United States is meddling in a Civil War

Already, not specifically about our own Civil War but very apropos. We've got no business helping Rebels overthrow sovereign governments - especially in Syria where the Rebels are massacring everyone in sight!

United States is meddling in a Civil War

Before Christmas, amid the drama of the fiscal cliff, and before the horrible shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama announced that our government would recognize the Syrian opposition as the legitimate representative of the country’s people, stating:

“The Syrian opposition coalition is now inclusive enough, and is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population, that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime.”

Since the March 2011 protests turned to armed conflict, more than 40,000 people have been killed, with countless civil rights violations inflicted by the Assad regime on his own people.  Nations including the U.S. have provided aid to the rebels through back channels, the extent of which is unknown, with calls from the Council of Foreign Relations to do more.  As of this writing, rebel forces have captured nearly 60% of Syrian territory.
But now there are reports that most of our aid to the region is going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists.”  In fact, the day Obama announced our recognition of the opposition, rebel groups across Syria signed a petition pledging allegiance to the Jihad and asking America by name not to intervene.
So in the fog of war, is providing aid and recognition to the opposition the proper response to a brutal civil war in a foreign country?  Bear in mind President Obama did not give hard justification for intervention, which in itself, should not be out of the question.  Official avenues exist to take decisive action - even with international forces - which have not been pursued nor realized.
If humanitarian reasons were indeed the basis for action, the President could go to Congress for a declaration of war, or an Authorization for the Use of Force, the way George W. Bush did for Iraq and Afghanistan, and multilateral intervention could be achieved through the UN Security Council.  Total intervention, however, would require the kind of state-building we have been trying to avoid since the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, according to a study by Brandeis University, limited intervention is only making things worse:

“The distillation of historical experience with civil war and insurgency, along with a sober reckoning of conditions on the ground in Syria, make clear that limited intervention of this sort will not serve the moral impulse that animates it.  To the contrary, it is more likely to amplify the harm that it seeks to eliminate by prolonging a hurting stalemate.”

Worse still, Syrian rebels are expecting aid from other nations;  Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow and Syrian expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said about our recognition of the opposition:

“It’s happening in the context of resentment among the Syrian opposition, especially armed elements, of the White House’s lack of assistance during the Syrian people’s hour of need.  This is especially true among armed groups.”

So we are caught in a dilemma, held hostage by those we are aiding: If the opposition fails, it looks as though we are impotent, and if the opposition succeeds, it looks as though we meddled.  Either way, support – for either side – undermines democratic processes being leveraged now to obtain a more representative government.
Just imagine if another nation undermined the U.S. government by recognizing any internal opposition to it.  That is, in fact, not an unfathomable scenario; during the American civil war, while the British maintained a strategy of neutrality, they sold weaponry and warfare to both the Union and the Confederacy.  In the aftermath, the American government demanded reparations from the British for damages inflicted by “commerce raiders,” particularly the British-built CSS Alabama. We risk a similar backlash by supporting rebel forces now, while undermining our own credibility around the globe if things do not play out the way we intend.

Another problem with choosing sides is the credence we lend to leaders we may soon oppose, as Nancy Pelosi did with Bashar Assad, and Barack Obama did with both Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.  But how do we, in keeping with our core values, support freedom and democracy abroad when it renders results with which we disagree?
First, we must recognize the difference between freedom and democracy.  Whereas democracy is necessary but not sufficient to achieve freedom, maximizing freedom for minority interests will beget democratic representation.  We must then treat regimes based on the degree of freedom they allow within their country, not to advance democracy within their borders.
Muddying the waters between freedom and democracy has been a bipartisan problem.  Obama’s agenda – to advance democracy around the world – is not much different George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda,” summarized by two maxims stated in his 2005 Second Inaugural Address:

“We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.  The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

And:

