The quotes below are from Ervin L. Jordan Jr., noted author, professor and research archivist at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
"Numerous Afro-Virginians, free blacks and slaves, were genuine Southern loyalists, not as a consequence of white pressure but due to their preferences. They are the Civil War's forgotten people, yet their existence was more widespread than American history has recorded. Their bones rest in unhonored glory in Southern soil, shrouded by falsehoods, indifference and historians' censorship."
"Tennessee in June 1861 became the first in the South to legislate the use of free black soldiers. The governor was authorized to enroll those between the ages of fifteen and fifty, to be paid $18 a month and the same rations and clothing as white soldiers; the black men appeared in two black regiments in Memphis by September."
"After their capture one group of white Virginia slave owners and Afro-Virginians were asked if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their freedom. One free negro indignantly replied: "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave from this same group, upon learning that his master had refused, proudly exclaimed, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave agreed: "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." On another occasion a captured Virginia planter took the oath, but slave remained faithful to the Confederacy and refused. This slave returned to Virginia by a flag of truce boat and expressed disgust at his owner's disloyalty: "Massa had no principles." Confederate prisoners of war paid tribute to the loyalty, ingenuity, and diligence of "kind-hearted" blacks who attended to their needs and considered them fellow Southerners."
"The public support and activities of Afro-Confederates, a minority within a minority, received considerable prominence. A Charlottesville newspaper reported an interview with Hames Ward, a slave who fled "Yankeedom" to warn his fellow slaves of abuse and racism in Union army camps and of blacks being forced to front lines during battles. He preferred being the slave of "the meanest masters in the South" than a free black man in the North: "If this is freedom, give me slavery forever."
The photo of Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., by LuAnn Williams, is from the University of Virginia website.
This very interesting headstone in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia, was lovingly purchased and placed by a former slave in honor of his master, who died ten years before the outbreak of the War Between the States.
The inscription reads:
David McKinley
Died 1851
Aged
About 70 Years
My Trust is in God.
Erected by Peter Fleming
his former Slave.
For a century and a half this simple grave marker has born silent testimony to the familial bonds of affection which often existed between slave and slaveholder in the antebellum South. It confirms the records left by hundreds of former slaves in the WPA Slave Narratives, in which the overwhelming majority speak of their former masters with fondness and appreciation.
It also is a testimony to the Christian faith of both slave and master. Such a kindred spirit between slave and slaveholder in this "peculiar institution" is impossible to conceive outside of a shared Christian faith. Many Christian slaveholders were opposed to slavery as a permanent condition, but were realistic enough to know that immediate, forced emancipation, without proper preparation, would be harmful to both the individual slave and the larger community.
A prime example of this is General Stonewall Jackson, the namesake of the cemetery where this stone is found. Jackson personally assisted many slaves in gaining their freedom and he helped hundreds more by educating them in his Colored Sunday School. Jackson saw gradual emancipation as the most practical way for the slaves to become responsible, self supporting members of society. He was not alone. Tens of thousands of southern slaveholders had already prepared their slaves and then had freed them, even before the War Between the States. Most northern slaveholders sold their slaves "down the river." That's why there were far more free blacks in the South than in the North.
The symbol at the top of the headstone shows a hand with the forefinger thrust upwards. This is a universal symbol, pointing upward to the hope of Heaven, and also upward to the Savior, Jesus Christ - who is the One Way true liberty.
The white columns of Washington University, Lexington, Virginia, were draped in black for the funeral of General Robert E. Lee. The name of the school was later changed to Washington and Lee University in honor of America's two great wars for independence - the Revolutionary War and the War for Southern Independence.
Below is a letter written October 16, 1870 by William Nalle, a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and sent to his mother, Mrs. Thomas Botts Nalle of Culpepper, Virginia. The letter, containing a detailed eyewitness account of the death and funeral of General Robert E. Lee is in the VMI Archives, Manuscript #0042.
