make up roughly three-fourths of the items at the "Touched by Conflict" exhibition.

"I think the exhibition brings an immediacy to this time period and brings it alive for people," Strayer said. "People do need to be aware of our country's history, if for no other reason than to become better voting citizens... without the sacrifice of these men back then, we wouldn't have the unified country we have today."
Both Strayer and Reynolds said the exhibition has pieces in it that simply cannot be found anywhere else.
For example, a display case features Civil War artifacts that were included in an entirely different exhibition, presented in 1888 for Marietta's centennial celebrations by actual Civil War veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic.

Strayer said another very rare grouping includes the belongings of Union Army volunteer and musician William T. Peyton.

"There's a set of equipment brought home by a man (Peyton) from Aberdeen, Ohio... and his family saved it and left it untouched, including his ration bag still filled with ground coffee," Strayer said.
Peyton's belongings are so rare because normally such possessions are never kept together, usually being divided up among surviving family members upon the person's death.

While the collection is almost entirely based around the lives of Union members, Reynolds said one particularly interesting artifact is the remnant of a confederate flag that flew outside General Lee's headquarters at the battle of Appamatox Courthouse.

"We think that if anybody has a passing interest in the Civil War, they'll find something here to see. This tells snippets of a much larger story," he said.

As such, multiple groupings in the gallery focus on the contributions of the rest of the populous, not just those involved in direct combat. That includes women, gunmakers, doctors, fraternal veteran organizations and many others.

The "Touched by Conflict" exhibition will continue on for three years, and every other month the gallery will play host to a new program. Reynolds said the programs planned for the future range from letter and diary readings to music programs to a Civil War camp event for children.
The next program, in which Reynolds and other local historians host a Civil War roundtable and discussion, is planned for 7 p.m. July 19.

The "Touched by Conflict" exhibition is currently open for visitors on Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Admission prices are $7 for adults and $4 for students.

 

Civil War Encampment Returning This Weekend To James A. Garfield National Historic Site

From Mentor Patch:  Civil War Encampment Returning This Weekend To James A. Garfield National Historic Site

James A. Garfield National Historic Site will host its third annual Civil War encampment July 13 through 15.
About 100 Union, Confederate, and civilian reenactors will be on
site to demonstrate Civil War-era drill and ceremonies, weapons proficiency, battle tactics, camp life and more. And it will all occur outside of the home of President James A. Garfield, who was a Union major general during the Civil War.

• Check out photos from last year's encampment.

The weekend will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Friday with a public symposium hosted and presented by the Northeast Ohio Civil War Round Table.

Speakers will present talks in the site’s auditorium on the following subjects: “How Ohio Won the Civil War,” “General Ulysses S. Grant” and “The Medal of Honor.”

These presentations are free and open to the public. However, limited seating is available in the auditorium. The symposium will conclude at 9:30 p.m.

From 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, the encampment will be open to the public on the grounds of the Garfield site.

Reenactors from the 7th, 8th and 82nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, as well as the 11th Misssissippi Volunteers and 7th Tennessee Dismounted Cavalry will be on hand to demonstrate Civil War drill and ceremonies, weapons, and camp life.

Musicians Steve Ball and the Camp Chase Fife and Drums will play Civil War-era music during both days of the encampment event.

Civilian “sutlers” will be on hand offering a variety of period items for sale to the public.

A number of the Civil War era’s most famous personalities -- including Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, James A. Garfield, Ambrose Burnside, and William T. Sherman -- will be present in the form of portrayals by professional living historians.

Other notable activities and displays will include: Faire Time Toys (19th century toys to play with, a toy making workshop, and contests throughout the day); a Civil War surgeon’s tent with 19th century medical equipment; displays by Hiram College and the Sons of Union Veterans; Civil War Navy reenactors; and U.S. Cavalry artifacts from the Civil War era.