“So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Bush, however, was merely echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, on the precipice of war, stated in 1939: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.”  In recent years, from Condoleezza Rice to, Hillary Clinton, and now, to John Kerry apparently, our chief diplomats have been fulfilling this vision.
While we pursue the goals based on these noble intentions, we must ask: Are they achievable?  If they are not, perhaps we must go another way.  Supporting both freedom and democracy is achievable if we adhered to a simple thumbrule:  To always support the democratic process, no matter the outcome.  We must not publicly endorse one side over the other.  We may, through diplomatic means, favor one side over the other, but not publicly.
In keeping with this thumbrule, the United States would reserve the right to publicly oppose any outcome achieved through democratic means which disagrees with our core values – namely, civil rights violations – while encouraging more representative governments throughout the world.  If we have learned anything through our three decades worth of Middle Eastern excursions, it is much more difficult – if not impossible – to deal effectively with an unrepresentative government.  In those cases, in the fog, we should take caution not to meddle.
Of course, adhering to this thumbrule would result in a much more restrained foreign policy.  What’s more, supporting the process regardless of outcome takes unwavering resolve against temptation, as certain despots with certain assets may seem more acceptable than those who lack assets.  But perhaps now, while we replace our Secretaries of both Defense and State, is the time to seek a new course.  After all, non-interventionist foreign policy strategy is at the root of our founding.  In his farewell address, George Washington called for the United States to extend commercial relations with foreign nations and “to have with them as little political connection as possible.”  Maybe more famously, Thomas Jefferson stated his own thumbrule in his 1801 Inaugural Address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
But even Jefferson proved fallible to meddling impulses.  Although initially a supporter of the French Revolution, Jefferson, who had previously “sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” revealed in a 1793 letter his dismay over the excesses of bloodshed in France, expressing “too great a sensibility at the partial evil by which it’s object has been accomplished there.”
There is nothing new under the sun, and I fear we are making similar mistakes with Syria now.  If we maintain American neutrality in the midst of another country’s civil war, we can avoid pitfalls in the aftermath.  The broader lesson is that, as Americans, it is acceptable to question the outcomes of democracy, and indeed, the values of our foreign policy.  Doing so is a testament to those very values.

 

