U.S. Civil War History bits

That's very interesting. Reminds me of the Scottish -American soldiers monument in Old Calton cemetery, Edinburgh-
Edinburgh, Waterloo Place, Old Calton Burial Ground, American Civil War Memorial | Canmore

 

That’s a good series. All of Ken Burns work is top notch. His series on the Roosevelt’s was extremely interesting.

 

Lots of Europeans fought in the ACW, on both sides. I’ve read once that there were a couple of Chinamen in a North Carolina regiment. Maybe they were from south China....

 

They were from Mount Airy, North Carolina.
The eldest sons of Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous conjoined Siamese Twins, joined the same Virginia cavalry battalion.
Chinese serving in the Confederate arm force - Association to commemorate the Chinese serving in the American Civil War

 

Now I know I wasn’t drunk when I read that!

 

BLACK-EYED PEAS AND THE CIVIL WAR

Do you eat black-eyed peas for good luck on New Year's Day? This tradition may have some beginnings from the Civil War.

Some suggest the tradition dates back to the Civil War, when Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, typically stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock, and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and field corn suitable only for animal fodder, and did not steal or destroy these humble foods.

In the Southern United States, the peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.

The traditional meal also includes collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion. Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.

We always have rice and gravy as well. Pretty good eatin', regardless of it's origins.

 

Don't think this has been posted before-
"For four breathlessly hot days in mid-July 1863, New York City became the northernmost battleground of the Civil War. Mobs marauded through Manhattan, looting and burning homes and public buildings, fighting police and soldiers, and beating and sometimes killing those who resisted. African Americans were singled out as particular targets. Never before or since had the public order of a major American city been so imperiled. Democracy lay bleeding in the streets.
The spark that ignited the rioting was the 1863 Conscription Act, but a combustible mixture of long-festering issues—slavery, abolitionism, social class, politics, ethnicity, race, labor, and capital—fueled the fire that threatened to consume the Union’s largest and most important city. In 1860, New York City was home to 805,658 souls, 53 percent of whom were native born. Of the nearly 400,000 people who had come from abroad, 53 percent were Irish. By the war’s outbreak, some 86 percent of the city’s laborers and 74 percent of its domestic servants hailed from Ireland. More than half the city’s blacksmiths, weavers, masons, bricklayers, plasterers, stonecutters, and polishers were also Irish-born. By comparison, New York’s free black community was miniscule. Numbering 12,000 men, women, and children, blacks represented less than two percent of the city’s population.
In 1860, 58 percent of the population lived in 15 downtown wards that covered less than nine percent of Manhattan’s area. The slums in the 6th, 11th, 13th, and 14th wards on the Lower East Side housed 147,264 residents. Irish, German, and Jewish immigrants lived cheek by jowl with free blacks. They labored at the same menial jobs, drank at the same taverns, and mingled in the same streets and dance halls. Living in such close quarters bred resentment and hostility that could easily erupt in violence. Between 1834 and 1863, there were at least a dozen major civil disturbances, several of which featured Irish New Yorkers as protagonists and African Americans as victims.
The Conscription Act that would trigger the rioting in July 1863 was an act born of necessity. With 130 regiments scheduled to leave for home in May and June, the Union Army needed 300,000 new recruits, and leaders in Washington were worried that few of the initially optimistic volunteers would reenlist. The new bill called for all male citizens between the ages of 20 and 45 to be enrolled in two classes. The first included single men between the ages of 20 and 45 and married men between the ages of 20 and 35, while the second included married men between the ages of 35 and 45. The second class would only be called up after the first class had been exhausted.
The Provost Marshal’s office, headquartered in Washington, was charged with administering the draft. Acting on orders from Provost Marshal General James Fry, a veteran of First Bull Run and Shiloh, conscription agents began going door to door in each congressional district during May and June 1863 to register all draft-eligible men. As federal agents, the provost marshals had broad powers to arrest and pursue draft evaders. Recent immigrants who had declared their intention to become citizens had 60 days to leave the country or become eligible to be drafted. African Americans, because they were not legally citizens, were not subject to conscription.
Those men who were mentally or physically disabled, or who were the sole support of aged or widowed parents or orphaned children, were exempt from service. The bill’s most controversial provision allowed a draftee to escape service by providing a substitute or paying a $300 commutation fee. At a time when a New York laborer might make no more than $6 a week, paying a $300 commutation fee represented a financial impossibility. Attempts by some Republicans to justify the fee as a means of allowing businessmen to stay home and run production efforts vital to the Northern war effort rang hollow to most. The draft represented a dramatic departure from the American tradition of voluntary military service. “This law,” editorialized Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, “converts the Republic into one grand military dictatorship.”
City Under Siege: The New York Draft Riots - Warfare History Network

