Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule, Part Two, Conclusion, of the Review, by Gene Kizer, Jr.

Posted on March 25, 2021April 19, 2021 by Gene Kizer, Jr. | 8 Comments

Part Two, Conclusion, of the Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me

A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point

By Gene Kizer, Jr.

[Publisher's Note: Last week Col. Jerry D. Morelock gave us Part One of this two-part review of Ty Seidule's book, Robert E. Lee and Me. Here is Part Two, the conclusion.]

A number of good historians have written reviews recently of Ty Seidule's book, Robert E. Lee and Me, including historian Phil Leigh who produced the video, Robert E. Lee and (Woke General) Please Like Me.

All of these reviews note that the tone of Robert E. Lee and Me is a desperate plea by Seidule for academia to "please PLEASE like me!" Academia is Seidule's new home. He has gone from the United States Military Academy at West Point, to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.¹

For Seidule to write such an embarrassing screed on his way into academia is understandable. Most of academia looks down on the military and military personnel. One of my professors at the College of Charleston in 1999, when I was a middle-age student, was Dr. Clark G. Reynolds. We became close friends. He told me on several occasions about the condescension of other faculty members toward military historians and the military itself.

Dr. Reynolds would know because he was a very fine naval historian who had written several important books and served on the faculty of the United States Naval Academy, and as Chair of the Department of Humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy.²

Robert E. Lee and Me is a non-history book that is so historically irrelevant it doesn't even have an index.

It was written by a virtue-signaling narcissist whose obvious goal is to make sure academia knows that he is woke and correct on all the leftist political issues of today that resonate in academia. They are the focus of way too many history departments that have hired social justice warriors instead of historians.

It is extremely propagandistic. It is peppered with leftist talking points, references to white supremacy, fights over Confederate monuments, the Emanuel AME Church murders in Charleston, Charlottesville, George Floyd's death, and other current issues that Seiudule uses to tar Robert E. Lee and Southern history.

Seidule is going from the most successful colorblind meritocracy in all of history --- the United States Military --- into academia, much of which is a racist, non-diversified, America-hating, free-speech hating, Marxist-loving indoctrination mill.

Academia has also given us the racist identity politics of Critical Theory, and the anti-white hate and racism of Critical Race Theory that now pollutes much of the country.

The problem with academia is that it is 100% liberal and aggressively politically correct meaning there is no real debate on anything. I know the actual percentage of liberal professors and administrators is closer to only 90%, but the other 10 are not going to speak up. Even the professors who disagree with leftist dogma don't dare say anything and risk losing tenure or having the mob show up at their office. The whole environment is sick, but Seidue's book will fit him right in.

My apologies to the open-minded folks still in academia who are appalled by racist identity politics, Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, attacks on free speech and all the rest of it. I know there are some good people in academia, but you know I am right about my description of most of it.

On the very first page of Robert E. Lee and Me, Seidule talks about a PragerU video he did in 2015 entitled "Was the Civil War About Slavery?". He states that he answers that question in the first 30 seconds:

Many people don't want to believe that the citizens of the southern states were willing to fight and die to preserve the morally repugnant institution of slavery. There has to be another reason, we are told. Well, there isn't. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Slavery was, by a wide margin, the single most important cause of the Civil War.³

No it wasn't.

Not even close.

In Seidule's entire book, he does not even mention, once, the economic interconnectedness of the North and South in 1860, yet that was the underlying factor in causing the war, not slavery.

Southerners seceded to govern themselves. They expected to live in peace, but Lincoln could not allow that and the reason was 100% economic.

If it wasn't, Northerners like The Chicago Times would not have said things like:

In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue,⁴ and these results would likely follow. If protection be wholly withdrawn from our labor, it could not compete, with all the prejudices against it, with the labor of Europe. We should be driven from the market, and millions of our people would be compelled to go out of employment.⁵ (Emphasis added.)

The Northern economy was largely based on manufacturing for the South and shipping Southern cotton. See Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank of the Hartford Courant (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005).

Without the South, the North was dead economically.

Without the North, the South, with 100% control of King Cotton, would ascend to dominance in North America, and Lincoln knew it.

Southerners were already paying 85% of the taxes yet 75% of the tax money was being spent in the North. Secession meant turning all that money inward, back on the South.⁶

Southerners wanted desperately to manufacture for themselves to get out from under the North's inferior goods that were greatly overpriced because of tariffs. In the meantime Southerners could buy from Europe at much lower prices than they had been paying.

The Morrill Tariff, passed by greedy, economically ignorant Northerners in the U.S. Congress after the Cotton States seceded, raised the rate for entry into the North to as high as 60%, as compared to the South's low 10% tariff for the operation of a small federal government in a States Rights nation. This threatened to shift the entire Northern shipping industry into the South overnight as Northern ship captains beat a path to the South where free trade reigned and protective tariffs were unconstitutional.

The loss to the North of their captive Southern manufacturing market, together with the damage to their shipping industry by the Morrill Tariff, was a one-two punch they would not be able to recover from. That's before even considering the loss of the 85% of tax revenue the South had been paying.

But the biggest thing driving Lincoln was the threat of European military aid. It would be for the South like French aid in the American Revolution was to the Colonists. The North would not be able to beat the South in that situation and, again, Lincoln knew it.

He needed to get his war started as quickly as he could so he could set up his blockade and chill European recognition of the South, because, with European recognition of Southern independence, it was game over for Lincoln.

So, Lincoln sent his hostile navy into the South to start the war, five different missions in April, 1861, to Fort Sumter in Charleston and Fort Pickens in Pensacola.⁷ The Charlestonians tried up to the last minute to avoid war and get Major Anderson to evacuate Fort Sumter but he did not feel like he could. He did, however, realize what Lincoln was doing and he answered a letter to Secretary of War Cameron and Lincoln stating:

. . . a movement made now when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country. . . . We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. . . . (Emphasis added.)

Anderson sees that the war "is to be thus commenced" by Abraham Lincoln, who had to hurry up and get it started or soon the South with European trade and military alliances would be unbeatable.

Abraham Lincoln announced his blockade before the smoke had cleared from the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Just before the Fort Sumter drama, Lincoln had committed his act of war in Pensacola by secretly landing troops in Fort Pickens and breaking a long-time armistice with the Confederates down there.

Lincoln was determined to get his war started as noted by several Northern newspapers including the Providence (R.I.) Daily Post which wrote, April 13, 1861, the day after the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter:

We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country. . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor.
"WHY?"
Providence (R.I.) Daily Post
April 13, 1861

It is immoral that Seidule completely ignores this overwhelming evidence in pushing his propaganda but that is the tactic of the left: Do like Goebbels said and repeat the big lie over and over, while ignoring everything else.

With everything Southerners had to gain economically by independence, it is absurd to say they seceded to protect slavery. That takes a lot of nerve anyway, since there were nine slave states in the Union when the guns of Fort Sumter sounded, soon to be increased by one with the admission of West Virginia.

There were only seven in the Confederacy.

On page 9, Seidule writes:

Eleven southern states seceded to protect and expand an African American slave labor system.

Again, Seidule is dead wrong.

As stated, there were nine slave states in the Union when the war started and only seven in the Confederacy. Four of the Union slave states had rejected secession at first: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. And in those four states lived 52.4% of white Southerners, a majority.

But those states immediately seceded when Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, and their reason was obviously federal coercion, not slavery. They believed, and rightfully so, that Lincoln's call to invade peaceful fellow states was unconstitutional and unconscionable. There was nothing in the Constitution in 1861 that required or allowed Lincoln and the Federal Government to force a sovereign state to do anything much less stay in a union they did not want. The Federal Government had no right to invade an American state, kill its citizens, and destroy its property.

The most widely quoted phrase in the secession debate in the South in the year prior to states calling conventions and actually voting to secede came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Of the seven Cotton States that first seceded and formed the Confederacy, only four issued declarations of causes for their secession. In fact, those four declarations of causes were the only four issued by any of the 13 states represented in the Confederate Government.

Missouri and Kentucky were represented in the Confederate Government though they did not officially secede. They remained as two of the six Union slave states the entire war; and Kentucky had slavery well after the war, until the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery kicked in, in December, 1865.

The four declarations of causes do mention slavery along with numerous other grievances including economic, constitutional, and the hatred used by the North to rally its votes in the election of 1860.

That hatred was the primary reason for Southern secession. Northerners had supported murder and terrorism against the South. They had financed John Brown and sent him into the South to murder Southerners. He had hacked pro-South settlers to death in front of their families in Kansas.

