Day 71. May 10, 1862.
71
while we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather….
May Saturday 10 1862
Quite cool this morning. I was quite well this morning. I was here in camp all day and I hope that we may find [illeg.] all engaging and I hope that the day may bring in the others 3 companys. They came in at about 10oclock. They looked very dusty and if they were very much fatigued with their march. I hope that they will all be ready to march on tomorrow as [illeg.]
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 43
“Saturday, May 10th. A fine spring day; the peach trees are in bloom.”
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 111
“May 10, 1862: Discovers that troops commanded by Col. Joseph B. Carr and Gen. Mansfield are not taking part in attack on Norfolk. Infuriated he bounces his tall hat off the floor and dictates orders involving these troops.”
Above: you can see the bullet hole upper arm.
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 517-520
STONEWALL JACKSON’S LAST BATTLE.
The Rev. James Power Smith, Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General, C.S.A.
“When Jackson had reached the point where his line now crossed the turnpike, scarcely a mile west of Chancellorsville, and not half a mile from a line of federal troops, he had found his front line unfit for the farther and vigorous advance he desired, by reason of the irregular character of the fighting, now right, now left, and because of the dense thickets, through which it was impossible to preserve alignment. Division commanders found it more and more difficult as the twilight deepened to hold their broken brigades in hand. Regretting the necessity of relieving the troops in front, General Jackson had ordered A.P. Hill’s division, his third and reserve line, to be placed in front. While this change was being effected, impatient and anxious, the general rode forward on the turnpike, followed by two or three of his staff and a number of couriers and signal sergeants. He passed the swampy depression and began the ascent of the hill toward Chancellorsville, when he came upon a line of the Federal infantry lying on their arms. Fired at by one or two muskets (two musket-balls from the enemy whistled over my head as I came to the front), he turned and came back toward his line, upon the side of the road to his left. As he rode near to the Confederate troops, just placed in position and ignorant that he was in the front, the left company begin firing to the front, and two of his party fell from their saddles dead– Captain Boswell, of the Engineers, and Sergeant Cunliffe, of the Signal Corps. Spurring his horse across the road to his right, he was met by a second volley from the right company of Pender’s North Carolina brigade. Under this volley, when not two rods from the troops, the general received three balls at the same instant. One penetrated the palm of his right hand and was cut out that night from the back of his hand. A second passed around the wrist of the left arm and out through the left hand. A third ball passed through the left arm half-way from shoulder to elbow. The large bone of the upper arm was splintered to the elbow-joint, and the wound bled freely. His horse turned quickly from the fire, through the thick bushes which swept the cap from the general’s head, and scratched his forehead, leaving drops of blood to stain his face. As he lost his hold upon the bridle-rein, he reeled from the saddle, and was caught by the arms of Captain Wilbourn, of the Signal Corps. Laid upon the ground, there came at once to his succor General A.P. Hill and members of his staff. The writer reached his side a minute after, to find General Hill holding the head and shoulders of the wounded chief. Cutting open the coat-sleeve from wrist to shoulder, I found the wound in the upper arm, and with my handkerchief I bound the arm above the wound to stem the flow of blood. Couriers were sent for Dr. Hunter McGuire, the surgeon of the corps and the general’s trusted friend, and for an ambulance. Being outside of our lines, it was urgent that he should be moved at once. With difficulty litter-bearers were brought from the line near by, and the general was placed upon the litter and carefully raised to the shoulder, I myself bearing one corner. A moment after, artillery from the Federal side was opened upon us; great broadsides thundered over the woods; hissing shells searched the dark thickets through, and shrapnels swept the road along which we moved. Two or three steps farther, and the litter-bearer at my side was struck and fell, but, as the litter turned, Major Watkins Leigh, of Hill’s staff, happily caught it. But the fright of the men was so great that we were obliged to lay the litter and its burden down upon the road. As the litter-bearers ran to the cover of the trees, I threw myself by the general’s side and held him firmly to the ground as he attempted to rise. Over us swept the rapid fire of shot and shell- grape-shot striking fire upon the flinty rock of the road all around us, and sweeping from their feet horses and men of the artillery just moved to the front. Soon the firing veered to the other side of the road, and I sprang to my feet, assisted the general to rise, passed my arm around him, and with the wounded man’s weight thrown heavily upon me, we forsook the road. Entering the woods, he sank to the ground from exhaustion, but the litter was soon brought, and again rallying a few men, we essayed to carry him farther, when a second bearer fell at my side. This time, with none to assist, the litter careened, and the general fell to the ground, with a groan of deep pain. Greatly alarmed, I sprang to his head, and, lifting his head as a stray beam of moonlight came through clouds and leaves, he opened his eyes and wearily said: “Never mind me, Captain, never mind me.” Raising him again to his feet, he was accosted by Brigadier-General Pender: “Oh, General, I hope you are not seriously wounded. I will have to retire my troops to re-form them, they are so much broken by this fire.” But Jackson, rallying his strength, with firm voice said: “You must hold your ground, General Pender; you must hold your ground, sir!” and so uttered his last command on the field.