 

BY THEIR WORKS YOU WILL KNOW THEM

Rev. Jones, Confederate Army Chaplain, recalls in his memoirs his first meeting with General Lee:

“I can never forget my first interview and conversation with General Lee on religious matters. It was in February, 1864, while our army was. resting along the Rapidan, Rev. B. T. Lacy and myself went, as a committee of our Chaplains’ Association, to consult him in reference to the better observance of the Sabbath in the army, and especially to urge that something be done to prevent irreligious officers from converting Sunday into a grand gala day for inspections, reviews, etc.

“It was a delicate mission. We did not wish to appear as either informers or officious inter-meddlers, and yet we were very anxious to do something to further the wishes of those who sent us, and to put a stop to what was then a growing evil and, in some commands, a serious obstacle to the efficient work of the chaplain.

“The cordial greeting which he gave us, the marked courtesy and respect with which he listened to what we had to say, and expressed his warm sympathy with the object of our mission, soon put us at our ease. But as we presently began to answer his questions concerning the spiritual interests of the army, and to tell of that great revival which was then extending through the camps, and bringing thousands of our noble men to Christ, we saw his eye brighten and his whole countenance glow with pleasure; and as, in his simple, feeling words, he expressed his delight, we forgot the great warrior, and only remembered that we were communing with an humble, earnest Christian.”

Travis [><]

Source: CHRIST IN THE CAMP; RELIGION IN LEE’S ARMY, By Rev. J. Wm. Jones, 1888.
Free E-book Link: https://play.google.com/books/reader…
Photo: GENERAL LEE AS PRESIDENT OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE, NOW WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. (Lee Family Digital Archive)

 

The NARA blog, The Unwritten Record has a post titled "Mapping the Battle of Shiloh". It has some nice hand drawn maps of the battle. Worth a look if you love maps.

 

"ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered a long lost mass grave of US Civil War soldiers in Mississippi.
The collapse of a hill at the Vicksburg National Cemetery - a burial site for Union soldiers - in Mississippi led archaeologists to a shocking find. Buried deep below the now collapsed hill was the grave of 15 soldiers who had died during the US Civil War - which lasted from 1861-1865, when the Union of the North defeated the Confederates of the South.
Experts state further DNA testing may be required to ensure that each soldier's remains are identified.
According to a release from the Vicksburg National Military Park, the remains will be carefully removed and stored to ensure each set of the remains of each soldier are kept together"
www.express.co.uk/news/science/1279655/archaeology-news-civil-war-discovery-Mississippi-archaeologist-cemetery

 