Va Military Institute
Lexington Oct 16th 1870
Dear Mother
I expect you have been looking for a letter from me for some time and in fact I would have written but about the time I thought of writing the rains & the flood came on, destroying bridges canals, & cutting off communication generally.
I suppose of course that you have all read full accounts of Gen Lee's death in the papers. He died on the morning of the 12th at about half past nine. All business was suspended at once all over the country and town, and all duties, military and academic suspended at the Institute, and all the black crape and all similar black material in Lexington, was used up at once, and they had to send on to Lynchburg for more. Every cadet had black crape issued to him, and an order was published at once requiring us to wear it as a badge of mourning for six months. The battalion flag has heavily draped in black, and is to stay so for the next six months. The Institute has been hung all around with black. The College buildings were also almost covered with black. All the churches and in fact the town looked as if they had been trying to cover everything with festoons of black cambric, and every sort of black that could be procured.
The morning after his death we marched up and escorted the remains from the house to Washington College Chapel, where they lay in "state" until the burial yesterday morning.
After the remains were placed in the Chapel on the morning of the 13th the entire procession was marched through the Chapel, past the corpse, which they were allowed to look at. The lid of the coffin having been taken off for that purpose. I saw the General after his death, and never saw a greater change than must have taken place in him a short time before he died. Some days before he was taken I met him in the path leading into town, coming in direction of the barracks. He was walking, and seemed to be the picture of health, and when I saw him in his coffin, he looked to be reduced to half his original size, and desperately thin. When first taken with the paralytic stroke or whatever it was, he fell on his dining room floor, a bed was placed under him and he died where he fell. The doctors forbid anyone to move him. Myself and four other cadets with Gen Smith's permission sat up all night with the corpse on Friday night, perfect silence was kept the whole night, no one speaking except in a low whisper. It was considered a great honor to be allowed to sit up with the remains, and a great many applied for the privilege but one of the college professors on arrival took only five of us, whom he requested to stay.
The day following the funeral procession after marching all around town and through the Institute grounds, formed around the college chapel and he was buried in the chapel under the floor of the basement. The procession was a very large one, a great many persons from a distance being here. Our brass band with muffled drums, went ahead of the hearse playing the dead march. Cannon of our stationary battery were fired & &. The hearse however was perfectly empty the corpse being all the time in the Chapel where it was placed at first.
The flood of which I spoke, did a great deal of damage in this part of the country, carrying off some ten or fifteen houses, some dwelling houses some ware houses situated at the canal boat landing near here all the bridges in the river were carried off and the canal running to this place entirely ruined, all the locks being torn up and carried off. It was a rare sight to see large houses, bridges, mills & every sort of lumber go sailing at a rapid rate, down the river. Up to a week or two since, we could get no mails or any thing that had to come from a distance, and it is still very difficult to get provisions. Mails come and go regularly now, as they have fixed ferries for stages &&.
I was made a sergeant in Co A about three weeks ago, and the evening after the first appointment, I was appointed color sergeant. I have to carry the battalion flag and have charge of the color guard, do not wear any such accoutrements as cartridge box and bayonet scabbard, when I am in charge of the guard, as the other sergeants have to do, but wear only a sword and sash, go to church in the staff, and enjoy various other privileges Jessie is getting along very well, he seems to be a great favorite. I had him put in a room, with the best new cadets that I could find. One of them is a son of Col. Dulaney of Loudoun, the others seem very nice little fellows, and they are all about the same size.
I am getting along pretty well I think, and I written about all that I can think of at present. Let me hear from you soon and let me know whether or not Gen Smith sent pa the receipt for the deposit.
Your affectionate son
W. Nalle
Lee Chapel, last resting place of Robert E. Lee, on the campus of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
A group seeking to commemorate the 170 South Carolinians who signed the ordinance of secession nearly 150 years ago wants to place a monument to recognize the historic event on the grounds at Patriots Point.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans' South Carolina division is proposing to install an 11 1/2-foot-tall stone memorial as the centerpiece of a 40-foot by 40-foot landscaped plaza at the state-owned tourist attraction.