Lincoln's party also used Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis as a campaign document. They had hundreds of thousands of them printed and distributed coast to coast. It called for slave insurrection and the throats of Southerners to be cut in the night.

Would you allow people who hated your guts and were already at war with you to rule over you? What kind of stupid, cowardly people would do that? Certainly not Southerners.

But the simplistic Seidule characterizes Southern secession like the fake news media characterizes those who have serious concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election. Seidule writes:

Unwilling to accept the results of a fair, democratic election, they illegally seized U. S. territory, violently.

The truth of the 2020 election will come out eventually but there are certainly an enormous number of legitimate concerns that call into account Seidule's description of a "fair, democratic election" in 2020. The Texas law suit which was joined by 20 other states, lays out legion legitimate issues of corruption and constitutional violations that have never been adjudicated by a court. The Navarro Report also goes into great detail. Anybody with a brain knows that when mail in voting jumps from 5% to 35% at the same time that signature verification standards are lowered or dropped, it is a formula for disaster.

For over a year, Southerners debated seceding from the Union. After all, five times in U.S. history Northerners had threatened to secede from the Union so nobody questioned the right of secession, not even Horace Greeley, until he realize Southern secession would affect his money. Then he wanted war like the rest of them. Before that, he believe "Let our erring sisters go" and he editorialized in favor of the right of secession.

Three states had formally reserved the right of secession before acceding to the Constitution. They were New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Because all the other states accepted the reserved right of secession of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia, those states had it too, because all the states entered the Union as equals with the exact same rights.

The Stetson Law Review, a publication of the Stetson University College of Law, did a good article on the right of secession entitled "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession" by H. Newcomb Morse. He writes that the War Between the States did not prove that secession was illegal because:

[M]any incidents both preceding and following the War support the proposition that the Southern States did have the right to secede from the Union. Instances of nullification prior to the War Between the States, contingencies under which certain states acceded to the Union, and the fact that the Southern States were made to surrender the right to secession all affirm the existence of a right to secede . . .⁸

He adds that the Constitution's "failure to forbid secession" and amendments dealing with secession that were proposed in Congress as Southern states were seceding strengthened his argument that:

[T]he Southern States had an absolute right to secede from the Union prior to the War Between the States.⁹

Of course they did.

How can you believe in the Declaration of Independence and governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and not believe a people can leave a government that has become tyrannical and oppressive. That was the essence of the Revolutionary War and the foundation of our country.

Northern hate, not unlike the hate we have in America today, drove the South from the Union, that and supporting terrorists and murderers like John Brown and encouraging mass murder in the South like Republicans did with Hinton Helper's book.

The one thing about American history that you can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the North did not go to war to end slavery. They went to war because they faced economic annihilation when the Southern States seceded and took their captive manufacturing market and their tariff revenue with them.

The Corwin Amendment which passed the Northern Congress and was ratified by several states would have left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. That was the true feeling of the North and Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and it proves the North's motive was not to end slavery. And there is much much more irrefutable proof.

A near-unanimous resolution entitled the War Aims Resolution established early-on what the North was fighting for. It was passed by the Northern Congress in July, 1861, three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter:

. . . That this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions [slavery] of the States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution [which allowed and protected slavery], and to preserve the Union. . . .¹⁰

It is unquestionable and irrefutable that the North did not go to war to end slavery.

They went to war because they wanted to dominate the country economically. Northern wealth and power were all dependent on the Union. That's why Lincoln said over and over it was about preserving the Union, not ending slavery.

That puts Seidule's Union Army in a pretty bad light. Lincoln's troops were down here in the South. Southern troops were not up there in the North menacing any Northern city.

Why didn't Lincoln just remove his troops who were on sovereign South Carolina and Florida soil? If he had done that there would have been no war, no 750,000 deaths and over a million maimed.

The hateful Seidule argued against memorializing West Point graduates who fought for the Confederacy. He writes:

I believed we should exclude them. After all, they died fighting against the United States. I argued stridently that West Point should honor only those who fought for the Constitution we swear to support and defend. West Point's mottos of "Duty, Honor, Country" (especially country) would seem to argue forcefully for exclusion of those dedicated to the country's destruction.¹¹

Southerners were certainly not dedicated to the destruction of the Union. No Confederate EVER said any such absurdity. The United States could have easily continued into the future as a major power on this earth but with just a few less states.

Seidule talks about support of the Constitution but Northern violations of the Constitution are one of the many legitimate grievances Southerners had and so stated many times. Many Northerners believed there was a higher power than the U.S. Constitution they should adhere to (and it always just happened to increase their political power).

Other Northerners like William Lloyd Garrison believed the Constitution was a "covenant with death" and "an agreement with Hell."

William H. Seward, Sr., Lincoln's secretary of state, asserted in 1850 that “[…] there is a Higher Law than the Constitution.”

None of these self-righteous Northerners in the antebellum era ever proposed a plan to end slavery such as they had used in the North with compensated, gradual emancipation. That is how all nations ended slavery and it would have been easy to do but Northerners were not about to spend their hard-earned sweatshop money to free the slaves in the South who would then go North and be job competition.

Lincoln did talk about it time to time but Lincoln's primary idea for dealing with slavery was to send black people back to Africa or into a place where they could survive. This was Lincoln's plan his entire life. See Colonization after Emancipation, Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011).

In Chapter 7, page 238, Seidule writes:

Lee acknowledged defeat but felt neither he nor the white South had done anything wrong. In his famous General Orders No. 9, Lee bid his soldiers farewell. He stated his version of what the war meant and why it ended, initiating the Lost Cause myth. The Army of Northern Virginia "succumbed to overwhelming numbers and resources," a kind of code criticizing the immigrant army of the United States supported by unsavory businessmen and ruthless politicians.

To prove how utterly disingenuous Seidule is, below is Gen. Lee's General Orders, No. 9. Compare what Lee actually said with what Seidule wrote above. See if you can find "a kind of code criticizing the immigrant army of the United States supported by unsavory businessmen and ruthless politicians" in Gen. Lee's short, heartfelt address. This, alone, proves what a fraud Seidule's entire book is.

General Orders, No. 9
Robert E. Lee's Farewell Address to
The Army of Northern Virginia
Hd. Qrs. Army of N. Va.
General Orders
No. 9
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.
R.E. Lee, Genl.¹²

Lee was almost always outnumbered and outgunned.

Grant himself admitted this when he wrote Secretary of War Edwin Stanton July 22, 1865 to explain how he won the war:

The resources of the enemy, and his numerical strength, were far inferior to ours. . . I therefore determined . . . to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to him but . . . submission. . . "¹³

The numbers showing the Union advantage over Lee are startling. Here's one example. Phil Leigh writes:

Grant began his forty-day campaign with an approximate two-to-one numerical advantage. He had 124,000 troops compared to 66,000 for Lee. At the end, Grant had suffered 55,000 casualties, which was also about twice those of Lee. Losses for the two sides during the battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor correspond closely to the federal disasters at Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg.¹⁴

The North had four times the white population of the South. While slaves helped the Southern economy, and many served as Confederate soldiers, they were not a big source of manpower.

The North had a functioning government, an army, navy, merchant marine, sound financial system. They had a pipeline to the retched refuse of the world who came here often with only the shirts on their backs to find the Union Army recruiter with bonuses in hand, food and clothing.

Over 25% of the Union Army was foreign born but as James McPherson points out, over 30% of the North was foreign born. The North was a wild busting-at-the-seams society. The scenes in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York are historically accurate.

Some speculate that because of the wildness caused by massive immigration during the 1850s that the North would have had a revolution if not for the western lands where they could send their surplus population. "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country!" said Horace Greeley.

So Lincoln starting a war knowing he had four times the white population of the South plus unlimited numbers of people verses the South's impossibility of adding more people because of the Union blockade, is despicable but understandable. The Republican Party was new, and what is better than a war to give it power, money and solidify it in the political life of a nation.

Lincoln certainly figured it would be a short war but he found otherwise, that a people fighting for independence will fight until there are oceans of blood covering their sacred soil, and until their society is completely destroyed.

The Northern manufacturing for armaments, ammunition, guns and uniforms was unlimited while it was non-existent in the South. Seidule's Union soldiers were always well-fed and had the latest weaponry but Confederates were always hungry, cold and often barefoot.

There were 19 marine engine factories in the North. There were zero in the South.