Thread's looking a bit neglected.
"It has become an accepted historical fact that the South could not have won the American Civil War. The North’s advantages in finance, population, railroads, manufacturing, technology, and naval assets, among others, are often cited as prohibitively decisive.
Yes, the South had the advantage of fighting on the defensive, this with interior lines, but those two meager pluses appear dwarfed by the North’s overwhelming strategic advantages, hence defeat virtually a foregone conclusion. But if strategic advantage alone was always decisive in warfare, then names like Marathon, Cowpens, Rorke’s Drift, and Cannae would today be meaningless, and they are not.
Indeed, there are times when the decided underdog wins in war, and there was one day in 1862 when the stars aligned, so to speak, to offer the South a victory of such magnitude that the Civil War might have ended in its favor.
It was June 30, 1862, and for days the Federal Army of the Potomac had been in retreat from Richmond toward the James River in a series of actions later named The Seven Days.
Their leader, General George McClellan – believing erroneous intelligence reports and Confederate misinformation – was fleeing an enemy he fancied 200,000 strong, when in fact the Rebel army was no larger than his own, about 90,000.
The Yankees had already fought several sharp actions at Beaver Dam, Gaines’s Mill, and Savage Station. Now the Federals were marching in strung-out columns on the few roads leading south, while the Confederates had the advantage of a series of roads that ran east and west.
After attempts to break the Federal line at White Oak Swamp had failed, General Robert E. Lee, the recently appointed Confederate commander, glanced at his map and immediately grasped his good fortune, for the road network below the swamp appeared to offer a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The Federals were headed for Harrison’s Landing on the James, and Lee realized that, due to the lay of the land, he had one last chance to damage the Yankees before geography turned in their favor. The Confederates could use three east/west roads to attack the Federals, while at the small village of Glendale, the Yankees would be bottlenecked onto only one north/south route.
Thus, if Lee could take Glendale at the proper moment, he could slice the Federal Army in two, and the opportunity for their envelopment and destruction would be his. It was almost too good to be true.
Orders were issued immediately. Stonewall Jackson was to attack the Federal rear at White Oak Swamp, thus holding the entire Union rearguard in place. A division under Theophilus Holmes was to cannonade whatever Federals had managed to reach Malvern Hill, south of Glendale, likewise keeping the Yankees pinned down there.
Meanwhile, Longstreet and Huger’s divisions – a force of over 40,000 – would burst through the Federal retreat at Glendale, breaching their long line of march. It was a simple, even brilliant plan. It need only be implemented.
Adding substantially to Lee’s design, but unknown to him at the time, General McClellan, in what can only be described as a psychological and moral breakdown, had fled his army for the gunboat Galena on the James, appointing no second in command, thus leaving his troops behind to fight on their own hook.
Therefore, when Lee struck, the entire Federal Army – five full corps – would be leaderless and incapable of internal cooperation or defense, hence utterly ripe for destruction. If all went as planned, there was a good chance that by nightfall, June 30, the Army of the Potomac might no longer exist as a coherent fighting force, and the Army of the Potomac was President Lincoln’s primary fighting machine."
www.warhistoryonline.com/american-civil-war/civil-war.html

 

Remembered reading about the famous naval battle as a kid of the Monitor vs the Merrimack in 1862 aka Battle of Hampton Roads. It was pretty much a draw, but the days of wooden hulled ships was the beginning of being obsolete. Too bad there aren't any examples left to explore on...or are they?

The strange but deadly ironclad ships of the U.S. Civil War

 

Many, many years ago while visiting New Orleans a saw smallish Confederate ram on display, don't know if original or a reproduction. Not quite as long back I saw a story on a interactive 'ride' I believe at Vicksburg that allowed you to see from the perspective of a ironclad, including its sinking. And of course you can see remnants of the Monitor and Hunley.

 

The Seven Days was all very well, proably the most important campaign in the Eastern Theater.

But up until the Seven Days, the news for the South had been all bad, Jacksons Valley Campaign excluded, but that was small potatoes, not even equal to a medium sized civil war battle.

Lee spent the next three years trying to achieve a "Cannae", all to no avail, because the Norths manpower meant that all the ANV had to do to survive to fight another day was retreat, rebuild, and replace their commander with someone who would not retreat in the face of a tactical defeat.

A Cannae was practically impossible anyway.

One can justifiably make the claim that the back and forth nonsense in the Eastern theater drew away vital Confederate manpower and supplys from the absolutely critical Western Theater, where the war was won and lost. Lee threw away his tactical victories with two strategically pointless invasions of Northern territory, chasing a rainbow of Foreign Intervention, and trying to achieve what was impossible for his army, namely, to isolate and hold Washington DC. The Souith did not have the siege artillery to overcome Washington defenses, nor did it have the logistics or the recruitment power to hold on to any conquest it achieved in the North, let alone Washington.

Lee's campaigns only served to give the south false hopes as to achieving victory in the East, whilst the war was lost irretrievably at Shiloh, Corinth, Memphis, New Orleans, the Vicksburg campaign, the Atlanta campaign, and finally Sherman "Making Georgia howl" and then dishing out the same treatment but worse in South Carolina.

All Lees camapigns achieved was to lengthen the casualty lists and give the Southern press something to lionize Eastern generals over.

What did von Rundstedt say in a future war, but it could have applied so easily to Lee and Davis?

"Make peace you fools..."

 

Started watching The Civil War on PBS America last night, though missed most of the first episode and will need to catch up on i-player.
Good stuff though.

 

just started a heavy hardcover.
thanks Mr Mead.

difficult to read while sweating profusely onto pages ( its hot out).
Johnny Reb
Billy Yank.
Alexander Hunter.

takes a while to acclimate to the verbiage.
enjoying it so far.

 

This just got a brief mention on the Civil War.
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/fort-pillow-massacre