Again we resorted to the litter, and with difficulty bore it through the bush, and then under a hot fire along the road. Soon an ambulance was reached, and stopping to seek some stimulant at Chancellor’s (Dowdall’s Tavern), we were found by Dr. McGuire, who at once took charge of the wounded man. Passing back over the battle-field of the afternoon, we reached the Wilderness store, and then, in a field on the north, the field-hospital of our corps under Dr. Harvey Black. Here we found a tent prepared, and after midnight the left arm was amputated near the shoulder, and a ball taken from the right hand.
All night long it was mine to watch by the sufferer, and keep him warmly wrapped and undisturbed in his sleep. At 9 A.M., on the next day, when he aroused, cannon firing again filled the air, and all the Sunday through the fierce battle raged, General J.E.B. Stuart commanding the Confederates in Jackson’s place. A dispatch was sent to the commanding general to announce formally his disability,– tidings General Lee had received during the night with profound grief. There came back the following note:
GENERAL: I have just received your note, informing me that you were wounded. I cannot express my regret at the occurrence. Could I have directed events, I should have chosen, for the good of the country, to have been disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is due to your skill and energy. Most truly yours, R.E. LEE, GENERAL.
When this dispatch was handed to me at the tent, and I read it aloud, General Jackson turned his face away and said, “General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God.”
The long day was passed with bright hopes for the wounded general, with tidings of success on the battle-field, with sad news of losses, and messages to and from other wounded officers brought to the same infirmary.
On Monday the general was carried in an ambulance, by way of Spotsylvania Court House, to most comfortable lodging at Chandler’s, near Guinea’s Station, on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac railroad. And here, against our hopes, notwithstanding the skill and care of wise and watchful surgeons, attended day and night by wife and friends, amid the prayers and tears of all the Southern land, thinking not of himself, but of the cause he loved, and for the troops who had followed him so well and given him so great a name, our chief sank, day by day, with symptoms of pneumonia and some pains of pleurisy, until, at 3:15 P.M. On the quiet of the Sabbath afternoon, May 10th, 1863, he raised himself from his bed, saying, “No, no, let us pass over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees”; and falling again to his pillow, he passed away….”
Quoting astronomer Don Olson and researcher Laurie Jasinski from Texas State University in a study that appears in Sky & Telescope Magazine (2013) CBS 6 staff wtvr.com/2013/05/01/full-moon-civil-war-death
“If Jackson’s reconnaissance party was riding in bright moonlight, then his own men should have recognized them as they returned from the Union’s side, but Olson and Jasinski said they did not– for good reason. “The 18th North Carolina was looking to the southeast, directly toward the rising moon,” they said. It stood at “25 degrees above the horizon” at the time, just at the wrong angle. The bright moon would’ve silhouetted Jackson and his officers, completely obscuring their identities. Our astronomical analysis partially absolves the 18th North Carolina from blame for the wounding of Jackson,” Olson says.”