 

18 July: McClellan vs. Lee C.W. expert gives a fresh perspective

From Gettysburg Times:  McClellan vs. Lee C.W. expert gives a fresh perspective 


Come experience one of the most storied rivalries between titans of the American Civil War. On July 18, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle will feature a fresh look at the violent relationship between General George McClellan and General Robert E. Lee. Dr. Ethan Rafuse, an elite U.S. Army historian specializing in Civil War scholarship, will present a lecture entitled, "'We Always Understood Each Other so Well:' McClellan, Lee, and the War in the East."

The Civil War in Northern Virginia in 1862 was the stage for a grand confrontation between the two very different generals' distinctly different armies. At the beginning, Robert E. Lee languished in relative obscurity, while George McClellan commanded the Union war effort like a colossus. By June, McClellan had led his Army of the Potomac to the proverbial gates of Richmond and ultimate victory for the Union seemed within sight. Lee, new commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, turned the tables and struck back, confounding McClellan and his staff. By the middle of September, Lee carried the war to the outskirts of Washington and then across the Potomac River into Maryland before McClellan managed to turn back the Confederate tide on the bloodiest day of the war, the Battle of Antietam.

 

How to get a free Civil War infographic

From the Washington Post:  How to get a free Civil War infographic

For those if us who love to have important statistics close at hand, the Civil War Trust has a wonderful, free gift. The “infographic” is meant to call attention to the human costs associated with the biggest battlers of the war.

It includes three bar graphs showing the biggest battles by war casualties (Gettysburg is number one), a comparison of the death rates in American wars (the Civil War is way ahead of all the others), and a comparison of the highest number of casualties for a single day in American history, including 9/11 (the highest is Antietam).

The graphic also lists the battles fought by key figures Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, George McClellan and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

The Trust is encouraging its wide dessimination by asking viewers to post it on Web sites, Facebook and blogs.

 

Woodchucks nailed in mysterious theft of flags from graveyard

From LA Times:  Woodchucks nailed in mysterious theft of flags from graveyard

NEW YORK -- When dozens of little American flags began disappearing from Civil War veterans' graves at a cemetery in Hudson, N.Y., this month, locals fumed. Who could be so callous, especially in the days surrounding Independence Day?

Thanks to surveillance cameras, a stepped-up police presence and forensic sleuthing, officials have the answer: woodchucks, also known as groundhogs. The animals apparently were burrowing beneath the ground, then taking the flags into their subterranean homes, where investigators poking cameras into the dirt have spotted some of the missing banners

The Register-Star newspaper reported the break in the case Saturday with a screaming headline:
BREAKING: Police identify suspect in cemetery flag thefts

On Tuesday, the paper followed up with an editorial calling for decisive action. "We don't think that the woodchucks should get off with a slap on the claw," it said, noting that 75 flags were stolen from the Cedar Park cemetery, stripping graves of the soldiers who died in the line of duty. 


For all the joking about the case, it has highlighted the ugly matter of flag thefts elsewhere. In Wisconsin, the Dodge County Sheriff's office said that at least 20 brass flag markers were stolen from a cemetery around July 4. Sheriff Todd Nelhs told the Fond du Lac Reporter newspaper that such thefts were increasing because of the rising price of brass at recycling centers. "In my opinion, this is equal to flag desecration," Nelhs said.
Similar thefts have been reported recently at cemeteries in Pittsfield, Mass., Chester County, Pa., and other spots around the country. Those cases have been blamed on thieves selling the poles as scrap metal, unlike in Hudson, where officials say the rodents were attracted to the wooden stems holding the flags in the ground.

There's a reason they call them woodchucks.

The discovery of the culprits followed days of hand-wringing by local officials and residents, who day after day followed local media reports on yet more little flags disappearing or being found ripped from the graves.
Mayor Bill Hallenbeck, for one, is relieved that no humans were found to be culpable.
“I’m glad we don’t have someone who has taken it upon themselves to desecrate the stones and the flags in front of them,” he told the Register-Star. 