Civil War Trust contracts to buy Brandy Station tract

From Fredericksburg.com:  Civil War Trust contracts to buy Brandy Station tract

The history-minded here and abroad have been waiting to hear this news for 30 years. Fleetwood Hill, heart of Virginia’s Brandy Station battlefield, will be saved—if people step up to the plate.
That’s the Cliff Notes version of Thursday afternoon’s announcement by the Civil War Trust that it has contracted with a Culpeper County landowner to buy 61 acres at the core of that cavalry battlefield.
Late Thursday, Civil War Trust President James Lighthizer said he was pleased to confirm the agreement.
“Protection of this property at the epicenter of the Brandy Station battlefield has been a goal of the preservation community for more than three decades,” he noted in a statement.
Brandy Station, fought on June 9, 1863, opened the Army of Northern Virginia’s Gettysburg campaign and sent Union forces in pursuit of Gen. Robert E. Lee and his forces. It was the largest cavalry battle ever fought on American soil, with nearly 20,000 troopers engaged and more than 1,000 casualties.
Although happy with the agreement with landowner Tony Troilo, Lighthizer warned that “several steps remain before the transaction is completed and the property can be considered preserved—chief among them raising the $3.6 million necessary to formally purchase the land.”
The trust intends “to launch a national fundraising campaign next year with the aim of raising the money in time for the 150th anniversary of the battle,” he said.
Though a Confederate victory, Brandy Station is the battle where Union cavalry came into its own after years of being dominated by Southern horse soldiers.
Northern Neck historian Clark B. “Bud” Hall, the recognized expert on the battle’s history, said Thursday that Fleetwood Hill is “without question the most fought over, camped upon and marched-over real estate in the entire United States.”
Hall has dedicated  27 years to helping preserve portions of the battlefield, but none mean more to him than the   knoll overlooking the village of Brandy Station.
“Ten thousand troopers grappled to the death on Fleetwood Hill. Scores of men were killed, right there,” Hall said in an interview. “And as J.E.B. Stuart wrote in his report. they ‘buried them where they fell.’ ”
Stuart, who pitched his headquarters tent there, went all out to retake the crucial high ground after being surprised when Northern cavalry swept across the Rapidan River.
“Genl’ Stuart always fought the hardest when things looked looked the worst,” one trooper wrote.
Another horse soldier, George Moffett of the 12th Virginia Cavalry, recalled: Stuart was “here, there and everywhere  his black plume floating   where the battle was fiercest  ringing out the words of command: ‘Give them the sabre, boys!”
Historian Robert K. Krick of Fredericksburg, author of 20 books on the Civil War, greeted news of the land deal warmly.
“Brandy Station has come a very long way since being on the brink of destruction some years ago—when first threatened with intense massive development, and then by a proposed high-speed auto-racing track,” Krick said in an interview.
“Earlier preservation saved extensive tracts, but this new purchase covers the very core of the battlefield.”
The University of Virginia’s Gary W. Gallagher, one the nation’s most eminent Civil War historians, said he was heartened by the possibility that the site will handed down to future generations.
“Preservation of Fleetwood Hill on the Brandy Station battlefield should trigger a chorus of praise from all who care about the historic landscape of the Civil War,” Gallagher said from California, where he was visiting. “It represents the culmination of a quarter century’s tireless efforts by an array of preservationists and underscores how hard and focused work can yield the most dazzling results.
“This ground not only figured prominently in the largest cavalry battle of the war on June 9, 1863, but it also served as a major encampment for the Army of the Potomac in the winter of 1863-1864,” said Gallagher, the university’s John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War.
“Its preservation will prove a great boon to anyone who seeks to understand mounted combat during the conflict, the preliminary phase of Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the United States in June-July 1863, and the season leading up to the seismic confrontation between Lee and U. S. Grant in the Overland campaign of May 1864.”
Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Preservation, also cheered.
“In just a few years, Virginia battlefield preservation has gone from a lagging position to the front of the line, thanks to the combined efforts of generous property owners, outstanding nonprofit groups, state and federal agencies, and elected officials,” Kilpatrick said in a phone interview.
“Brandy Station, and the surrounding area, is a particularly stellar success story.”
The Civil War Trust has long been committed to protecting the battlefields in Culpeper County.  To date, it has helped preserve nearly 1,800 acres at Brandy Station—more land than at any other single battlefield in the nation.
Brandy Station has seen many high-profile preservation fights since the 1980s, when Hall and others first became involved.
First, county supervisors rezoned 1,500 acres of the battlefield to allow light industrial development. Later, a 515-acre Formula One auto racetrack was proposed for the site.
Today, the trust owns 878 acres of the Brandy Station battlefield that are open to the public. Interpretation of that property includes educational signage, walking trails and a driving tour.
Cita Suratgar, owner of Farley, a stately 1801 home on the north end of the 2-mile-long Fleetwood Hill ridge, said she was “thrilled” by news of the trust’s action.
“Fleetwood Hill is so important to our history, and has great meaning for the whole area. It’s a huge step that they’ve taken,” Suratgar said. “This couldn’t have come at a nicer time than Christmas.”
ON THE NET:
civilwar.org

American nightmare: the art of the Civil War

From the Independent:  American nightmare: the art of the Civil War 

War has been the defining challenge for artists, as for society, for virtually all of history. And for most of the last century and a half the painting and sculpture have vied with photography as the means of best expressing its reality and its consequences. Nowhere more so than in the American Civil War.