Note: Major John Decatur Barry (who gave the order to shoot), according to Barry family legend, died of a broken heart at 27, in 1867. A granite boulder, the “Jackson Rock,” was placed at the death site, then a monument was erected there in 1888. In the 1990s, historian Robert Krick supposedly pinpointed the exact coordinates of the shooting to be 15 yards off the northeast corner of the visitor center.
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, Editors (2000) P. 19 “The Anatomy of the Myth.” Alan T. Nolan
“National Park Service personnel conduct a tour of the grounds at Guiney Station, Virginia, including the building in which Jackson died. These affairs are in the nature of pilgrimages, with candlelight and lugubrious readings of accounts of the general’s death, not unlike the reading of Christ’s Passion and death on Palm Sunday at a Roman Catholic mass.”
“The Monuments Must Go”
An open letter from the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.
By JACK CHRISTIAN and WARREN CHRISTIAN
AUG 16, 2017 11:57 PM
“Dear Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and members of the Monument Avenue Commission,
We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.
In making this request, we wish to express our respect and admiration for Mayor Stoney’s leadership while also strongly disagreeing with his claim that “removal of symbols does [nothing] for telling the actual truth [nor] changes the state and culture of racism in this country today.” In our view, the removal of the Jackson statue and others will necessarily further difficult conversations about racial justice. It will begin to tell the truth of us all coming to our senses.
Last weekend, Charlottesville showed us unequivocally that Confederate statues offer pre-existing iconography for racists. The people who descended on Charlottesville last weekend were there to make a naked show of force for white supremacy. To them, the Robert E. Lee statue is a clear symbol of their hateful ideology. The Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are, too—especially Jackson, who faces north, supposedly as if to continue the fight.
We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us.
Through our upbringing and education, we have learned much about Stonewall Jackson. We have learned about his reluctance to fight and his teaching of Sunday School to enslaved peoples in Lexington, Virginia, a potentially criminal activity at the time. We have learned how thoughtful and loving he was toward his family. But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy.
While we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.
In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall’s sister—our great-great-grandaunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.
Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.
There is also historical evidence that the statues on Monument Avenue were rejected by black Richmonders at the time of their construction. In the 1870s, John Mitchell, a black city councilman, called the monuments a tribute to “blood and treason” and voiced strong opposition to the use of public funds for building them. Speaking about the Lee Memorial, he vowed that there would come a time when African Americans would “be there to take it down.”
Ongoing racial disparities in incarceration, educational attainment, police brutality,* hiring practices, access to health care, and, perhaps most starkly, wealth, make it clear that these monuments do not stand somehow outside of history. Racism and white supremacy, which undoubtedly continue today, are neither natural nor inevitable. Rather, they were created in order to justify the unjustifiable, in particular slavery.
One thing that bonds our extended family, besides our common ancestor, is that many have worked, often as clergy and as educators, for justice in their communities. While we do not purport to speak for all of Stonewall’s kin, our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought. We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.
As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context. We are in need of a new context—one in which the statues have been taken down.
Respectfully,
William Jackson Christian
Warren Edmund Christian
Great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson”
Note: So, they’ll put the statues & monuments up, then down, then up, then relocate ’em, chip away at ’em like ripping away a small piece of flesh from the face, then a bigger piece, then a whole section until the entire face has vanished; monuments draped over that begin to have a tarp color that is the color of losing blood & starting to die if blood hits the air & gets oxygenated, so the tarps stay for now thrown over these 2nd place participation trophies like werewolf romances. In another dream, or later in this one, whole city councils knock them down, or shunt them behind fences too high to gallop, but there is no stopping someone who wants revenge street-style. They always come back for more.