Northern society throughout the war barely noticed a difference in their day to day lives while Southerners suffered at the hands of Seidule's barbaric animals in the South raping, pillaging, murdering. All of that did go on and has been well-documented, as in every war. The great British historian, Antony Beevor, estimates that 2,000,000 German women were raped by the Russian army at the end of World War II as it conquered Germany. Union soldiers raping black women is especially documented in the Official Records.

Gen. Lee often could not do things on the battlefield because he did not have the resources. That was never a problem for the North.

The Federal ration of grain for their horses was ten pounds a day per horse. Lee wrote this to President Davis August 24, 1863:

Nothing prevents my advancing now [against Mead] but the fear of killing our artillery horses. They are a much reduced, and the hot weather and scarce forage keeps them so. The cavalry also suffer and I fear to set them at work. Some days we get a pound of corn per horse and some days more; some none. Our limit is five per day per horse. You can judge of our prospects. . . . Everything is being done by me that can be to recruit the horses. I have been obliged to diminish the number of guns in the artillery, and fear I shall have to lose more.¹⁵

The South faced the same problem with railroads. Of the 30,000-plus miles that existed nationwide in 1861, 70% was in the North. There were 21,300 miles of track in the North and Midwest with 45,000 miles of telegraph wire while in the South there was only 9,022 miles with 5,000 miles of telegraph wire. The South had a much larger territory to cover with much smaller resources.¹⁶

Ramsdell writes:

For more than a year before the end came the railroads were in such a wretched condition that a complete breakdown seemed always imminent. As the tracks wore out on the main lines they were replenished by despoiling the branch lines; but while the expedient of feeding the weak roads to the more important afforded the latter some temporary sustenance, it seriously weakened the armies, since it steadily reduced the area from which supplies could be drawn.¹⁷

So, again, Gen. Lee's "overwhelming resources" of the North is correct and Seidule is wrong. The Lost Cause Myth is not a myth. It is simply the Southern view of what happened, and it is both accurate and truthful.

On the other hand, the Righteous Cause Myth of the North is truly a myth --- no, not myth, LIE. Their "righteous cause" was their money, power, and the lust to rule the country.

Lysander Spooner, who was an abolitionist in Massachusetts, agreed:

On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.¹⁸

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a West Point graduate and true American hero, is a much better representative of West Point and the United States Army than the virtue-signaling "please, academia, like me!" of Ty Seidule. Eisenhower is a much better judge of honor and character.

Gen. Eisenhower, 1st Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in World War II, later president of the United States for eight years, had a picture of Gen. Robert E. Lee on his wall in the White House his entire time there.

Eisenhower speaks with some of the 101st Airborne Division June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.

Like President John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower had great respect for Gen. Lee and his cause, and he appreciated Lee's efforts to bind up the nation's wounds after our bloodiest war.

On August 1, 1960, a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, wrote an angry letter to President Eisenhower excoriating him for having that picture of Lee in his White House office.

Scott wrote: "I do not understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me. / The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being held as one of our heroes."¹⁹

President Eisenhower wrote back on the 9th:

Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower²⁰

Robert E. Lee, oil on canvas, by Edward Calledon Bruce, 1865.

Seidule favors the term "civil war" for our conflict of 1861 to '65. He writes:

When I hear 'the War of Northern Aggression' or 'the War Between the States,' I know a Confederate sympathizer or argument against equal rights will soon follow.

Gen. Eisenhower used "War Between the States" in his letter, above, and in that one letter is more truthful, accurate American history than in Seidule's entire book.

Seidule's book, as many who have reviewed it conclude, is nothing but a desperate supplication for academia to please like him.

Can you imagine Gen. Eisenhower or Gen. Lee lowering himself to the level needed to write such a book?

Seidule is a writer of woke, politically correct propaganda, which means he will fit into academia like a glove.

NOTES:

¹Hamilton College appears to be a charming, small liberal arts college founded in 1793 and named for Alexander Hamilton who was on the first Board of Trustees when it was Hamilton-Oneida Academy. Hamilton.edu, accessed 3-22-21.

² Dr. Reynolds also taught at the University of Maine, and was History Departmental Chair at the College of Charleston (SC). Among his books are Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires; Navies in History; History and the Sea; The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy; and On the Warpath in the Pacific: Admiral Jocko Clark and the Fast Carrier. His complete bio is at www.WorldHistory101-102.com. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_G._Reynolds.

³ Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me, A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2020), 1. Seidule did not capitalize "southern" in his quotation. I always capitalize it and Northern, as well as North and South, which are obviously proper names that should be capitalized.

⁴ See also Footnote #47 on page 44 of Gene Kizer, Jr., Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument. (Charleston, SC: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) for the difference between tariff for revenue and protective tariff. What is meant by "a tariff for revenue" is a small tariff to raise a small amount of revenue to pay for the operation of a small federal government such as the government of the Confederate States of America. Southerners had always wanted free trade with the world. They believed in as small a tariff as possible. Contrast a small tariff for revenue with the huge protective tariffs the North loved that were punitive and meant to deter free trade so that one would be forced to buy from the North at jacked-up rates that were not determined by market competition but were jacked-up to the level of the tariff. The tariff is the perfect thing to contrast the differences in North and South. The moment the South was out of the Union, they made protective tariffs unconstitutional while the North passed the astronomical Morrill Tariff. The Morrill Tariff prevented the recovery of the Northern economy and made war Abraham Lincoln's only choice to save the North from economic annihilation. Of course, Lincoln's choice resulted in 800,000 deaths and over a million wounded out of a population of approximately 31 million.

⁵ Daily Chicago Times, "The Value of the Union," December 10, 1860, in Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession, Vol. II, 573-574.

⁶ Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 103.

⁷ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 142.

⁸ Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," 420.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ The War Aims Resolution is also known by the names of its sponsors, Representative John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee: the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, or just the Crittenden Resolution. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives July 22, 1861, and the Senate July 25, 1861. There were only two dissenting votes in the House and five in the Senate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden-Johnson_Resolution, accessed March 29, 2014.

¹¹ Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me, 4.

¹² Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), Vol. 4, 154-55.

¹³ Phil Leigh, Civil War Chat, "Ty Seidule's Falsehoods About Grant and Lee", https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/ty-seidules-falsehoods-about-grant-and-lee/, accessed 3-25-21.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Charles W. Ramsdell, "General Robert E. Lee's Horse Supply, 1862-1865" in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians (Charleston: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2017), 250. The quotation is from the OR, ser. I, v XXIX, pt. 2, 664-665.

¹⁶ "Railroads In The Civil War: Facts and Statistics (North vs South)," https://www.american-rails.com/civil.html, accessed 3-23-21.

¹⁷ Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians, 300.

¹⁸ Lysander Spooner, "No Treason. No. 1, Introductory," Boston, by "the Author, No. 14 Bromfield Street. 1867".

¹⁹ Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee, August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

²⁰ Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in "Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee," August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule, Part One of a Two-Part Review

Posted on March 17, 2021December 5, 2022 by Gene Kizer, Jr. | 6 Comments

Part One of a Two-Part Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me

A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. - Original post was March 17, 2021. Updated December 5, 2022:

I am honored to present Col. Jerry D. Morelock's review, below, as Part One of a two-part review of Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me. Next week will be Part Two, by me.

Seidule is on the naming commission which came about because of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who introduced in 2021 in the Senate Armed Services Committee, a resolution to change the names of the military bases in the South named for Confederates. We won two World Wars from those bases, which are around a century old. They were named for Confederates as part of the reconciliation of our country and most, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, are legendary.

Warren's legislation has morphed into the changing of over a thousand historically inspired names of streets, monuments, and patches making it an unbelievable waste of taxpayer money at a time when some of our servicemen and women are on foodstamps because they can't make ends meet.

Now, Seidule and the naming commission have concluded that they need to demolish the 108 year old Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which symbolizes the reconciliation and reunification of North and South after the War Between the States.

The memorial, entitled "New South" and created by internationally renowned Jewish sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, who was a Confederate soldier and is buried at the base of his monument, was the idea of Union soldier and later president William McKinley.

McKinley said that every grave, Union and Confederate, was a testament to American valor.

Congress and two other presidents, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, as well as veterans North and South supported the Confederate Memorial but what difference does history and tradition make to a Woke political commission out to erase history. Their standard is "presentism," the application of the goofy standards of today rather than peer-reviewed and debated scholarly history.

Scroll down for a link to an excellent video by Bode Lang entitled "The Civil War Was Not for Slavery," which tears apart Seidule and the Prager University video he made.

Frankly, I have lost all respect for Prager University. They might present some aspects of American history well, but they are false and unhistorical to promote Seidule as a truthful expert on Southern history.