Before then it was possible to picture a battle within the frame of a painting. It was not that artists ignored the horrors of war. Goya depicted the ravages of the decade-long Peninsular War in a series of engraving that have never been equalled for their honesty and their anger at what it was doing to victim and perpetrator alike. Turner took a particularly mournful view of the dead and dying that remained on the field of Waterloo the day after. But the portrayal of war was largely left in the hands of the celebrators of the victorious: Benjamin West, Jacques Louis-David and others. War was terrible but it was also heroic.
The American Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, changed all that. It was the first full-out conflict in which the mechanics and destruction overwhelmed the individual actions of men, the first to be fought in prolonged and unremitting trench warfare. It was also the first to be covered by the new art of photography. Roger Fenton had been out in the Crimea a decade earlier, in a conflict that had seen the first signs of machine over man, but his pictures were largely traditional in composition, capturing the landscape, the encampments and the troops but not the destruction. The American Civil War was different. As many as 200 photographers are thought to have taken pictures and, in the hands of the best of them, the full reality of what it did to body and place was brought home to the public.
The impact of the photographers and the efforts of the painters to find a way of responding to the cataclysm that had fallen on their country is the subject of a quite remarkable and searching exhibition, The Civil War and American Art, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. It is not a grand show. It is certainly not a comprehensive one. But what it does is to give a sense of the actuality that was now being shown by the photographers and the struggle traditional painters had in trying to respond in their own way to the conflict about them.
The photographs – new to me – taken by George Barnard of the devastation wreaked by Sherman's famous March to the Sea are stark evocations of the ruination of war. Alexander Gardner's shots of the dead after the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg are as great and as grim as any photographer achieved in the European world wars or Vietnam.
Painters couldn't compete with that, nor did they try. There were those, such as Thomas Buchanan Read and Fabrino Julio, who attempted to crown the conflict with works that glorified the heroism and the generals. But the Smithsonian, which eschews them, makes the point that these seemed archaic even then. By the time war broke out, American artists had moved away from painting in the European Grand Manner. Instead, they preferred landscape painting as a means of expressing the unique character of American "nature" and a folksy genre painting to describe its people. That hopefulness and fondness couldn't survive the war, for all the first belief that it would all be over in few weeks or months.
The skies of the painters became darker, the clouds more threatening, the mood more melancholy. Our Banner in the Sky painted by Frederic Edwin Church, the finest landscape artist of the day, as war broke out in 1861, has the sky violently streaked in red show. His pictures from a visit to the far north of the same period show nature, majestic but remorseless in its solitude, with man's presence puny and perished. Sanford Robinson Gifford's Twilight in the Catskills from the same year paints a picture of eerie silence, the sky dark red and the trees in the foreground bare of leaves and branches. A haunting pairing of two views of precisely the same spot, Paradise Rocks, Newport, painted by John Frederick Kensett in 1859 and then in 1865, has the former peopled with ducks and aglow with the sunrise while the latter is without life and only a dim light coming from behind lowering clouds.
The genre painters, in the meantime did their best, picking out the odd skirmish, the ruined house and the fleeing civilians, particularly the slaves trying to escape to freedom in the northern lines. But they found it difficult to express the sheer magnitude of the horror about them, not least because the battles took place over such a wide area and there was no market for painted pictures of mortality. They could capture the human face of the military camp or the battered fort but not the facelessness of the hundreds of thousands of the dead.
Where they came into their own was in the aftermath of war, when minds turned to the problems of reconciliation, Reconstruction and the place of the emancipated slaves in the new world. It might have been a cause for sentimentality. And there is certainly that in some of the pictures. But in the hands of Eastman Johnson and, above all, Winslow Homer, the pictures are far more ambiguous and unsettled. In a deeply disquieting work, A Visit from the Old Mistress, painted by Homer a decade after the war, the artist portrays the grey-haired white lady, taut and still imperious, staring uneasily at a group of equally uncomfortable former slaves.
American painting never quite recovered its old optimism, at least not until French Impressionism and Modernism gave it a new life in colour. Ironically, it was the photographers, taking their cumbersome cameras into the wilderness, who sustained the sense of awe in nature. The scars left by civil war and a botched Reconstruction ran deep. An exhibition anyone interested in the soul of the United States should visit. And if you can't, there's an excellent, and heavy, catalogue that accompanies it.
The Civil War and American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (americanart.si.edu) to 28 April

 

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The Civil War and American Art