James Cobb “Spalding Distinguised Research Professor University of Georgia’s Franklin College bittersoutherner.com/gone-with-the-wind-my-southern-education
“Now, it puts off a great many visitors from outside the region to see these statues to people who fought for a war to maintain slavery,” he said. “But that’s the reality of the South. I think that too many Southerners, black and white, get caught up in fighting over these things, and fighting about them is not getting us anywhere. It’s not bringing more jobs to the community, it’s not making our schools better…. I think the problem is, if you go and really start de-Confederatizing the South’s landscape, you quickly lose perspective on what the people who sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ had to overcome. And as generations pass, you can have all of the memorials you want to the Civil Rights movement, but if you don’t have any indication of the forces that made the Civil Rights Movement necessary, then it exists in a historical void.”
“Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox” appeared in the Journal of American History in 1972 Edmund S. Morgan
“American historians interested in tracing the rise of liberty, democracy, and the common man have been challenged in the past two decades by other historians, interested in tracing the history of oppression, exploitation, and racism. The challenge has been salutary, because it has made us examine more directly than historians have hitherto been willing to do, the role of slavery in our early history. Colonial historians, in particular, when writing about the origin and development of American institutions have found it possible until recently to deal with slavery as an exception to everything they had to say. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who have insisted that slavery was something more than an exception, that one fifth of the American population at the time of the Revolution is too many people to be treated as an exception.
We shall not have met the challenge simply by studying the history of that one fifth, fruitful as such studies may be, urgent as they may be. Nor shall we have met the challenge if we merely execute the familiar maneuver of turning our old interpretations on their heads. The temptation is already apparent to argue that slavery and oppression were the dominant features of American history and that efforts to advance liberty and equality were the exception, indeed no more than a device to divert the masses while their chains were being fastened. To dismiss the rise of liberty and equality in American history as a mere sham is not only to ignore hard facts, it is also to evade the problem presented by those facts. The rise of liberty and equality in this country was accompanied by the rise of slavery. That two such contradictory developments were taking place simultaneously over a long period of our history, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, is the central paradox of American history.”
Confederate Flag Information:
**Evolution of the Rebel flag in 5 stages (Beauregard designed the new flag for the Confederacy after 1st Bull Run):
Bonnie Blue Flag (blue with white star centered)
Stars & Bars (3/61-5/63)
The X Battle Flag (stars & bars)
The Stainless Banner (5/63-3/65)
Blood-stained Banner (March-April 1865)
Salute to the Confederate flag:
“I salute the Confederate Flag with affection, reverence and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands.”
Salute to the Virginia flag:
“I salute the Flag of Virginia with reverence and patriotic devotion to the ‘Mother of States and Statesmen’ which it represents the ‘Old Dominion’, where liberty and independence were born.”
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War Tony Horwitz P. 153
“Foote’s views on the Confederate battle flag were equally nuanced. In his view, those who saw the banner as synonymous with slavery had their history wrong. The battle flag was a combat standard, not a political symbol. “It stood for law, honor, love of country,” Foote said, and the banner was revered as such by the veterans who had fought under it.
At the same time, Foote recognized that the flag had become “a banner of shame and disgrace and hate.” But he pinned the blame for this on educated Southerner who allowed white supremacists to misuse the flag during the civil rights struggle. “Freedom Riders were a pretty weird-looking group to Southerners,” Foote said. “The men had off haircuts and strange baggy clothes and seemed to associate with people with an intimacy that we didn’t allow. So the so-called right-thinking people of the South said, “They’re sending their rifraff down here. Let our rifraff take care of them.’ Then they sat back while the good ol’ boys in the pickup trucks took care of it, under the Confederate banner. That’s when right-thinking people should have stepped in and said, ‘Don’t use that banner, that’s not what it stands for.’ But they didn’t. So now it’s a symbol of evil to a great many people, and I understand that.’”
