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Here We Go Again...Maybe...Maybe Not
nunn
Forums Admins, Member, Moderator Posts: 36,085 ******
While traveling this year, since wife likes to drive so much, I had a chance to finish a book that had been presented to me by the author/editor/compiler, Evault "Bosie" Boswell of Greenville,
Texas.
It is titled, "Texas Boys In Gray," and it is a compilation of journal entries, letters home, and after-the-fact remembrances of Texans who fought for the Confederacy. Noteworthy is the fact that there are very few references to the slavery issue, but many references to the right of the individual States to determine their own destiny.
There was one entry which referred to a particular minister/soldier who was left poorer after the war because he had owned several slaves of considerable value. There were several entries describing encounters with Negro Union troops, but only one of them used disparaging terms to describe the troops.
There was one story of a Confederate troop dispatched as a courier, who was on a ferry with his horse. The ferry was operated by a black man who knew who and what he was carrying. The black man kept his eye on a Union gunboat patrolling the river, and notified the Reb as soon as it seemed that the gunboat had taken note of their presence. When the gunboat started bearing down on the ferry, the ferryman told the Reb where he could jump his horse into the river in shallow water and continue the crossing unaided, effectively assisting him in avoiding contact with Union forces so he could complete his assigned mission.
The entry that most stuck in my mind, and which seemed to accurately describe the spirit of the conflict from the point of view of the average Confederate soldier was made by John S. Kritzer of Taylor, Texas.
He wrote: "We were poorly clad and poorly fed, living for days on parched corn and drinking swamp water from bayous full of snakes, cypress knees and rotting leaves. Sometimes for a change we had mule meat, and well do I remember on one occasion we were without bread or
salt for twenty-one days, and our horses without corn half the time, giving out daily and being turned loose on the prairie, in the woods and in the bogs, to die, and still we did not murmur, but plodded along keeping up as best we could with those who still had horses.
"How long would the Yankees have stood such fare? They would have all deserted and quit the fight. The difference was that we were fighting for our homes and firesides, and they were fighting for pay."
I hope this does not stir up another big North VS South controversy. The most important thing to know is that not all the men in blue were knights in shining armor fighting for a just and noble cause, and not all men in gray were black-hearted villains fighting to keep possession of their slaves.
More often than not, Confederate soldiers were just average Joes who got good and angry over Union troops devastating their land, burning, stealing, raping and murdering as they went, and joined up to try and stop them.
SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the best gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net
Texas.
It is titled, "Texas Boys In Gray," and it is a compilation of journal entries, letters home, and after-the-fact remembrances of Texans who fought for the Confederacy. Noteworthy is the fact that there are very few references to the slavery issue, but many references to the right of the individual States to determine their own destiny.
There was one entry which referred to a particular minister/soldier who was left poorer after the war because he had owned several slaves of considerable value. There were several entries describing encounters with Negro Union troops, but only one of them used disparaging terms to describe the troops.
There was one story of a Confederate troop dispatched as a courier, who was on a ferry with his horse. The ferry was operated by a black man who knew who and what he was carrying. The black man kept his eye on a Union gunboat patrolling the river, and notified the Reb as soon as it seemed that the gunboat had taken note of their presence. When the gunboat started bearing down on the ferry, the ferryman told the Reb where he could jump his horse into the river in shallow water and continue the crossing unaided, effectively assisting him in avoiding contact with Union forces so he could complete his assigned mission.
The entry that most stuck in my mind, and which seemed to accurately describe the spirit of the conflict from the point of view of the average Confederate soldier was made by John S. Kritzer of Taylor, Texas.
He wrote: "We were poorly clad and poorly fed, living for days on parched corn and drinking swamp water from bayous full of snakes, cypress knees and rotting leaves. Sometimes for a change we had mule meat, and well do I remember on one occasion we were without bread or
salt for twenty-one days, and our horses without corn half the time, giving out daily and being turned loose on the prairie, in the woods and in the bogs, to die, and still we did not murmur, but plodded along keeping up as best we could with those who still had horses.
"How long would the Yankees have stood such fare? They would have all deserted and quit the fight. The difference was that we were fighting for our homes and firesides, and they were fighting for pay."
I hope this does not stir up another big North VS South controversy. The most important thing to know is that not all the men in blue were knights in shining armor fighting for a just and noble cause, and not all men in gray were black-hearted villains fighting to keep possession of their slaves.
More often than not, Confederate soldiers were just average Joes who got good and angry over Union troops devastating their land, burning, stealing, raping and murdering as they went, and joined up to try and stop them.
SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the best gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net
Comments
Truer words were never spoken.
Stand And Be Counted
When the facts are known,and ignored,then we have something else.
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
Addressing those on this board with an open mind.
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
Like most people, I had family that fought on both sides during the Civil War. The way that I was raised to think of the Civil War was that it was, primarily, a question of a state's right to "self" determination, and that slavery was one of the "determinations" that a state had a right to make on their own, albeit a very large and significant one.
I know that history can be changed in the teaching, but this is what I was taught. It is interesting that almost everyone I grew up around seemed anti-slavery, but said that they did/would support the confederate cause. Is this a logical disconnect? I really don't think it is. However, it is probably easy to take this kind of postion now that we're removed from the situation by a century or so. Just my thoughts, still don't know what I would have done - really would be speculation on my part. Thanks for "listening".
To whom much is given, much is expected.