Lang makes Seidule look foolish by showing one clip after another of Seidule's cherry-picked "history" then thoroughly refuting each with equal, and in most cases, better, sources.

Lang proves Seidule's dishonesty, politicization and falsification of history.

Below, is Col. Morelock's bio followed by his excellent assessment of Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me.]

JERRY D. MORELOCK, PhD, Colonel, U.S. Army, ret., is a 1969 West Point graduate who served 36 years in uniform. A decorated Vietnam War combat veteran, his assignments included Pentagon tours on the Department of the Army staff and in the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate, Joint Chiefs of Staff. His final active duty assignment was head of the history department of the US Army Command & General Staff College. An award-winning author, he has published several books and hundreds of journal and magazine articles. His books include Generals of the Bulge: Leadership in the U.S. Army’s Greatest Battle (Stackpole, 2015) and (as a contributing author) Pershing’s Lieutenants: American Military Leadership in World War I edited by David Zabecki and Douglas Mastriano (Osprey, 2020).

After Army retirement, he was Executive Director of the Winston Churchill Memorial & Library at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri (2000-2004) and is adjunct faculty professor of history and political science at Westminster. He was Editor in Chief of Armchair General magazine (2004-2015), and currently is Senior Editor/Senior Historian for three military history magazines.

Don’t Be Fooled by Ty Seidule's "West Point Professor/Brigadier General" Misleading Credentials

by Jerry D. Morelock

Lest any potential buyer/reader of this book be swayed by the seemingly "impressive military credentials" of the author, please let me explain what those credentials really comprise and represent when the author acquired them by being a former 'permanent professor' and 'department head' in the academic department of the US Military Academy at West Point.

First of all, Ty Seidule did not earn his rank of 'Brigadier General' by being competitively selected by a Department of the Army promotion selection board from among his peers, but, per standard procedure for retiring USMA academic department heads, was merely given that general officer¹ rank upon his retirement from military service (that is, as he exited military service, he was 'awarded' that rank -- essentially like a long-serving corporate executive would get a 'gold watch' as he walked out the door).

Seidule never served on active duty as a 'general officer' commanding a tactical unit (apparently, based on his bio, he commanded a tank platoon – a Lieutenant’s command – and his highest unit command appears to be an armored battalion – a Lieutenant Colonel’s command); so some of the reviews on this book asking, "Was he a warrior general or was he not?" sadly miss the point because they are simply unaware of where Seidule's 'general' rank came from, and not their fault -- Seidule was never a general until he retired.

Second, Seidule's author bio emphasizes that he served on active duty for "36 years" (coincidentally, the same as I did) but also notes that he spent "two decades" teaching history at West Point – so, immediately, that means Seidule had, at most, 16 years of 'real' military service in the 'real' Army -- serving on the staff & faculty at West Point is hardly 'real' military service, as it is a completely artificial environment in every possible way (how do I know? my own 36 years of service included eight years at USMA, four as a cadet, graduating in 1969, and four more years later serving on the USMA staff & faculty).

Being a 'permanent professor/department head' at West Point means serving in the artificial, hermetically-sealed environment that exists at the Military Academy, completely separate and distinct from the day-to-day, rough and tumble 'real' Army.

The bottom line is that the title 'Brig. Gen.' given to a former USMA permanent professor/department head does NOT carry the same weight and prestige as an Army officer EARNING that rank on his own military merits -- it was merely given to Seidule for 'staying the course' for 20 years as a West Point professor.

And his claimed '36 years' of military service is really only, at best, 16 years in the REAL ARMY when his 20 years in an academic department at USMA is factored into his overall service.

I only present this information to alert readers that there is a profound difference between 'real' US Army brigadier generals and those who, like Seidule, are simply awarded that rank upon retirement; plus when his claimed 36 years of military service has the 20 years serving at West Point removed, Seidule's actual military service is about the same as that of an Army Major.

His book on Lee is nothing more than his revisionist 'sucking up' to his new civilian academic buddies, ingratiating himself into the camaraderie of his new 'Woke' buds and has nothing of any historical revelation to share in this so-called 'book.'

It's not a researched, thoughtful book based on new information or new evaluation of previous information. In fact, it ignores Lee’s significant post-Civil War efforts to bring the divided nation back together – which was Lee’s “finest hour” as, for only one example, historian Charles Bracelen Flood revealed in his book Lee: The Final Years.

Seidule's book seems merely to be his own 'Hey! I'm so, so WOKE now!' confessional, but disingenuously using his 'BG' rank, his misleading ’36 years’ service, and touting his 'so what?' West Point service to try to trick potential readers/buyers into spending actual money on his worthless book based on his misleading ‘military credentials.’

Don't waste your money.

Click Here for Bode Lang's excellent video,
"The Civil War Was Not for Slavery."

Click Here for a short video by the Abbeville Institute on the
Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Here is the caption beneath Abbeville's video:

Nov 9, 2022

The Naming Commission has recommended the removal of the Arlington Confederate Monument. This would not only be a historical travesty and a barbaric leveling of art, it would lay waste to the very message the monument was intended to convey: fraternity, healing, and reconciliation. Tell your Representative you want to stop this heinous act of cultural destruction.

Next Week:

Part Two of a Two-Part Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me, A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

NOTES:

¹ The term “general officer” means an officer of the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps serving in or having the grade of general, lieutenant general, major general, or brigadier general. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/101#b_4, Accessed 3-17-21.

Our Confederate Ancestors: The Legendary Dalton Snowball Fight; and Sticks, Fists and Rocks at Orange Courthouse

Posted on March 10, 2021March 11, 2021 by Gene Kizer, Jr. | No Comments

A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.

H. McInnis of Lakeland, Fla. in 1895 wrote: "Allow me to say something about that grand snowball battle we had at Dalton, Georgia. In the early morning there was light skirmishing between our Brigade (Findley's) and Tyler's Brigade across the road. We saw that Tyler's men were going to charge us so we went to work and soon had breastworks built out of snow and in a short while the warning was given: 'Look out, boys, they are coming!' Then that blood chilling, on one side, and soul-cheering Rebel Yell was raised, and such a scene was hardly ever witnessed before. Tyler's men had the best of it and took possession of our quarters. Then we concentrated both brigades and charged and captured Gen. Walker's Brigade over another hill, and so on all day. Long live the Veteran!"

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. III, No. 2, Feb. 1895

The Legendary Dalton Snowball Fight;

and

Sticks, Fists and Rocks at Orange Courthouse

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. :
There are several accounts of massive snowball fights involving thousands of Confederate troops with battle flags flying, formations, horses, charges, and prisoners, while they were hunkered down for the winter in different places during the War Between the States. There are some drawings in the Library of Congress.

The Dalton, Georgia snowball fight is famous and they had some hilarious things going on! They had Gen. Patrick Cleburne carrying a fence rail since that was a known punishment of his for slackers.

The second account, featured below, at Orange Courthouse, Virginia, got serious when some soldiers used rocks as well as snowballs dipped in water and packed tight to make them like ice balls. Their shocked opponents captured the provocateurs then counterattacked and quickly the passions of actual battle ensued! There were several serious injuries and some bitterness that "took time and comradeship, battles, privation, and suffering to destroy."]

Snowball Battle at Dalton
by S. R. Watkins

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. II, No. 7, July, 1894

IT WAS IN THE SPRING OF 1864, about the 22d of March; a heavy snow had fallen during the night; the hills and valleys were covered with the flaky white. Joe Johnston's army was in winter quarters at Dalton. Two regiments of infantry were camped near each other, and in a spirit of fun, began in somewhat military order to throw snowballs at each other.

The effect was electrical, boyhood frolics were renewed, and the air was full of flying snowballs. Brigades and divisions were soon involved, and such a scene was never before witnessed on earth. Many thousands of men were engaged in a snowball battle.

Caption should say 1864, not 1863.

It began in the morning; generals, colonels, captains, and privates were all mixed up. Private soldiers became commanders and the generals were simply privates, and the usual conditions were reversed. The boys had captured the generals' horses and swords and were galloping through the flying snowballs giving orders and whooping things up generally. Verbal orders to different portions of the field were sent on flying steeds.

Library of Congress: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.21383. Dalton, Georgia, March 22, 1864.

Gen. Patrick Cleburne was noted for his strict discipline, and whenever he caught a straggler from any regiment in the army, he would make him carry a fence rail. Well, the boys had captured "Old Pat," when some fellow yelled out: "Arrest that soldier, and make him carry a fence rail."