See: Freedom Riders James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi in 1964. See John Doar, lawyer who received the Medal of Freedom. The film “Mississippi Burning” is said to be false narrative of the nature of FBI Agents & the events themselves. See too: Detroit Riots, 1967, & the “Long, Hot Summer of 1967.” Just 5 & a half in ’67, I vaguely remember the 1960s: our small b&w TV with the antenna showed molotov cocktails, the crowds of people outside in cities standing or running on concrete streets, the marching, the Washington Monument, the police dogs biting Black people. Billy clubs, fire, & smoke. Water hoses. The sense of foreboding. President Johnson had come on TV: “Law and order have broken down in Detroit, Michigan. Pillage, looting, murder, and arson have nothing to do with civil rights.” That I don’t recall, just the name Johnson & his looming face everywhere like a sullen balloon gravity’s dropping soon. The moon landing I remember, too, sitting on the rug in front of the TV asking how far away the moon was, my mother saying it was so far I couldn’t imagine, just veryveryvery far away in the sky, so I took that to be Denver, where her parents lived, so I said it’s near Denver, right, & she laughed & said no, then my brother in his Mensa forehead smugly announced to the room’s air I know where the moon is!
Foote: interview YT video published 11/23/15 from 1997 90,814 views
“I tell them to their faces that they’re the scum who have degraded the confederate flag, converted it from a symbol of honor into a banner of shame, covered it with obscenities like a roadhouse men’s room wall. What are you talking about?
I’m talking about the yahoos who ran around waving the Confederate flag uh, in favor of, uh, segregation, and all that kind of thing, uh, I regret it to this day the Confederate flag is a, a, a, a banner, uh, for a noble cause as well as some people see it as a banner of an ignoble cause because they would defense [sic] of slavery.”
“Shelby Foote In-depth 3 hour Interview” video on YouTube (minute 1:29.00):
“‘I regret very much what has happened about the flag. Uh, the flag that people look at now is a flag that was carried during the demonstrations against civil rights, it was carried by Ku Klux Klansmen, and all that kind of thing, and that’s what it represents to a great many people and I don’t wonder that they’re feeling pain and wanting to take it down. I understand perfectly well they do that. But to my mind, they’re misidentifying that flag. Uh, that flag represents many good things. And you have to translate yourself back into the time of secession to understand how some states would want to secede. The Constitution had not been amended in 61 years. This was the first amendment– the emancipation amendment– was the first amendment in 61 years of the Constitution and absolutely the first amendment that ever had anything to do with anybody’s private property. So, they saw this amendment coming, uh, they said we don’t want any part of this Union, we want to get out of it. And people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war. That was a very complicated civic thing. Uh, Robert Toombs or somebody once gave the best definition of that war I’ve ever heard. He said it was a war of one form of society against another form of society. And because one of those forms of society included, uh, chattel slavery, and the other side didn’t, except to a limited extent, uh, it’s always been identified as a war over slavery. Uh, believe me, no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves. Uh, they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Southerners thought they were fighting the second American Revolution. Northerners thought they were fighting to hold the Union together. And that held true throughout the whole war, except for some people who were absolute partisans on both sides. Fire Eaters in South Carolina, and abolitionists in Massachusetts. Uh, but most of the people were fighting because they were fighting for, Southerners once said I’m fighting ‘cuz you’re down here, uh, if you want to invade my home, you got me to fight. Others say you’re trying to tear the fabric of the Union, therefore you should be put down and not allowed to do what you claim you want to do. It’s a very complex subject and I’m sorry to see it, uh, degenerate into such things as identifying that flag as a symbol of, uh, racism. It is not. It was never intended as such. Confederacy respected law above all things.’”
Note: Which law? “I cannot stand & sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.” Jackie Robinson
Note: Foote’s cynical insistence no one on the Union side fought to free the slaves is outdated. Foote’s dead, of course, but this White male insistence on having the right answer is dead too. Dead & gone, hopefully for good, a long stretch in history when they mined all they could from everyone not White & not male. It will be puzzling to look back on. It’s enraging now.