One of those who took part in the investigation was a volunteer caretaker at the cemetery, Vincent Wallace, who told the Register-Star that evidence left behind at some of the graves pointed to animal, not human, involvement. Rather than the flags being pulled from the ground, Wallace noted, the flags had been yanked downward.


“A human would have ripped it upwards," he said.

The thefts were discovered in the days leading up to July 4. Flags were replaced, only to vanish or be found ripped from their holders the following day. Locals and civic leaders were dismayed, and local media reported daily on the mystery and on the efforts to prevent further thefts.

Hallenbeck even called a meeting to discuss the problem. "We want to figure out why ... this is happening -- is it random or is there more to it?" he said.

Clearly, there was more to it.

So far, it's unclear what city officials plan to do, although there is no shortage of pest control companies that deal with such issues. The city might also consider consulting with groundhog expert Bob Will, who for decades has adopted sick, injured and unwanted groundhogs and who advocates on behalf of the oft-maligned rodent.

As Will told the Los Angeles Times back in January, as he prepared for his biggest day of the year -- Groundhog Day -- the little animals mean no harm when they burrow through the ground. He advocates relocating groundhogs to places where they won't create problems if people feel the need to get rid of them.
"They really are an animal that doesn’t do anything bad, and they shouldn’t be destroyed just for the lark of it," Will said.

 

Abraham Lincoln 'Impeached.' Wait, What?

From WBUR.com:  Abraham Lincoln 'Impeached.' Wait, What?

Abraham Lincoln is not just America's greatest president. To many, his very face is an emblem of America: honest, homespun, strong and sad, haunted, brooding and humorous.
So where does some famous Yale Law School professor get off writing a novel in which President Lincoln is accused of subverting the Constitution?
In Stephen Carter's new novel, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, the man we know as the Great Emancipator imprisons critics, invokes martial law, suspends the writ of habeus corpus, and throttles the press — all to win the Civil War.

(Michael Lionstar / Random House)

Carter takes all kinds of liberties with history, beginning with that fateful night at Ford's Theatre, when John Wilkes Booth shoots Lincoln, and Lincoln ... survives? "I should begin by explaining that I am a big Lincoln fan," Carter says, laughing. "I think Lincoln was our greatest president; I have no question about that. But at the same time, there were a lot of things that Lincoln did during his presidency, in order to win the Civil War, that could be called into question. And so my idea was to write a courtroom drama that was crafted around that possibility. The path I sketch in my fiction is one possible path history might have taken."
At the center of Carter's story is a young woman named Abigail Canner, an Oberlin graduate who comes to the nation's capital intending to become a lawyer. Canner is African-American — at a time when there are just a few black lawyers in the entire country, and no women. "But she conceives this idea of wanting to be a lawyer, wanting to be involved in great events," Carter says.

He adds he developed Abigail's character to appeal to "that part in all of us, when we're young, that's ambitious and fresh and innocent and excited, and thinks the world's a just and fair place. And of course she goes out into that world and finds it's much more complex and dangerous than she imagined."

And the danger to President Lincoln in this book comes not from the cranky, mossbacked conservatives, but from the people who considered themselves progressive. Carter points out that the Republican Party of that era was the center of abolitionist activism, led by highly educated men who'd fought slavery all their lives and who resented Lincoln as an unlettered Western hick who wasn't moving fast enough to free the slaves.
"Even as the war progressed, and even as the Union began to win, he remained deeply unpopular," Carter says. "There were a lot of people, the leaders of his own party, who simply thought he was not morally as good as they were."

Carter says he doesn't think Lincoln should have been impeached — though his opponents in the book make a pretty good case. "If you look at the things Lincoln actually did, his administration shuttered opposition newspapers, locked up editors, court-martialed reporters at the front who wrote unfavorable stories, suspended habeas corpus, ignored court orders, declared martial law," Carter says.