Designed by Pelion artist Ron Clamp, the rectangular structure would be made from blue Georgia granite and would measure 5 feet wide on each side. It would be lighted and surrounded with benches for visitors.
The group said Tuesday that it would take care of all the up-front costs and set up an endowment fund to cover future maintenance expenses. It asked that the Patriots Point Development Authority pay the electricity bill and have its security personnel include the proposed addition in their rounds to deter vandalism.
Representatives from the group pitched the idea to the authority this week, saying few public monuments exist recognizing the secession convention held in Columbia and Charleston on Dec. 17 and Dec. 20, 1860, helping ignite the Civil War.
The name of each of the signers and the wording of the secession document would be among the text and images engraved on each side of the monument.
Albert Jackson, chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans' monument committee, called the secession debate and the subsequent unanimous approval of the ordinance "a significant action" for South Carolina. Most people are not aware of the history behind it, he said.
Jeff Antley, who is in charge of finding a location for the memorial, said organizers want to put the monument at Patriots Points but that they need a firm commitment for a site before they raise the rest of the money for the estimated $160,000 project.
"We believe it belongs out here," Antley said, noting that the waterfront visitor attraction is now a key "gateway to Fort Sumter," where the first shots of the War Between the States were fired in April 1861.
Many people have heard of the Confederate prison known as Andersonville (or Camp Sumpter). Far fewer are aware of Camp Lawton (also known as Fort Lawton) which was built in Jenkins County, Georgia, to relieve the unhealthy, crowded conditions at Andersonville.
During it's brief existance, Camp Lawton was the largest prison in the world. Occupying 42 acres beside beautiful Magnolia Springs, it was designed to hold 40,000 prisoners of war. The prison consisted of a log stockade, 1398 feet by 1329 feet, with guard towers on the walls, and a ditch dug within the walls for a deadline. It was built in September, 1864, by a crew of 800 workers. On high ground surrounding the prison, three earthen forts were excavated and armed with cannon to prevent escape and guard from attacks.
One of the reasons the prison was located here was the large, pure spring, which could supply ample water to the prisoners Another factor was the Augusta Railroad which passed just one mile from the camp. If the camp was threatened, prisoners could be loaded onto trains and moved north to Augusta or southeast to Savannah, and to other points from there.
The first prisoners began arriving in October 1864 and within a month 10,299 men were held there. Then on Nov. 25, 1864, the camp was quickly abandoned in advance of the Left Wing of Sherman's army during their cruel and infamous "March to the Sea." Sherman's invading horde burned the new stockade and it was never rebulit.
Today, the spring is the site of Magnolia Springs State Park. Some of the earthworks remain and historical markers outside and inside the park tell help interpret the site. The nearby railroad town of Millen had a beautiful depot and hotel which were burned when Sherman's men came through on Dec. 3, 1864. The local Chamber of Commerce, located in the new depot, built 1915, has a large picture of the prison and various historical displays.
Historic Fort Lawton Earthworks
I have visited Magnolia Springs on several occasions and have found it to be a beautiful, uncrowded place to hike, camp and study nature - especially rare birds and alligators. It is also a significant Confederate historical site which is too often overlooked and unknown.
The discriminating minds among our intelligent young people of the South will readily perceive that there is a manifest and important, because truthful, distinction to be maintained touching the style and title of the conflict waged on this American continent during 1861 - 1865, between The United States and the newly born nationality known as The Confederate States. The following from Dr. S. A. Steel, of Richmond, Va., will be appreciated:
"The term 'Civil War' ought to be abandoned because it embodies an error. A civil war is a war between factions contending for the control of the same government, like Caesar and Pompey, like Lancaster and York. If the Southern people had fought in the Union, it would have been a civil war, and the defeated party would have been rebels. The movement was a revolution. The object of it was to maintain a separate government. The war was between the government of the United States and the government of the Confederate States. We went out of the Union; went so completely that we had to be re-admitted. We were not 'rebels,' but patriots, wisely or unwisely, exercising the the inalienable right of self-government in an honest effort to rectify political diffiiculties. This is the verdict history will ultimately pronounce upon that struggle."