From Patch.com:  The Civil War and American Art

Seventy-five pieces of transporting art about the civil war — transporting us back in time to experience a multitude of aspects about the war, some we are certainly familiar with, many whose significance was only seemingly transparent at the time.
This exhibit illustrates a broad range of aspects about the war; soldiers, carnage, society, slavery, fear and hope. There are two mediums used, beginning with landscape paintings signaling the oncoming storm, scenes during the war, and also reflections on the storm after its passing. The exhibit balances these idealized interpretations with photography, showing the grim reality of the affair.
The artists are among the most famous of their time, painters Winslow Homer, Frederick Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt and photographers Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan and George Barnard. Many others are represented, each bringing unique perspectives.
Some of the pictures include “Our Banner in the Sky” painted by Frederick Edwin Church in 1861, portended the oncoming conflict. A number of paintings by Winslow Homer include “Home Sweet Home” showing two Union soldiers listening to the song of the same name which commanders wanted banned as it was thought to promote desertion. “Prisoners from the Front,” shows the disdain of captured Confederate soldiers at the end of the war, and “The Cotton Pickers” from 1876 perhaps representing resignation to the present and a look to the future in the faces of a two black women still picking cotton.
While many of us are familiar with the painting of the "Submarine Torpedo Boat H. L. Hunley" by Conrad Wise Chapman, how many have ever seen the original? There are a number of vintage photographic prints from Antietam by Alexander Gardner, including “Confederate Dead, Antietam” with the Dunker Church in the background. There is also a print of the famous "Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg" by Gardner. Post war prints include "Ruins in Charleston, South Carolina and Ruins on Columbia, South Carolina," by George N. Barnard, both from 1865. All bringing visceral reality to the viewer.
This exhibit is a must see, even worth a couple of visits. The wide variety of styles gives the viewer a lot to take in, reflect on and perhaps revisit. Although the images are available on-line, one must visit the exhibit to take it all in. The scale of the images, both large and small, brings an authenticity allowing one to experience the content as it was originally intended to be viewed, adding to the experience and interpretation.
The Civil War and American Art is located at the American Art Museum at 8th and F Streets, N.W., next to the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop on the Red, Yellow and Green lines. The exhibit runs until April 28, 2013. For further information go to http://americanart.si.edu/.

 

‘My father fought in the Civil War’

From Yakima Herald:  ‘My father fought in the Civil War’

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In “Lincoln,” director Steven Spielberg lasers in on 1865: The end of the Civil War. The end of slavery via the 13th Amendment. And, devastatingly, the end of President Abraham Lincoln. A powerful, momentous year in American history.

And so long ago. Or was it? Juanita Tudor Lowrey has something to say about that: “My father fought in the Civil War.”

It’s a line that makes people’s faces squinch. Your father? A contemporary of Lincoln?

Millions of moviegoers are flocking to see Daniel Day-Lewis disappear into his role as the 16th president, the film’s setting a world away from the re-election in November of our 44th president, an African-American.

But the chasm seems not so wide to Lowrey. On a recent afternoon she spread out paperwork, photographs and two small diaries with black covers on her kitchen table. Lowrey pointed out a diary entry dated March 23, 1865:

“This morning Genl. Sherman and his the 14th Corps came in. ... We fell in and saluted him respectfully. It is very windy. We drawed rations. The(y) fired 15 guns to salute Sherman.”

The words are those of Lowrey’s father, Hugh Tudor, an infantry private in the Union army from early 1864 through the summer of 1865.

Tudor moved with his unit through Kentucky, Tennessee, to the East Coast. He probably would have participated in Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea except that an apparent case of the measles kept him back.

Born in Iowa in 1847, the son of Welsh immigrants lived in Missouri most of his life. That he has a daughter proudly talking about him in the year 2012 is a remarkable mathematical stretch, but not a stretch of the truth.

After the war, Lowrey’s father settled in Dawn, Mo., a farming community south of Chillicothe, with his wife, Elizabeth Watkins. They had been married 50 years when she died in 1917. They had no children.

Three years later, at age 73, Tudor married 36-year-old Mary Morgan, who hadn’t been married before but who had known “Mr. Tudor” her whole life.

Besides romance, Lowrey says, probably there were practical concerns. He likely needed a housekeeper and she security. And it seemed he still fancied having children.

Indeed, to the new union came two daughters, HuDean Grace in 1924 and Juanita Mary in 1926.

There the four are in a photo on their farm property — “That’s the chicken house in the background, not our house,” Lowrey says — Tudor looking grandfatherly with a white beard and head of white hair.

Two years later in 1928, the family traveled to Denver for the national encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Civil War veterans.

Tudor and his young family caught the attention of the Denver Morning Post. The paper displayed their picture on the front page, the elderly father, seated with his two little girls perched on the arms of the chair, their mother standing next to them.

The article paraphrased Tudor that “rearing a family gets more interesting as one grows older.” It noted Mary’s comment that she had been a friend of the first Mrs. Tudor. And it quoted her on the topic of her husband’s age:

“No, he isn’t able to do much work now,” she explains. “But he has enough laid by that he doesn’t have to work, and we get along fine. He spends lots of time playing with the children and is quite fond of them.”