Ephraim was not the only Union soldier also fighting with the slaves in mind. I’m not sure where these people, these historians, get their opinions, but my grandfather got his facts by being there, fighting & writing, in 1862. Ephraim was one of many Union soldiers concerned about the disposition of the slaves even if they did not voice that sentiment on paper because they kept no diary. Certainly for a number of so-called Rebels, & definitely to the leaders of the Confederacy, the enslaved were the entity foremost in their minds… after all, the war itself began over expansion of slavery, these White men thinking their White liberty at stake, the liberty to remain free while the humans they owned stayed chained so they could expand into more States generation after generation into infinity.
See Ephraim’s June 14 diary entry, as well as his May 27 letter, for what he wrote about the enslaved. Like a Confederate banknote of varying degrees of soundness, these theories of Union soldier motivations come and go. It’s unfortunate the myth Union soldiers did not fight to free slaves, as if the whole affair were homicidal violence of undetermined etiology, gladiator entertainment perhaps, that Foote’s idea re soldier intention has become so widespread, but now the light hits his pages in a more faded way. You can see the alteration process right in the records as you go through the decades. It’s always been about creating and producing a new kind of story in each era of each century. The Stars & Bars flies high on giant poles in every last hick backwater of each state in the Union, still. What is it with these people? Why can’t they fly the goddamn American flag? On tailgates of trucks, say?
Anyway, what historians have traditionally emphasized muted the lesser-known lived experiences like those of my grandfather. More & more the human stories of war are being heard now, not just abstractions about battle tactics, lines, ammunition. I put this project off so long mostly because I had no interest in learning about this war (was it fought in the 1890s? 1850s? It was Virginia? I thought it was Mississippi, Alabama. Virginia? Really?) & having to figure out where the 110th was when they were & then doing what, then what happened next in time. I should have skipped all the battles & simply found all the diaries I could that were written from March 1– July 5 & typed those up instead. Because the abstract can’t save what’s not abstract. The bodies are in the ground & we want the body in the end, not the words. Bones just don’t look like a body.
On the other hand, how much sense would Ephraim have made without backgrounding? Context about where he was, why, with whom, along with what was happening in the Valley right then, day to day, month to month? Because the most important thing to him, in the end, was keeping his body intact, whether he’d live, no? But if I didn’t include context, the desperate conditions under which these men lived & fought Confederates, how much sense would his words even have made? And how would Ephraim have wanted this dealt with? He probably wouldn’t have wanted any of this. But he did leave his diary behind when he could have destroyed it or not ever started it. He returned to write for 127 days straight, so obviously understood the significance of his historical moment, & must have intended his ancestors read his writing. Maybe unfortunate for him that it passed through 11 people’s hands down 5 generations then finally into mine. I’ll ask him when I get there. Meantime, he looks accusingly at me from the wall by my barcalounger where I sat & typed this whole thing up. The worst is when he gets that look of chagrin & pity to his eyes, Oh you sweet summer child.
Note: Jefferson Davis’ 3xgrandson: “The battle flag needs to be understood in reference to what it symbolized, which was those troops underneath that leadership in a war. That’s as far as the battle flag is meant to go and that’s where I think it should stay. That’s what it’s meant to say.”
“Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color” (video, episode two)
“‘The fact is,” he said, “the Confederate battle flag was associated with white supremacy and not only that, but the Confederate battle flag supported a country that was dedicated to the furtherance of African-American slavery. So for a black person, seeing this banner anywhere is an indication they don’t want me. This is not part of my heritage. I don’t really belong here. It’s a flag of exclusion.