The surgeon of our regiment was calm and even-tempered, but would get out of patience with a lot of whining fellows who would report on the sick list day after day. The doctor would look at his tongue, feel his pulse, and say: "Well, there is not much the matter with him; just put him on light duty."

They captured the old doctor, and a soldier had hold of each leg, another his head, and others his arms, and as he was brought in as terribly wounded, Fred Domin ran to him, felt his pulse, looked wise, and said: "Well, there is not much the matter with him; just put him on light duty."

This same doctor was noted for having had the same affliction as the soldier who complained. If a man went to him with the toothache, he would say: "Shucks, that's nothing; I've had the toothache a thousand times."

One day Kenan Hill got a bug in his ear and went to the doctor, hallooing in great agony. The doctor said : "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had a thousand bugs in my ears." One day a soldier got a nail in his foot, and the doctor said: "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had a nail in my foot a thousand times."

The doctor had one of his eyes nearly knocked out by a snowball when Fred Domin ran up to him again and said: "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had my eye knocked out a thousand times."

There was a great deal of this kind of fun and take-off in imitation of some general or other officer, but we were kept too busy throwing snowballs to take it all in at the time. Infantry boys would capture cannon and caissons and take the horses from the artillery and go dashing through the crowd. They would also hitch to the caissons and dash off somewhere else. This snowball battle lasted all day.

Library of Congress, from https://www.historynet.com/deep-freeze-fight.htm.

A Battle with Snowballs.
by Thomas Perrett, Faison, N. C.

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. XXVI, No. 7,
July, 1918

AFTER THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, July 1-3, 1863, I was laid up for repairs for about four months; and after a perilous trip to Richmond and about thirty days in Camp Winder Hospital, I was granted a furlough to visit my home in Central North Carolina. Remaining there till in the early part of November, I returned to the Army of Northern Virginia, finding the 26th North Carolina Regiment, to which I belonged, located near Orange Courthouse. I found the regiment in much better shape than I had expected after the great loss sustained at Gettysburg. Many of the wounded had returned to duty, and quite a number of new recruits had been added, which gave it much of its old-time life and morale.

We were soon on the move and bivouacked at several places during the next months, our moves usually caused by raids of the Federals. During the latter part of November the Federals crossed the Rappahannock in considerable force, advanced up the turnpike in the direction of Orange Courthouse, and were met by the Confederate forces at a place we afterwards called Locust Grove. No regular engagement, only skirmishes, took place, and after a few days they retreated and left us in possession of the field.

During our stay, however, we had to be constantly on picket duty, and on one occasion I had charge of a part of the picket line in the woods about five hundred yards from the Federal line. While on duty there one day a flock of wild turkeys got between the Federal and Confederate lines, which excited the boys very much. As the turkeys came near our line the boys turned loose a volley at them. The turkeys then made a get-away in the direction of the Federal line. In a few minutes the Federals let loose a volley, and the turkeys again headed in our direction. This sport was kept up for some time. One of our boys finally killed one of the turkeys. This sport was positively against orders, but so many of us were in it that no one got punished.

The latter part of December our camp was moved to a large wood about four miles northeast of Orange Courthouse, and we were assured that we would have this as winter quarters. The weather was extremely cold, and we had no tents; so it was up to us to do the best we could under the circumstances, I selected three partners, and we at once went to work to build us a "shack." The ground was frozen hard, and we were too cold to sleep. The moon was shining brightly, and we began cutting poles and setting them up, and by day we had the structure ready for the roof and chimney; and by night the roof was on, a stick chimney built, and the cracks daubed to keep out the cold. We moved in and had a regular "house-warming." We remained here through the winter, but were called out occasionally to meet some threatened raid or do picket duty on the North Anna River.

Library of Congress: Abandoned Confederate camp, 1861-1862.

A little friction had developed between the brigades of General Kirkland and General Cook, which were located near each other, the whole trouble starting by making raids on each other in fun, which had grown into bad feeling. The boys must have something up all the time to keep them in good humor, and about everything was tried that would afford any sport,. When not on drill they would play cards, drafts, make and fly kites, and occasionally made a raid at night.

Early in 1864, at the first heavy snowfall, a challenge was passed for a battle royal between the brigades, snowballs to be the weapons. The challenge was duly accepted, and the rules of battle agreed upon. The brigades, under command of their respective officers, met in a large field, facing each other on opposite sides of a ravine. At a given signal the battle began in earnest.

At first the men contented themselves with using ordinary snowballs, and all was fun and frolic; but the battle had not progressed very far before we discovered that quite a number of Cook's men had brought along their haversacks and filled them with snowballs dipped in water and pressed as hard as a ball of ice. On making this discovery we captured a number of them and relieved them of their haversacks and snowballs. As the contest waxed more animated, each side struggling for victory, the passions of the combatants became aroused, and the excitement of actual battle seized them. Hard substances, frequently stones, were used with telling effect, in a number of cases doing serious damage.

At one stage of the battle about twenty-five of Cook's men made a charge to capture the colors of the 26th Regiment and were met at the colors by about an equal number of our men. The fight that followed was terrific for a few minutes. We broke the flagstaff into several pieces, fought with these pieces, fists, or anything we could get, but finally routed them and carried off the colors in triumph. I happened to be one of the men engaged in the fight over the colors, but escaped without any serious damage. Colonel McRae, in command of one of the regiments, was pulled from his horse and roughly handled; and the combat ended only with the exhaustion of the men, each side agreeing that it should be considered a drawn battle.

This affair caused some bitterness between the brigades which it took time and comradeship, battles, privation, and suffering to destroy. This battle was not compulsory with the men, but most of them engaged in it for the fun. On returning to camp a few slackers who had refused to take part in the fun got to guying the boys about being such fools, when they were taken down and covered up in the show as a "leveler."

Deo Vindice!

The War Through Women’s Eyes, Part II

Posted on March 4, 2021March 6, 2021 by Gene Kizer, Jr. | No Comments

"The next day Mrs. McDonald went into Winchester to aid in caring for the wounded. She wrote: "I wanted to be useful, and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint. It was that of a Captain Jones of a Tennessee regiment. A ball had struck him on the side of the face, taking both eyes and the bridge of his nose. It was a frightful spectacle. I stood as the surgeon explained how, and why he might be saved, and the poor fellow not aware of the awful sight his eyeless face was, with the fearful wound still fresh and bleeding, joined in the talk, and, raising his hand put his finger on his left temple and said, 'Ah! if they had only struck me there, I should have troubled no one.' The surgeon asked me if I would wash his wound. . . .^"

From Cornelia McDonald's
A Diary with Reminiscences of the War
and Refugee Life

Part II of

The War Through Women's Eyes

by Douglas Southall Freeman

Chapter VI of
The South to Posterity,¹1939.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This is the final part, Part II, of Freeman's Chapter VI. These have all been riveting and well-written accounts of the war. The passages from Sarah Morgan (later Sarah Morgan Dawson) show the humiliation and bitterness for her family when forced by circumstances to take the oath of allegiance to the Yankees in New Orleans while two brothers were still in the field, both of whom were soon killed. Of ten regiments of Louisianians -- approximately 10,000 men -- only 750 made it home.

Sarah Morgan later married the former English writer, Francis Warrington Dawson, who was a captain in the Confederate Army and later editor of the Charleston News and Courier.

The News and Courier became today's Post and Courier, which is an insufferable politically correct rag that is 100% responsible for destroying the monument to South Carolina's most famous native son and American Founding Father, John C. Calhoun. It had stood on Marion Square in downtown Charleston for 125 years.

The monument said simply "Truth, Justice, and the Constitution" but that was too patriotic for the woke Post and Courier, which has celebrated their destruction of this huge piece of Charleston history since the summer. Their own paper said the Calhoun statue was "as good as any in the City of Rome" but they destroyed it anyway because woke hate knows no bounds.

Since the 1930s when The South to Posterity was published, much more from the perspective of women and about women in the War Between the States has come to light. Many new books have been written.

I have inserted 14 outstanding illustrations, mostly photographs. Again, the style of the citation and content of each note are Douglas Southall Freeman's, verbatim.]