While our friends, the enemy, persist in calling as "Rebels," and refer to that struggle for Southern independence as "The Rebellion," we are content to bear the obloquy, knowing the injustice of it; yea, we glory in it, as did the now largest of protestant religious denominations accept and wear the term of reproach designating them "Methodists." But let us not forget that "We be brethren!"
***
One day in April, 1861, I heard that President Lincoln had called on the State troops to force the seceding States back into the Union. That was one of the saddest days of my life. I had prayed and hoped that war might be averted. I had loved the Union, and clung to it. That day I saw war was inevitable. The inevitable must be met. That day I walked up and down my porch in Smithville (now Southport, N. C.) and wept and suffered and prayed for the South.
The drum and fife were soon heard there, and all through the Old North State companies of our best men, young and middle aged, offered themselves to the Governor of the State.
***
August 28, 29 and 30 (1962). Horrid scenes! Many dead Federals still on the field, though a squad of their men, under flag of truce, has been some days caring for wounded and burying dead.
I found a wounded Federal sitting on the field - a broken thigh, a rifle ball through his arm and a bruised shoulder made him right helpless. His undressed wounds were sore. He asked me if I thought our surgeons would care for him. I assurred him they would. He said he had a wife and two little children in his northern home. His parents were pious and had raised him piously, but he had neglected his own soul. I said: "Brother, Jesus loves you. You came down here to kill my brothers, but I love you." He broke down and sobbed aloud: "You don't talk like one man that came here. He upbraided me." He told me our men had been very good to him during the three or four days he had been there. As one hurried by he would give him water and food, and raise him up to rest certain tired muscles. Another would stop to give him more food and water and lay him down.
They had just taken the last Confederate wounded from that part of the field. He was on the surgeon's table a few yards away. I trust this Federal was soon taken to that table. As I was about to hurry away to overtake my regiment he asked me to lay him down! How could I? Where could I take hold? I did the best I could. As I took him by the hand and commended him to God, I think my heart was as tender as it ever was. His bones may be in that field now. I hope to meet his soul in Heaven in a few years. Hurry on ten miles and overtake our regiment. Sleep cold and take cold. Frost next morning.
***
October 15 - Ten years ago God converted my soul. C. H. Ruffin, of Nash Co., wounded yesterday. Dies in my arms - in perfect peace. Charlie enlisted at 17, and perhaps, was the wildest boy in his Regiment.
He was very respectful to me, but showed no signs of any care for his soul till April last. About the time I was disappointed in my hopes to go home, he began to seek my company and give good attention to preaching. He became deeply convicted and was happily converted and I took him into the Missionary Baptist Church, and sent his name to the home church the day I started home If I had gone home at the time I first proposed, he might not have been converted. Just before he breathed his last I asked him about his case. He sweetly smiled and said: "Bro. Betts as soon as I die I shall go straight to my blessed Jesus!" That was a happy moment to me. As I write about it in October 1896 the joy I feel pays me a thousand times for all the nights I ever slept on frozen ground, snow or mud.
***
July 14 - Cross Potomac. As I came near the river a straggling soldier shouted to me and asked me to let him ride the horse I was leading. I told him the horse's back was so sore I could not myself ride him. In a sharp angry tone he replied, "Yes, you think more of a horse than you do of a man." I stopped. As he came near, I said, "Young man, you ought not to speak to me that way. I have waded the James and the Potomac for a sick man to ride my horse. I will now wade this river and let you ride over." He did not wait for me to dismount. He hurried into the warm, shallow water. I trust he and each reader will be slower to judge others than he was that day.
***
Engage the enemy fiercely near Winchester and drive them, and they drive us. Gen. Rodes killed. Went into private house to see his body after he was brought into Winchester. His wife had spent some time in camp during preceding winter. We fall back to Strasburg, marching all night. Riding alone and very sad, at midnight, I overtake one or two thousand Federal prisoners. They began to sing, "We are going home to die no more." My heart was touched. I shed tears as I thought many of them would die in Southern prisons.