"And for Lincoln, all of this was justified by his need to win the war. And that's the question, that in my novel, that the Senate has to confront. Did Lincoln have a justification for the various things he attempted to do that he said were necessary?"

Lincoln, of course, is a central character in the book — but he doesn't appear very often. Carter says it was both intimidating and enormously difficult to write dialogue for such an iconic figure. "One of the reasons that he ends up being in only about five scenes in the novel is precisely that I didn't want to stray too far from the record and bring the whole legion of Lincoln aficionados down on my head."
Carter's version of Lincoln tells a few funny stories that the real 16th president is known to have told. "Where he has to talk about other things, I tried to use the cadences that so far as I can tell were accurate," Carter says, adding that he learned those cadences by studying Lincoln's letters, speeches and accounts of conversations people had with him.

Fantastical depictions of Lincoln seem to be popular this summer; Carter says that while he hasn't seen the movie Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, he's planning to. "I think it might be fun. And the truth is, anything that gets people to take a real interest in Lincoln, I think is a good thing."

 

Ohio: Civil War museum free to active troops

From  Advertiser-Tribune:  Civil War museum free to active troops

The American Civil War Museum of Ohio in Tiffin announced the launch of its participation in a program to extend free admittance to all active duty military at the ACWMO from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
"All military personnel has to do is show current their military status for admission," ACWMO Executive Director Michael Baltzell said.

The Nationwide Blue Star Museum Initiative is a nationwide collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 1,800 museums across America to offer free admission to active duty military personnel and their immediate families.

"It is an honor to provide this service to our active duty military men and women and their families, not only as a show of support, but also as a small token of appreciation for their sacrifice," Baltzell said.

Leadership support has been provided by the Met Life Foundation through Blue Star Families. A complete list of participating museums is available at www.arts.gov/bluestarmuseums.

 

Check it out: Legacy of Gettysberg Address is long

From the Columbian:  Check it out: Legacy of Gettysberg Address is long


"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Next year will be the 150th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg. From July 1-3, 1863, the Union and Confederate armies fought in and around the small town of Gettysburg, Pa. The battle ended when General Robert E. Lee called for the retreat of his Confederate soldiers.
When dawn broke July 4, those who survived the carnage were confronted with a devastating scene: More than 40,000 soldiers from both armies lay dead on the battlefield. As Civil War scholar and author Gabor Boritt writes in "The Gettysburg Gospel," for the citizens of Gettysburg, "war had come to them. Then it had gone and left the horror behind."

Such an event seems unimaginable today, but for those who were alive when the Battle of Gettysburg took place, it was yet another catastrophic moment in a long, terrifying war. Debates still continue about whether or not Gettysburg was the turning point in the war, but one fact cannot be denied: the largest number of Civil War casualties happened there.

When President Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg in November 1863 to dedicate a new National Cemetery, he was painfully aware of how much Pennsylvania and the rest of the United States had already suffered. He also knew that the fighting had to continue and that soldiers and citizens would have to shed more blood before the war was over. These thoughts were heavy on his mind when he wrote the Gettysburg Address.
Boritt does an amazing job describing not only the events leading up to the famous speech, but also how Lincoln's uncommon trip away from a wartime White House affected the nation.

Today we view the Gettysburg Address as one of the most important speeches in American history, but when President Lincoln was invited to Gettysburg to help dedicate the cemetery, the expectation was that his few remarks would be secondary to a presentation by the esteemed orator Edward Everett.

As we now know, Everett's speech is long forgotten by most people, but President Lincoln's "remarks" — less than 300 words total — have and will remain a powerful tribute to mankind.

Jan Johnston is the Collection Development Coordinator for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. Email her at readingforfun@fvrl.org. She blogs at youbetterreadnow.blogspot.com.