“And if you look after the Civil War, when Florida and Alabama made new flags, their flags, even to this very day, resemble the Confederate battle flag.’” bittersoutherner.com/gone-with-the-wind-my-southern-education/rq?=civil%20war David Goldfield
Note: Speaking of flags & regions, here is the Great Migration chosen by African-Americans from 1915-1970: https://www.communitiescount.org/blog/2019/814/the-great-migration
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War James M. McPherson P. 99
“It is perhaps true that Northern nationalism was more “abstract and intangible” than its Southern counterpart. But it was nonetheless just as real and as deeply felt. Union soldiers did not think that they could “retire into their own country” if they lost the war “and possess everything they enjoyed before the war began.” Most of them believed that they would no longer have a country worthy of the name. “If we lose in this war, the country is lost and if we win it is saved,” wrote a New York captain in 1863. “There is no middle ground.”
Again and again one finds similar phrases in the letters of Northern soldiers: “Home is sweet and friends are dear, but what would they all be to let the country go to ruin.” “I do not want to live if our free Nation is to die or be broken [by]… the foul hand of treason.” “Far better would it be if the war should continue until every home should be made desolate [than]… to surrender to those miserable despots who are trying to destroy our country.’”
http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html
Ҥ176. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor
(a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise
(c)The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
(e)The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
(f) The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.”
Note: 1865:
Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Harold Holzer P. 1177 footnote by editors THIS WAS MAY 10 1865
“Jefferson Davis was captured on the 10th of May near Irwinsville, Georgia, by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry (belonging to General R.H.G. Minty’s division of General James H. Wilson’s cavalry corps), under Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin D. Pritchard. Pritchard left Macon, Georgia, on the 7th, and was moving south along the west bank of the Ocmulgee when he crossed the route on which Mr. Davis and his party were moving with about twenty-four hours’ start of their pursuers. A detachment of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry (belonging to General John T. Croxton’s division), under Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Harnden, was following Mr. Davis in the direct road to Irwinsville, and Pritchard, making a swift march on another road, came upon the fugitives in their camp, and arrested Mr. Davis just as the advance of Harnden’s command reached the scene.”
*Because no public database of banned cops in the U.S. exists, in 2019 USA Today published one. 30k & counting. Do note: police funding at 115 billion. CDC at 11 billion (incorrect guidelines even in a pandemic, lack of funding for disease research, ad nauseam) EPA at 9 billion (regulations constantly rolled back on basics such as waterways), FEMA (remember Katrina?) at 3 billion, & finally, OSHA (forget FOIA request accessibility, or, say, workplace safety transparency) at 558 million. Also note police began inciting riots across America– unlawful violence on the public dime– during the George Floyd protests, countless minutes of footage with evidence of criminal conduct White middle America can no longer deny, that they think of us as insects they can just spray & get rid of for exercising our 1st & 2nd Amendments. In 2020 it is apparent we need the National Guard to round up the police before another “officer-involved shooting,” as if the cop watched the gun go off by itself.
Note: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Section 3, Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution.
Note: Monuments: a foreign visitor could easily conclude Rebels won the war, specifically the Patron Saints of the Lost Cause Lee, Longstreet, & Davis, who the statues indicate won it for the South. The Union came in a distant 2nd.
Note: The 4th Michigan Cavalry catches up to Jeff Davis camping in Georgia; at 3:30am, very first light; they capture him as he tries to pass unnoticed from his tent right after his wife Varina gives him a black shawl & a “waterproof,” a raglan overcoat for disguise.
Note: Robert Smalls sails to freedom today in 1862. Also, May 10, 1865, Battle of Palmito Ranch, or, Texans against Texans. 350 Confederates defeat 800 Union troops.
Note: Death of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, 1/21/1824-5/10/1863.
they looked very dusty….
Some believe it came to an end there in a room in a village but it keeps running up, like a flag ascending a pole after half-staff, & they are yet to discover it ain’t over till the dead have voted.
May 10, 1865 President Johnson tells everyone that armed resistance “may be regarded as virtually at an end.”
The armed resistance continues for 16 more months.