***
The night following the tidings of our contemplated surrender was a still, sad night in our camp. Rev. W. C. Willson, the Chapel Hill pastor, was with us. We had preached a few times in that camp; but that night we made no effort to get the men together. In little, sad groups they softly talked of the past, the present and the future. Old men were there, who would have cheerfully gone on, enduring the hardship of war, and protracted absence from their families, for the freedom of their country. Middle aged men were there, who had been away from wives and children for years, had gone through many battles, had lost much on their farms or stores or factories or professional business; but would that night have been glad to shoulder the gun and march forward for the defense of their "native land". Young men and boys were there, who loved their country and were unspeakably sad at the thought of the failure to secure Southern Independence.
Rev. W. C. Willson and I walked out of the camp and talked and wept together. As I started back to my tent - to my mule and saddle, I should say, for I had no tent - I passed three lads sitting close together, talking softly and sadly. I paused and listened. One said, "It makes me very sad, to think of our surrendering." Another said, "It hurts me worse than the thought of battle ever did." The third raised his arm, clenched his fist and seemed to grate his teeth as he said, "I would rather know we had to go into battle tomorrow morning." There was patriotism! There may have been in that camp that night generals, colonels and other officers who had been moved by a desire for worldly honor. Owners of slaves and of lands may have hoped for financial benefit from Confederate success. But these boys felt they had a country that ought to be free! I wish I had taken their names. And I wonder if they still live. They are good citizens, I am sure.
Rev. A. D. Betts, D.D. was an ordained minister with the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. During the War for Southern Independence he served as Chaplain for the 30th N. C. Troops. The excerpts above are from his book, "Experience of a Confederate Caplain," published after the War.
Two million people travel annually to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. The imposing sculptures of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln have become a symbol of the American spirit. The artist in charge of the project, Gutzon Borglum, intended his work to be a summary of the first 150 years of American history, but the choice of figures has helped create a lasting problem in American history: who owns the founding tradition? Borglum has led many Americans to believe that Lincoln and Roosevelt constitute the bridge between the founding generation and the modern era. While there were certainly times Lincoln and Roosevelt could rhetorically sound like the Founders, their actions do not mesh with the principles of that generation. Lincoln and Roosevelt helped create a "new" United States, perverted the founding documents and ruined the founding principles of limited government and state sovereignty.
The true expositors of the founding tradition are not the sectional president, Lincoln, or the first progressive president, Roosevelt; they are two Unionists who are often classified as Southern extremists: John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia. These men were on the cusp of the founding generation. Calhoun was born in 1782 and Randolph in 1773. They were too young to participate in first events of the early republic but knew many of the participants. Most importantly, they understood what the founding generation meant by "union."
The Founders forged a union based on the consent of the States – a compact among them – for their benefit through defense and commerce. They recognized sectional differences and knew that these differences should be respected. Thus, many in this generation, Northerners and Southerners alike, cautiously guarded the interests of their communities through the sovereignty of the states. As long as the benefits and burdens of the union were distributed equally, they suffered and prospered together. Such had been the case in the War for Independence. No one conceived that one section or one faction should have the right to plunder the other. Madison insisted in Federalist No. 10 that the Constitution was written to protect against such infractions. Early American documents are littered with statements in defense of a mutually beneficial union. All that ceased in the following two generations.
In an 1833 speech, Calhoun made the following observation:
"In the same spirit, we are told that the Union must be preserved, without regard to the means. And how is it proposed to preserve the Union? By force! Does any man in his senses believe that this beautiful structure – this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by the join consent of all – can be preserved by force? Its very introduction will be certain destruction of this Federal Union. No, no. You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, hold the parts together, but such union would be the bond between master and slave: a union of exaction on one side, and of unqualified obedience on the other."
Such is what Lincoln accomplished through the War Between the States. The South was forced to remain "loyal" under the yoke of the federal government. He preserved the "union," but not the union of the Founders. It was a union of Lincoln’s and the Republican Party’s creation.