 

American Civil War "Battle of Antietam", July 21

From City of Chehalis website: American Civil War "Battle of Antietam"

Event Title: American Civil War "Battle of Antietam"
Date/Time: Sat, Jul 21st (All day) - Sun, Jul 22nd (All day)
Location: Veterans Memorial Museum, 100 SW Veterans Way, Chehalis (I-5 Exit 77)

Join the Veterans Memorial Museum for the Battle of Antietam.  This massive event will be held not far from the museum.  Hundreds of living historians will take to the field in battle and provide demonstrations about what life was like in military and civilian camps.  The event is being hosted by the Washington Civil War Association, with participation by the Northwest Civil War Council.

Schedule

Saturday, July 21
10:00 - 11:00 am ~ Guest speaker, Battle of Antietam
11:00 am & 3:00 pm ~ Huge battles
5:00 pm ~ Camp closes to the public

Sunday, July 22
9:30 - 10:00 am ~ Church service
10:00 - 11:00 am ~ Guest speaker, Battle of Antietam
11:00 am & 2:00 pm ~ Huge battles
3:00 pm ~ Camps close

Admission (includes admission to Veterans Memorial Museum)

Adults ~ $10
Seniors (60+) ~ $7
Students/Veterans/Active Duty/Under 6 Years ~ Free

For more information or advanced ticket sales, visit the Veterans Memorial Museum at 100 SW Veterans Way, Chehalis or call 360-740-8875.  Visit www.veteransmuseum.org to learn more about this one-of-a-kind museum where, "They Shall Not Be Forgotten."

Byways to Battlefields app released

From LaJunta Tribnune Democrat:  Byways to Battlefields app released

La Junta, Colo. — The Federal Highway Administration and the National Park Service recently announced the release of the Android mobile application (App): "Byways to Battlefields."

 

Travel America's Byways® and commemorate 150 years since the American Civil War. The war (1861-1865) left a legacy throughout the United States, often in places you wouldn't expect. America's National Parks and public lands preserve and interpret these stories for travelers from the East to the Western Plains. Step onto the Battlefields, visit the graves of the fallen, experience life on the Homefront, and learn of the Civil Rights struggles from the Civil War era and beyond from the people who experienced it.



The App allows the traveler to: plan their experience by downloading content for the specific region (Mid-Atlantic or Western Plains) they wish to visit; 
 view descriptions of photos of Civil War sites and sort by theme; 
find driving routes designated as America's Byways® and obtain driving directions to Civil War sites; 
 find the sites nearest their location and customize their travel route accordingly; and  contact local organizations. 

“Byways to Battlefields” is a free App available for download at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.byways.cw150, or is available from the Google Play Store directly on an Android mobile device. 



Please utilize this forum to post and feedback you have on the App, or to post any data or traveler responses that would help us measure the performance of this effort.

Android is a trademark of Google Inc.
The Civil War battlefield at Glorieta Pass is about two hundred fifty miles south of La Junta on the path of the Southwest Chief on its journey in New Mexico near Lamy, New Mexico. Pecos National Park, which contains part of the Glorieta Battlefield, is accessible from I-25. The Santa Fe Trail, which passes through La Junta, is definitely on the App. A better view of the Glorieta Battlefield is from the windows of the Southwest Chief, leaving every day from La Junta at approximately 8:30 a.m. Guided tours from Trails and Rails are available on Fridays and Sundays on Train 3, Saturdays and Mondays on Train 4, returning to La Junta from points south. These tours run through Sept. 2-3.

Civil War 150th: Glendale and Malvern Hill end the Seven Days campaign

From Richmond Times-Dispatch :  Civil War 150th: Glendale and Malvern Hill end the Seven Days campaign

RICHMOND, Va. -- Joseph Atkins could have expected to benefit if the North won the Civil War in 1862 when the Union Army came within hearing distance of Richmond.

Atkins was a free black man in his early 30s who lived under restrictions almost as strict as those for slaves. He'd been taken from the farm he owned in eastern Henrico County and forced to help build defensive earthworks around Richmond and Yorktown. He was banned by law from learning to read.