MRS. CHESNUT'S FRIEND, the President's Lady, never kept a diary for any length of time, if at all, but in her Jefferson Davis . . . A Memoir by his Wife² she included much that was lively and autobiographical. The book was not enthusiastically welcomed in the South for reasons that went back to the early summer of 1861, when Mrs. Davis first came to the new Confederate capital. All Richmond, especially all feminine Richmond, scrutinized Varina Howell Davis with polite and perhaps with cold curiosity. Virginians knew, of course, of Mr. Davis' pathetic³ early romance, which ended speedily in the death of his bride. She had been a daughter of General, then Colonel, Zachary Taylor and hence a granddaughter of Virginia and a cousin of many F. F. V.'s. Tradition had it that she had been very lovely. As for the second Mrs. Davis---well, her grandfather on her father's side had been Governor of New Jersey and her mother's line included that of the Virginia Kempes, so there could be no question about her social standing. At the same time, echoes had come from Washington of some sharp passages at arms between her and certain other ladies. She had spoken with a candor almost cruel and again she had smiled and had been politic when there had been a dangerous gleam in her fine eyes. While naturally she would be received with the respect and attention due the wife of the idolized President, it might be well to be a little careful at first.

Varina Howell Davis, First Lady of the Confederate States, in Frank Leslie's Illus. Newsp, 1862.

Wedding photo in 1845 of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell. She was 18, he was 37.

So reasoned Richmond women. Nor did they change their minds when first they saw her. She was somewhat above the average height and in the physical amplitude of the forties. Her face could not be accounted beautiful, but neither was it unattractive. She carried her head well and dressed her hair simply and most gracefully. Her neck and shoulders were fine. There was nothing in her manner that could be called forbidding; and if quick friendship was discouraged, this was done with much adroitness by a calm glance and an unsmiling mouth that showed she was conscious of her position and indisposed to risk it by hasty professions.

Mrs. Jefferson Davis, portrait, sometime between 1860 and 1870.

President and Mrs. Davis thought it would be proper to hold receptions at frequent intervals and to throw them open to the public, instead of confining them to invited guests. It was felt that a general invitation might bring to the President's house gentlemanly officers and soldiers of whose presence in Richmond the Davises otherwise might not know. Besides, it was the democratic thing to do. At first, Richmond society was a bit aghast at the thought of levees open to all, but after natives learned that interesting Cabinet members, Congressmen, Senators and distinguished soldiers were to be met there, the city's best attended. By her manner at these receptions, Mrs. Davis rose swiftly to admiration and, in many cases, to affection. Like her husband, she had the same friendly greeting for every guest, regardless of station, with neither effusion nor condescension.

When Constance Cary was the brilliant Mrs. Burton Harrison and could look back through decades with all the perspective of time and all the experience of social life, she could say "the lady of the Confederate White House, while not always sparing of witty sarcasms upon those who had affronted her, could be depended upon to conduct her salon with extreme grace and conventional ease." Again, she wrote, Mrs. Davis "was decreed to be a woman of warm heart and impetuous tongue, witty and caustic, with a sensitive nature underlying all; a devoted wife and mother."⁴

T. C. de Leon probably described Mrs. Davis with accuracy when he said: "She was politician and diplomatist in one, where necessity demanded, but . . . Varina Howell Davis preferred the straight road to the tortuous bypath. She was naturally a frank though not a blunt woman, and her bent was to kindliness and charity. Sharp tongue she had, when set that way and the need came to use it; and her wide knowledge of people and things sometimes made that use dangerous to offenders. Mrs. Davis had a sense of humor painfully acute, and the unfitness of things provoked laughter with her rather than rage. That the silly tales of her sowing dissension in the Cabinet and being behind the too frequent changes in the heads of the government are false, there seems small reason to doubt. Surely, in social matters, she moved steadily and not slowly, from at least coolness to the warm friendship of the best women of conservative Richmond and to the respect of all."⁵

In denying, somewhat too mildly, the vicious stories that Mrs. Davis interfered in the Cabinet, Mr. de Leon might have denounced as well the whispered "secret of the White House that Mrs. Davis confided too carelessly to a member of the President's official household affairs of war and state that he traitorously communicated to the Federals. This was the basest of slander, for which the revelations of seventy years give not the least shadow of justification or even any possible basis for unjust suspicion other than that the patriotic and sacrificial official happened to be Northern-born.

Mr. Davis did not permit "the Mistress of the Gray House" to visit often the hospitals because, as he told her, he did not think she should expose the men to the restraint that her presence might impose. In addition, Mrs. Davis was twice confined while in Richmond. The President probably felt that Mrs. Davis' physical condition and her social obligations were such that regular attendance upon the hospitals would be injurious. Even when she was busiest, or close to motherhood, she found time to visit bereaved families to prepare and dispense the food and clothing that generous friends of the Confederacy sent to her, to the Governor, or to others for the use of the needy.⁶

By the affrighting spring of 1862, Mrs. Davis virtually had completed her conquest of Richmond society, but as the enemy drew nearer the city, there occurred an incident that dampened the enthusiasm of some natives for her. On the night of May 9, one of the regular levees was held at the Executive Mansion. Mr. Davis was a gracious as ever. Presently, through the throng, a courier made his way to the President,. Mr. Davis read his dispatches without the flickering of an eyelash and resumed his duties as host. In a short time, as he passed Mrs. Davis she gave him a questioning glance. He paused and whispered, "The enemy's gunboats are ascending the river," and then he went on.

When the last of the guests departed, he told her to complete her packing for a departure originally scheduled for the 12th. The next morning she left Richmond with her children and went to Raleigh. Mrs. Davis returned when the danger was past and reigned with favor, but again, when the end was at hand in 1865, there was grumbling that she fled the city. It would have been more courageous, Richmond women thought, had she remained as other wives did in order that all the trains might be used for troops and supplies. Later Mrs. Davis won much sympathy by her efforts to procure the President's release, but, for a fourth time, criticism was visited upon her when, following Mr. Davis's death, she went to New York to live. Her reasons were valid, but that did not win acceptance for them. Consequently, when she issued her Memoir of Mr. Davis, she did not have in the South as attentive an audience as she deserved. She was not an ideal historian, to be sure, and she weakened her pages by over-frequent quotation from her husband's book; but by her straightforward and cheerful narrative she won many unbiased hearts. James Ford Rhodes went on record as saying that hers was the most persuasive portrayal of the much-maligned Confederate President.⁷

T. J. Jackson, needless to say, had never been subjected to such adverse criticism as was visited on President Davis. Consequently, when the widow of the commander of the Second Corps, A. N. Va., published in 1895⁸ her Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, her audience was in reverent mood. In military narrative Mrs. Jackson did not supplement materially what the diligent R. L. Dabney had written thirty years previously.⁹ At times she did little more than paraphrase the earlier book. Her contribution was in sharing with the South for the first time numerous letters that Jackson had written her from camp and from battlefield. Interesting letters they were. Often Jackson wrote as if he were at home on Saturday evening and, by conversation on religious topis with his wife, were preparing himself for communion on the Lord's Day. Again it was the time-pressed soldier who scrawled a few lines while the "foot-cavalry" slept uneasily and impatient staff-officers waited in the hall for orders. Twice or thrice, between meek lines of gratitude to God, his sword seemed to flash in the light of ambition. Nearly always, somewhere in the letters, there was a wistful sentence or two: He had been at the Winchester manse where he and Mrs. Jackson had spent happy evenings together in the winter of 1861-62; he was glad his victorious army was encamped near Weyer's Cave, because he remembered that once she had been there. An avowal of his love, an endearing word in the Spanish he had picked up in Mexico fifteen years before---and then he was deep again in his study of the map, or he was off to the front where Ashby's troopers crouched vigilantly behind the walls while their Blakely gun barked defiance. These letters did not explain the man to old soldiers who still cherished the illusion of a mysterious leader of terse commands, night marches and strange gestures. Rather, at the moment, did the letters appear to deepen the contradictions of his character.

Mary Anna Jackson in 1895, 32 years after Stonewall Jackson's death.

General Jackson, painting by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.

Mrs. Jackson's experiences during the war were altogether in Virginia and in North Carolina, as were most of those that Mrs. Jefferson Davis records. Several other women who impressively wrote of the war lived on the Atlantic Seaboard and witnessed longest resistance to invasion. Fortunately for the completion of the story, where are in print some diaries and memoirs by women who resided during 1862-64 in districts occupied, if not subjugated, by the Federals.