Whichever side you favor, let's not forget that thousands died brutally or suffered horribly on both sides. That should tell us all we need to know about how good an idea war is, however unavoidable.
A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand
I can't speak to desertion rates, but I do know my ancestors were none too happy to be draftees in the Union Army, served the minimum time they were forced to be in the service and never voted for a Republican candidate for the rest of their lives. I agree with those who say "let it go," but the victors write the history books and Lincoln and his party were anything but knights in shining armor.
The most important things, Are not things.
Best!!
Rugster
Abraham Lincoln should without a doubt be named America's greatest war criminal. His war of invasion not only killed over 600,000 innocent Americans but it was obvious from his earlier speeches that he had previously advocated the prevalent constitutional right of democratic, state by state secession. Lincoln's War also effectively overthrew the existing decentralized, limited federal government that had existed and governed well in the US since established by America's founding fathers. Lincoln bastardized a respected federal government with limited powers into a dictatorial, uncontrollable Washington federal empire. {Words of Ron Holland}
Mr.Holland has merit.
Gee Nunn, what oh dear have you done?
JBB
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them.
Also, there was the issue of the powerful European nations, particularly England, returning to America and subsuming, by force or economic clout, the independent southern states. It was a very real possibility at the time.
SSgt Ryan E. Roberts, USMC
My point was not whether the War was about slavery. Not going to debate that one. My point was that the slavery issue was simply not in the mind of the average Confederate. He was trying to defend his home, his family, his neighbors.
SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the best gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net
AlleninAlaska
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free
Jody Commander,
Member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and DAMNED proud of it!
I appreciate you guys keeping it civil. Believe or not I learn a lot from these civil war post.
It's hard to imagine, but stop and think -- when we use the word 'state' to describe a foreign country, we picture a nation. When we use the word state nowadays to describe a place within our own borders, we know we're talking about a region of the United States of America with a government of local jurisdiction, but -- until 1954, at least -- this state is a piece of "one nation, indivisible." The odd double meaning of the word 'state' is a clue to the pressure that was being felt in pre-Civil War politics.
Pre-Civil War, some of the states were determined to remain states in the way we think of European states like Latvia, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, or states like North and South Korea -- in other words, self-determining countries or nations.
There came a time in American history when so many states were threatening to secede from the relatively loose "union" for whatever reason -- slaves, currency, state tariffs, trade, or more correctly sometimes refusal to trade -- that a federal decision on the behalf of all the states was becoming impossible. The closer the union came to being unified, the more some states threatened secession. It became clear that the union would either have to remain a loose confederation of supreme states, with some opting in and out at their own will, or it would become united under the umbrella of a federal government, with the states maintaining certain a subset of jurisdiction and self-determination lumped under the title "states' rights."
I think we are lucky that the outcome was a country called the United States of America. The alternative is a patchwork of little states like those in the Middle East, richer perhaps, but with the same kinds of problems -- disagreements over everything from currencies to import/export tariffs to squabbles over God-knows-what. Can you imagine a Northa and South Carolina which are comparatively like North and South Korea? A nation of California? A country called Texas, that might decide to try to annex Montana? (I'm not looking at a map, I don't know if they share a border, I'm just making a point here.)
There would undoubtedly be no "federal" connection with Alaska or Hawaii. And we would be, instead of a nation, 48 contiguous little nations like Lithuania and Latvia -- the mice that roared.
It sounds like a horror show to me. Personally, I like the American Flag the way it is, with 50 stars on it, red, white and blue -- the red being for the blood shed to maintain it.
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Best!!
Rugster
The man is writing a reference book on the subject. I think that qualifies him to know a bit more about the semantics of the Civil War than your average "armchair historian", several of whom posting here seem to have big thoughts on the subject when they have a truly minimal amount of facts.
Someone asked why the South didnt free their slaves and THEN secede (assuming that the real reason they seceded was over State's rights, not slavery).
Because it wasnt about state's rights. It was about the South refusing to give up their slaves.
Right or wrong, and no matter how the Southern politicians wanted to spin it, that's the reason. It's not the first time people have slapped a shiney label on an off-color issue to make it seem more palatable...
seems like it still is...at sundry times.
Of course I could be wrong. Not likely, but
possible.
BL
I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to show up.
Prior to 1860, our country was referred to as "these United States"....after 1865 as "THE United States".
to be able to take time to view points of life without the prejudice of educational formation or conditioning.....
On the slave issue it easy to bring people to the reality slavery never ended ....It was just substituted......
Your house is mortgaged....
Your Car is not paid for ....
You live in a rented hose or condo....
You pay heavy taxes ......
To your information you are a Slave ..Owned by the bank the lanlord and the goverment..... But not aware of it.
The chains are there ,can you break them ?...NOPE! It will take time
for it to be understanded.....
I think it will take quite a few years until changes are made...
JD
400 million cows can't be wrong ( EAT GRASS !!! )
to be able to take time to view points of life without the prejudice of educational formation or conditioning.....
On the slave issue it easy to bring people to the reality slavery never ended ....It was just substituted......
Your house is mortgaged....
Your Car is not paid for ....
You live in a rented hose or condo....
You pay heavy taxes ......
To your information you are a Slave ..Owned by the bank the lanlord and the goverment..... But not aware of it.
The chains are there ,can you break them ?...NOPE! It will take time
for it to be understanded.....
I think it will take quite a few years until changes are made...
JD
400 million cows can't be wrong ( EAT GRASS !!! )
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the best gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net