His loyalty to the Union reflected a yearning for better times.

"I heard that the rebels meant to sell all free people of color into slavery," Atkins said a decade later to a government commission. "I thought the Yankees would give us our rights and they have done. I was always on their side and did all in my power for the Union cause."

The realities of war, however, proved disastrous to all who got in its path, among them Atkins and the other free blacks who'd lived for generations at Gravel Hill on Longbridge Road in Varina.

Their story is one of the focal points Saturday and today during a commemoration of the last of the Seven Days Battles at Glendale and Malvern Hill.

Gravel Hill was an unusual pre-war community, said Bert Dunkerly, a park ranger for Richmond National Battlefield Park. He spoke about "African-Americans Caught in the Vortex" on Saturday at Gravel Hill Community Center with William H. Anderson, whose ancestors lived at Gravel Hill during the Civil War.
They were freed in 1771 by John Pleasants in his will. Pleasants, who was a leader in the Quaker community, also granted 350 acres to the 78 former slaves.

"It was controversial," Dunkerly said. "There was a case that went before the state court of appeals. It was before the Revolutionary War. There was no Supreme Court. John Marshall was involved on behalf of the slaves to argue their case. They were successful, obviously."

The Union Army came through Gravel Hill on its retreat from Mechanicsville to the James River through Glendale.

Anderson's great-great-great-great-grandfather Richard Sykes recalled Pennsylvania regiments amassed outside his house, Anderson said.

"They told him, 'You guys have got to clear out of here because there's going to be a big fight.'

"He and his wife and children were getting out of the way when the firing started. They ran down to the woods and fell to the ground with bullets whistling above their heads. The fighting was so fierce that tree branches were falling down on them. They had to get up and run some more."

Atkins was more matter-of-fact in his petition for reimbursement from the Southern Claims Commission on Feb. 24, 1873.

"On Monday they formed a line of battle on my farm. … I was on the place all day. I saw my hogs all taken and killed by the soldiers," Atkins said. "I had 10 (hogs) penned up. They would have weighed 150 pounds apiece. They were cooked and eaten on the spot.

"I saw a full barrel of flour taken and a hundred weight of bacon. They were taken from my house. I lost all my chickens. I had 10 grown ones and a great many little ones. I had an acre of onions all pulled up. I grew them for market. All my fences were used for firewood. I had 10 acres enclosed. ... I lost a lot of beds and bedding and pots and pans that were taken for use at the hospital."

Atkins didn't get a receipt. "There was fighting going on all the time," he said on the form he signed with an X because he couldn't write his name.

"I was laying low, in a hole. I could see the soldiers take the things, but I didn't interfere. They took pretty much all I had, and the same evening went on to Malvern, fighting all the way. The rebels didn't come on my place till the Yankees were gone and everything gone with them."

So, he asked the government to reimburse him for 10 hogs, 20 bushels of corn, a barrel of flour, 100 pounds of bacon, 30 fowls, 40 bushels of onions, 500 fence rails and various household furnishings, for a total of $213.
Two relatives testified on his behalf, saying they'd seen the animals and fences before the soldiers arrived.
"I was there again the day after the soldiers left," said Eliza Atkins, his sister-in-law. "There were no fences left then. He had nothing in the world to eat. Everything was gone even out of the garden. All his furniture was gone too."

A white farmer then testified that the Federal army took only horses from his farm, questioned whether Atkins had as many supplies as he claimed and said Confederates probably burned the fence rails.
Result: Atkins got nothing.

Bob Krick, historian at the Richmond battlefield, said the Atkins claim offers "a typical case of how hard it was for any claimant to get his case approved.

"Mr. Atkins stood in the path of a massive battle, was trampled by it, and received no sympathy from his government."

From Anderson's perspective, "These people were pro-Union, but they suffered at the hands of the Union, and at the hands of the Confederates, too. They were caught in the vortex."