Two of these diaries, both of deep interest, were written contemporaneously in Louisiana for some months of the war. The Journal of Julia LeGrand¹⁰ was kept by a woman of thirty-two who embodied all the elements of romance that an early Victorian novelist would have desired for a heroine. On her mother's side, she was a granddaughter of Robert Morris; her father was the son of a Frenchman of station who had come to America not long before the stirring days of the Bastile. The younger LeGrand, educated in France, was a colonel in the American War of 1812 and later was a wealthy planter in Maryland. Attracted by the larger agricultural opportunities of the Mississippi Valley, he sold his holdings and bought an estate in Louisiana. For the period of Julia's girlhood, he lived as a grand seigneur. In the spring and autumn he entertained on his plantation; in winter, he went to New Orleans with his daughters and a retinue of servants and had a suite at The St. Charles for the season of the opera; in summer, his daughters journeyed to the Virginia springs.

Julia LeGrand, from her book, The Journal of Julia LeGrand.

Julia adorned and enjoyed this rich social life. She wore long trailing white gowns, had a great dog as an attendant, "played very beautifully upon an old harp that had a history," and was "full of romantic fancies." Besides, she had a great sorrow. Her lover, too poor to win her father's approval, had gone to Mexico to seek a fortune. Stage by stage, with ardent protestation, he had written back of his adventures. Then the letters stopped abruptly. He had advanced on horseback from the wagon-train in a wild country, Julia subsequently ascertained, and had never returned. The supposition was that he and all his companions had been killed by the Indians. Julia LeGrand could do no more than grieve and make him the hero, under the name Guy Fontenoy, of an unpublished novel. After this tragedy came a darker: Colonel LeGrand died; his estate evaporated; Julia and her sister, Virginia, left penniless, went to New Orleans and opened a "select school for girls."¹¹ The two ladies were earning a very modest living in this manner when the crash of war came. Their brother Claude hurried to Virginia with the first Louisiana volunteers. The sisters perforce remained where they were, until the city fell, and then for months they were refugees in Mississippi. As the Federal advance threatened their haven, they went to Georgia and helped to nurse Johnston's sick and wounded. In the end, they moved to Texas to live with their brother, who, meantime, had lost an arm at Port Republic. Romance returned with peace: Julia LeGrand in May, 1867, married a German, Adolph Waitz, described as a "gentleman of fine abilities and attainments."

These details of Julia LeGrand's career prepare the reader for a sentimental diary, which is distinctly what Julia LeGrand's is not. Much of it was destroyed. What remains covers briefly the events of December, 1861-December, 1862, and, in detail, those of January-April, 1863. It is an intelligent, direct and honest narrative of what happened in the city and in the temporary havens she subsequently reached. Occasionally there is a Byronic phrase, but page by page, the story is one of neighbors' woes, of personal hardship stoically endured, and---what is unusual in extant diaries---of hopes raised one day and dashed the next by reading the newspapers. More clearly than perhaps any other war-time writer, Julia LeGrand exhibits the dependence of those "within the enemy's lines," on hostile papers or on the few friendly journals that reached far-off inland villages.

Sarah Fowler Morgan Dawson, author of A Confederate Girl's Diary.

The second of the familiar Louisiana diaries is that of a girl of twenty, Sarah Fowler Morgan, daughter of Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan. The judge opposed the secession of his State but, when Louisiana left the Union, he accepted her verdict as binding on him. Three of his sons entered the Confederate service, but the fourth and oldest, himself a judge in New Orleans, adhered to the Union, though he refused to fight against his own kind. Of Sarah Morgan's sisters, one was the wife of a Federal Colonel in California, and one was living at her father's home in Baton Rouge with her five children. The remaining sister, Miriam, was Sarah's closest companion and, like her, was unmarried. Rarely was a Gulf State family so divided and even more rarely did those of differing political conviction seek more consistently to help one another. After the death of the senior Judge Morgan in November, 1861, the pro-Union Judge Morgan did his utmost to care for his mother and his sisters, and in time arranged for them to come to New Orleans if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States,. How they fared when necessity compelled them to accept the judge's offer is set forth by Sarah Morgan in her diary, under date of April 22, 1863:¹²

When we at last entered the canal, I beheld the animal now so long unseen, the Yankee. In their dark blue uniforms, they stood around, but I thought of the dear gray coats, and even the picket of Madisonville seemed nobler and greater men than these. Immediately a guard was placed on board, we whispering before he came, "Our dear Confederates, God bless them."
We had agree among ourselves that come what would, we would preserve our dignity and self-respect, and do anything rather than create a scene among such people. It is well that we agreed. So we whispered quietly among ourselves, exhorting each other to pay no attention to the remarks the Yankees made about us as we passed, and acting the martyr to perfection, until we came to Hickock's Landing. Here there was a group of twenty Yankees. Two officers came up and asked us for papers; we said we had none. In five minutes one came back, and asked if we had taken the oath. No; We had never taken any. He then took down our names. Mother was alone in the coop. He asked if there was not another. The schooner had fifteen passengers, and we had given only fourteen names. Mother then came up and gave her name, going back soon after.
While one went after our passes, others came to examine our baggage. I could not but smile as an unfortunate young man got on his knees before our trunk and respectfully handled our dirty petticoats and stockings. "You have gone through it before," he said. "Of course, the Confederates searched it."---"Indeed they did not touch it!" I exclaimed. "They never think of doing such work."---"Miss, it is more mortifying to me than it can be to you," he answered. And I saw he was actually blushing. He did his work as delicately as possible, and when he returned the keys asked if we had letters. I opened my box and put them into his hand . . . Then came a bundle of papers on board carried by another, who standing in front of us, cried in a startling way, "Sarah Morgan!"---"Here" (very quietly). ---"Stand up!"---"I cannot (firmly)---"Why not?"---"Unable" (decisively). After this brief dialogue, he went on with the others until all were standing except myself, when he delivered to each a strip of paper that informed the people that Miss, or Mrs. So-and-So had taken and subscribed the oath as Citizen of the United States. I thought that was all, and rejoiced at our escape. But after another pause he uncovered his head and told us to hold up our right hands. Half-crying, I covered my face with mine and prayed breathlessly for the boys and the Confederacy, so that I heard not a word he was saying until the question, "So help you God?" struck my ear. I shuddered and prayed harder. There came an awful pause in which not a lip was moved. Each felt as though in a nightmare, until, throwing down his blank book, the officer pronounced it "All right!" Strange to say, I experience no change. I prayed as hard as ever for the boys and our country, and felt no nasty or disagreeable feeling which would have announced the process of turning Yankee.
Then it was that mother commenced. He turned to the mouth of the diminutive cave, and asked if she was ready to take the oath. "I suppose I have to, since I belong to you," she replied. "No, madam, you are not obliged; we force no one. Can you state your objections?" "Yes, I have three sons fighting against you, and you have robbed me, beggared me!" she exclaimed, launching into a speech in which Heaven knows what she did not say; there was little she left out, from her despoiled house to her sore hand, both of which she attributed to the at first amiable man, who was rapidly losing all patience. Faint with hunger, dizzy with sleeplessness, she had wrought on her own feelings until her nerves were beyond control. She was determined to carry it out, and crying and sobbing went through with it.
I neither spoke nor moved. . . . The officer walked off angrily and sent for a guard to have mother taken before General Bowens. Once through her speech, mother yielded to the entreaties of the ladies and professed herself ready to take the oath, since she was obliged to. "Madam, I did not invite you to come," said the polite officer, who refused to administer the oath; and putting several soldiers on board, ordered them to keep all on board until one could report to General Bowens. Mother retired to the cabin, while we still kept our seats above.

Despite her plain speech, Mrs. Morgan finally took the oath after her son the judge procured permission for her and his sisters to land in New Orleans. Sarah was relieved and miserable, glad that her mother could have some comforts, but for herself, humiliated that she had taken an oath she could not respect. Here are the reflections she entered in her diary June 21:¹³

How about that oath of allegiance? is what I frequently ask myself, and always an uneasy qualm of conscience troubles me. Guilty of not guilty of perjury? According to the law of God in the abstract, and of nations, Yes; according to my conscience, Jeff Davis, and the peculiar position I was placed in, No. Which is it? Had I had any idea that such a pledge would be exacted, would I have been willing to come? Never! The thought would have horrified me. The reality was never placed before me until we reached Bonfouca. There I was terrified at the prospect; but seeing how impossible it would be to go back, I placed all my hopes in some miracle that was to intervene to prevent such a crime, and confidently believed my ill health or something else would save me, while all the rest of the party declared they would think it nothing, and take forty oaths a day, if necessary. A forced oath, all men agree, is not binding. The Yankees lay particular stress on this being voluntary, and insist that no one is solicited to take it except of their own free will. Yet look at the scene that followed, when mother showed herself unwilling! Think of being ordered to the Custom-House as a prisoner for saying she supposed she would have to! That's liberty! that is free will! It is entirely optional; you have only to take it quietly or go to jail. That is freedom enough, certainly! There was not even that choice left to me. I told the officer who took down my name that I was unwilling to take the oath, and asked if there was no escaping it. "none whatever" was his reply. "You have it to do, and there is no getting out of it." His rude tone frightened me into half-crying; but for all that, as he said, I had it to do. If perjury it is, which will God punish: me, who was unwilling to commit the crime, or the man who forced me to it?