Hugh Tudor died later that year. Lowrey, just 2 years old at the time, has no memory of him. But she is the keeper of his diaries from his early years, as well as tintype photographs and newspaper clippings. Lowrey’s sister, HuDean, died in April.

One of Lowrey’s three children, Margie Yansura, who lives in Florida, says it was easy to become a Civil War buff with such a legacy.

“It’s a fantastic glimpse into history,” she says of the journals, “ as expressed by a very young, 16- and 17-year-old caught up in this huge national conflict.”

Like many young men at the time, Tudor was eager to join the war effort and enlisted early at 16. He wrote “18” on a piece of paper and put it in his shoe, so he could truthfully say he was “over 18.”

His diary entries describe the weather, the lay of the land — he probably hadn’t traveled much beyond his home in Iowa — and crops, which is what he knew coming from a farm.

He could read and write but wasn’t the best speller. The Army provided a quick introduction to the ways of the world. One entry mentions a “horehouse.”

Geography? At one point he talks about the Pacific Ocean when he probably was looking at some eastern bay.

Two days before the entry about Sherman, he writes: “We started of(f) again on march at 6 o’clock a.m. and crossed 2 creeks and through some good countery ... We got into Goldsburow (Goldsboro, N.C.) at 4 o’clock.”

Tudor didn’t experience major fighting. He wrote letters for other soldiers, probably to make extra money, and did a lot of trading of knives, trinkets and food. He sent gifts and cards home to his sisters.

“I’m sure he was taught as a farm boy to be thrifty and to make the most of a situation,” Yansura says.

In Dawn following the war, Tudor was a farmer and businessman — insurance, home loans, lightning rod sales. He founded the cemetery there for the predominantly Welsh community.

Lowrey was interviewed in the early 2000s for the BBC documentary series, “Star Spangled Dragon,” about the Welsh in America. She told of her father’s experience in the Civil War, how he was among the troops reviewed by Sherman at the end of the war.

“That was the only time I teared up,” Lowrey says. “I felt very proud that he was there.”

As for Lowrey, who folks have called Skeet since she was in the first grade, she graduated from Chillicothe Business College and at age 21 used money her mother had put aside from Tudor’s Army pension for a down payment on a house. She worked in Kansas City at a World War II battery factory and other businesses, including Skelly Oil and Emery, Bird, Thayer.

A few years after Lowrey married Tom DeFord, the couple moved to Michigan and raised their children. They retired to Arkansas, and DeFord died in 1992.

Like father, like daughter. In 1996, at age 70, she married Russell Lowrey, someone she had gone through school with in Dawn. They recently moved from Gladstone to a retirement community in Kearney.

So how many others are there like Lowrey, now 86, actual sons and daughters of Civil War veterans? Not many.

Several organizations try to keep track of the surviving “real” sons and daughters of Civil War veterans — children, not just descendants — including the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The situations in these families were similar, says David Demmy of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, vets in their 70s and 80s having late-in-life children. People who hear about children of Civil War vets are invariably skeptical until you put pencil to paper for them, he says.

“You can see the gears running in their heads,” he says. “They’re trying to calculate, can that be possible?”

Tallying these groups’ current lists, the total is about 60. And even figuring that all the real sons and daughters haven’t been identified, the number of Civil War children is likely less than 100, says Ben Sewell of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Sarah Anderson of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War knows of 10 surviving Union vet daughters. “There’s no one closer to the Civil War. The way I look at it, they’re a national treasure.”

Lowrey doesn’t know about “national treasure,” but she appreciates her unusual heritage: “It’s special.”

 

Civil War 150 HistoryMobile rolls into Fredericksburg area for commemoration of battle

From Washington Post:  Civil War 150 HistoryMobile rolls into Fredericksburg area for commemoration of battle

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — A history class on wheels is ending its 2012 tour at events marking the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg.

The Civil War 150 HistoryMobile is spending the weekend at National Park Service events relating to the Battle of Fredericksburg. Some 1,300 re-enactors are also due at George Washington’s Ferry Farm in Stafford County and a Confederate encampment at Slaughter Pen Farm in Spotsylvania County.

The HistoryMobile has been touring for two years, and it’s planning 35 events next year. The Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission says the HistoryMobile uses the latest technology and exhibits to present individual stories from the war.

The 2013 tour schedule includes the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Chancellorsville in May and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.