Randolph, in similar fashion, lectured Northern secessionists during the War of 1812 for their stand against the good of the whole. He reminded them that the South had stood shoulder to shoulder with the North during the Revolution and that Virginia had sacrificed far more for the good of the Union by ceding her western lands to the central government than any Northern state in the history of the confederation. Each section suffered due to British hostility, and though Randolph personally opposed the war and foreign alliances, he believed secession during a time of war damaged the prospects of opposition. New England had its chance to secede in 1807 following the Embargo Act, a time of peace, but 1814 was a different story. He said, "Our Constitution is an affair of compromise between the States, and this is the master-key which unlocks all its difficulties."
Randolph was the consistent defender of state sovereignty throughout his career, and he clung to the union of the "good old thirteen states." Likewise, Calhoun insisted that state’s rights was the traditional policy of the founding generation. He called Jefferson "the true and faithful expositor of the relation between the States and General Government," and labeled the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 "the rock of our political salvation" in a letter to the citizens of Philadelphia. Only through a firm reliance on state’s rights could the government be brought "back…to where it was, when it commenced."
It must be noted that Randolph did not trust Calhoun, and he considered nullification a foolish doctrine (he preferred secession, and did not see how a state could remain in the Union after it nullified a federal law), but when Andrew Jackson as president threatened to use force to coerce South Carolina during the Nullification Controversy of 1832, Randolph said he would strap his "dying body" to his horse "Radical" and enter the field of battle rather than see a sovereign state threatened by the bayonet.
From the 1880 through the 1908 presidential election, there was consistently a clear divide between the North and South. The South voted one way, the North another. Both sections implicitly recognized that the Union was dominated by the North, and no election showcased this more clearly than Roosevelt’s victory over Alton Parker in the 1904 election. Roosevelt was not a "national" candidate; he was a sectional one with sectional support. He was not the heir of the Founding Fathers and the founding principles of limited government, state’s rights, neutrality, and peaceful trade. He was a bully, an imperialist, and a man who used executive power in a way the founding generation consistently warned against.
Why does this matter? Because Americans are still burdened by factional government and the tyranny of elected despots. We now witness a rural/urban conflict along with a North/South split. Half the population can take from the other half and Americans feel helpless in wake of the political onslaught of "progressivism." But there is hope. Americans still have power in their state and local communities. The states are still sovereign, and Americans have more control over their state and local representatives than those in congress or the executive branch. If Americans recognize that the Union must burden and benefit all equally, as the founding generation, Calhoun, and Randolph emphasized, than there is still hope to salvage the founding principles of the United States. Otherwise, the Founding Fathers will continue to be eliminated from our historical consciousness or will be perverted by progressives such as Barack Obama who invoke their name but know nothing of the founding principles. Mount Rushmore should be split between Jefferson and Roosevelt. That way, Americans could see the canyon – not the bridge – between them.
Brion McClanahan received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).
Confederate Digest is my way of celebrating America's proud Southern heritage.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of William Elisha Conn, who died April 26, 1862, as a private in the Georgia/Confederate volunteer infantry. He was only 24-years-old at the time of his death, leaving behind a grieving wife and two babies, one of which grew up to become my great grandfather.
William Elisha was a poor tenant farmer whose ancestors were brought to the United States from Ireland as indentured servants. He and three of his brothers fought for freedom from governmental tyranny and in defense of their homes and families against a hostile, invading Union army. Three of the four brothers were killed; the other was captured.
The four Conn brothers, plus numerous cousins and uncles, along with hundreds of thousands of brave Confederates, young and old, black and white, fought for the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the hope that their sacrifice would not be forgotten.
Deo Vindice! God Will Vindicate!
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Author and Editor
J. Stephen Conn
I am a freelance writer and photographer, and also a retired pastor and syndicated newspaper columnist. My writing credits include authoring six books and more than 300 articles which have appeared in a large variety of magazines and scores of newspapers.
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