Bullets sounded like someone chopping wood; the sound of ramrods shoving bullets down like entities free-falling fast through a metal chute to their death. And the whole field echoing in a 20 second per rifle load on down the line, that noise richocheting into whatever was flying above men’s heads like a piece of night candy had broken loose. Everything breaks if you apply the right force. Limb structures, if you squinted in certain lights you could see them, a dark warp. Bone marrow after it hits the air too long. To the tree branches the bones flew in the air with vestiges remaining of their original meaning, something once attached to a center point. They swirl in currents then rise to a planet just off this one, adjacent, the one where the Real War stays. BODIES, dear god, the bodies.
Later, the men not killed go hunt in droves. They go out with lanterns, in the Buzzard light, Buzzards enough to block the sky out, a giant bottom of the sea color sheet of dark. Darker regions extend even farther in all directions and than what language a word first came from. They search for the ones not beyond help, they pass the ones beyond it despite cries for water. Bodies turned black, the ground & sky black, bodies in unnatural poses, arms sticking straight up, legs in angles they couldn’t ordinarily go, that would ordinarily snap & crack at the joint or clean in half. Overnight, a shock, it was all down on the ground, white platelets of what was just attached to the long stem, secure. It was a rude permanence, stark shelling on the ground, disruption of the way things ought to be, the light the world had appeared in. And there was no reattaching these disarticulated limbs, no floating back up to homecome the fallen.
If a realm exists beyond the material Jackson reaches for it as he falls off his horse, the one-eyed Jack, where you saw only the side he wanted you to see, advocating black flag policy straight out of the Old Testament, Joshua killing everyone in town then belly laughing like a Sultan washed in the blood of the lamb preaching “the Providence of God” that put Africans on ships to hear “the glorious gospel.” Maybe in the end it was about something carried in the blood, an ancient evil & a motive as old as time, along with the impression of a back end of a shovel. We know who you were.
Wife Mary Anna Jackson (1831-1915; brother-in-law was AP Hill) becomes the “Widow of the Confederacy” ever after; for 50 years she personified the “inevitable loss tradition,” the substanceless, specious circular logic that’s a kind of spear travelling through time, a high fashion spread in the NYT Sunday Magazine featuring a chain link bracelet by Tiffany&Co., mimicry for bucks & views, heavy coating a pure gold or like a pitted, eroding ice sheet bouncing back hot solar flares then succumbing to the melt.
September 2019 the National Park Service changes Caroline County Park from Stonewall Jackson “Shrine” to Stonewall Jackson “Death Site.” The signs had to all change like something shot between the eyes at close range. Present day I-95 cuts through all the men laying there in the spaces between the worlds & what’s taken & what’s left, & it’s exit 118 where children jump & scream in an inflatable castle nearby, reeking of stale fries, dead cows, & chasing after a toppled toy where his arm is buried in Chancellorsville at Ellwood Manor 100 miles from the rest of his body, too late now. Good god the glory over a severed limb.
3 men from the 18th NC shoot Jackson but never get over it. Jackson was struck 3x, & each of the 3 who fired thought it was their bullet that killed him; in turn, the 3 basically killed themselves. One died of a broken heart, the guy who told ’em to shoot. Yet friendly fire was common in the war. They (who? everyone down there) say the Confederacy lost the war that night but went on 2 years anyway. The South shifted with his death is one theory. “Order AP Hill to prepare for battlefield. Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train. Let us cross the river and rest in the shade” is the most well-known line of the war (& one I learned about as a child, people practically whispering it with a vengeance & that was Pennsylvania). Robert Penn Warren in The Legacy of the Civil War: “In the moment of death the Confederacy entered upon its immortality.” Jackson had biggest funeral since George Washington.
Lee doesn’t go see Jackson as he lay dying because why would he. What’s left to say.
In 1991, at 104, his granddaughter Julia Preston dies in North Carolina. She will have had 22 great grandchildren, 22 opportunities for the continuance of the grand mal lost cause tantrum family tradition.“Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth.” Clint Smith
We jes pruhfer arr oun kine better known by its real name, racism, defined by Glenn Loury as “a withholding of the presumption of equal humanity.”
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