Sarah Morgan had not the heart to write lengthy entries after she went to New Orleans, She was by the waters of Babylon in her own land. Finally, in January, 1865, the family received notice within a week that George and Gibbes Morgan, two of the Confederate sons of the house, were dead. The bitter cry of the girl is too sacred, even now, to be quoted. On May 2, 1865, when the first grief was past, she wrote:

While praying for the return of those who have fought so nobly for us, how I have dreaded their first days at home! Since the boys died, I have constantly thought of what pain it would bring to see their comrades return without them---to see families reunited, and know what ours never could be again, save in heaven. Last Saturday the 29th of April, seven hundred and fifty paroled Louisianians from Lee's army were brought here---the sole survivors of ten regiments who left four years ago so full of hope and determination,. On the 29th of April, 1861, George left New Orleans with his regiment. On the fourth anniversary of that day, they came back: but George and Gibbes have long been lying in their graves. . . .¹⁴

There is only one entry after that: "Our Confederacy has gone with one crash---the report of the pistol fired at Lincoln."¹⁵

Nine years later she married the brilliant Francis Warrington Dawson, an English writer who joined the Confederate army, rose to the rank of captain and subsequently became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier. She never intended her diary to be printed and, in fact, wrote explicit instructions that it be burned, but on the plea of her son, Warrington Dawson, gave it to him. In 1913 he issued it under the title A Confederate Girl's Diary. In his introduction, Mr. Dawson remarks that a Philadelphian to whom his mother loaned a transcript of the diary returned it "with cold regrets that the temptation to rearrange it had not been resisted." The critic maintained, to quote Mr. Dawson's words, "No Southerner at that time could possibly have had opinions so just or foresight so clear as those here attributed to a young girl."¹⁶ Mr. Dawson denied flatly that the diary was "rearranged." The printed text, said he, conformed in every way to the original in his possession, except for the omission of a few matters entirely personal.

Capt. Francis Warrington Dawson, CSA, from England, later editor of the Chas. News and Courier.

He might well have added that the "just opinions" which created doubts in the mind of the critic were not illogical in a judge's daughter who was succored by a judge-brother of tolerant mind and sympathy though of opposing politics. To those unfamiliar with the standards of letter-writing that prevailed in the South prior to the war, the smooth ease of Sarah Morgan's style also may seem spurious. Truth is, letters in those days were for the leisured and cultured a careful exercise in composition,. Young women, in particular, were taught to regard skill in letter-writing as a social accomplishment,. Sarah Morgan wrote her diary precisely as she would have prepared a series of letters,. She was exceptional, yes; but she was not, in any sense, suspiciously unique.

Hannah Lide Coker saved her son, Capt. James Lide Coker, later founder of Coker College.

No stylistic puzzle is presented by Mrs. Hannah Lide Coker's Story of the Confederate War, which was printed in a small edition for the family and never was circulated outside. It is one of the simplest but most inspiring of all books on the bloody era. Mrs. Coker, wife of Caleb Coker of Society Hill, S. C., gave three sons to the Confederacy: James, a captain in the Sixth South Carolina Volunteers, William of the Eighth, also a captain, and Charles, ordnance sergeant of the same regiment. Charles was killed at Malvern Hill; William was wounded and captured at Gettysburg. Then, on the morning of October 30, 1863, came word that James had been hit at Lookout Mountain on October 28. A minie ball had shattered the bone of his right thigh, an inch and a half below the hip joint. He asked that his mother, his wife and the family physician come to him, but his wife, nee Susan Short, was within three weeks of confinement. The senior Mrs. Coker and the physician set out at once, while all Society Hill lamented. James Lide Coker had been at Harvard under Agassiz and Asa Gray and already had organized at Hartsville an agricultural society to advance scientific methods. South Carolina had not more promising young planter than this infantry captain of twenty-six.

Mrs. Coker's Story is that of her journey to the front and of her nursing of her boy who, within a short time, was left on his back, splinted from foot to shoulder, within the Federal lines. There is not a suggestion in her narrative that she felt she was doing anything unusual, and certainly nothing heroic. All her emphasis is on the cheerfulness of her son, on the fidelity of the sergeant who voluntarily remained to attend him, and on the manner in which, whenever food or money gave out, aid somehow came,. She records gratefully that among the many Federal officers whom she met during nearly nine months, in Tennessee, at Louisville, on the long journey to Baltimore and thence to Fort Monroe, only two were rude to her. Most of them were sympathetic and helpful. While these glimpses of the Federal treatment of a captured officer are creditable to the Army, and especially to the medical corps, the reader, whose eyes soon will be dimmed as he turns the pages, will conclude that Hannah Lide Coker possessed superb tact and fortitude. Well was she recompensed for her service! Major James Lide Coker recovered, became one of the greatest industrialists of the South, founded Coker College, brought new hope to agriculture in the Carolinas, lived to be eighty-one, and begot great sons. One of them, the brilliant David R. Coker, probably advanced plant-breeding more than did any man who ever lived in the South.

Rear of Davidson Hall, Coker Univ., Hartsville, SC, photo courtesy of Jud McCranie.

Of a dozen other interesting books by Confederate women, none excels that of Mrs. Cornelia McDonald, A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life.¹⁷ During her residence in Winchester, the second wife of Col. Angus McDonald kept a regular diary from March, 1862, to August, 1863. This was supplemented by a narrative she put together in 1875. The whole is one of the most thrilling of the war books, and, had it been published for general circulation, it would have made a sensation. From her photographs, Mrs. McDonald must have been a woman of great dignity of person. She possessed high intelligence and unshakable moral courage, as every page of her diary shows, but she could not endure the sight of acute physical pain. About as much of the misery of war as ever comes within the vision of one woman is to be read in her account of the battle of Kernstown, March 23, 1862.

Cornelia McDonald, author of A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life.

She was home with a young baby; her husband and his elder sons by his first marriage were away with their regiments; only the younger of her step-sons had been in Winchester that day, and they had gone out to witness the battle. Long and anxiously she waited for the lads in the chill of the evening. Now hear her:

About nine o'clock they came in, very grave and sad looking. Indeed they seemed not like the same boys, so sad and unnatural was their expression. . . . All the careless happiness had gone from the faces and manner of the boys, and though there was no sign of fright or of excitement, they were very grave and sorrowful; disappointed, too, as we had lost the battle, and they had been compelled to see the Southern troops sullenly withdraw after the bloody struggle. . . . They told of the prolonged fight behind the stone wall, of the repeated onset of our men, and the rolling back of the blue columns, as regiment after regiment was repulsed by the Confederates, till at last, outnumbered and borne back, they had retired from the field, leaving behind the dead and dying, and even their wounded. When the boys told of the retreat their anger and mortification found relief in tears, but they were tears of pity when they told of the wounded. They remained for a while to give water to some, and would have gladly done more, but were hurried away by the sentinels. "I was mortified all the time," said Allan, "because we had to stay on the Yankee side."¹⁸

The next day Mrs. McDonald went into Winchester to aid in caring for the wounded. She wrote: "I wanted to be useful, and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint. It was that of a Captain Jones of a Tennessee regiment. A ball had struck him on the side of the face, taking both eyes and the bridge of his nose. It was a frightful spectacle. I stood as the surgeon explained how, and why he might be saved, and the poor fellow not aware of the awful sight his eyeless face was, with the fearful wound still fresh and bleeding, joined in the talk, and, raising his hand put his finger on his left temple and said, 'Ah! if they had only struck me there, I should have troubled no one.' The surgeon asked me if I would wash his wound. I tried to say yes, but the thought of it made me so faint that I could only stagger toward the door. As I passed, my dress brushed against a pile of amputated limbs heaped up near the door."¹⁹

That [meaning all the accounts in Chapter VI as published in my two blog posts] is what war means to women.

End of Part II.

NOTES

¹ Douglas Southall Freeman, The South to Posterity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939).

² New York (Belford Co.), 1890; 2 v.

³ The word, "pathetic", in the past, was often used to refer to something dealing with the emotions. A synonym would be "sympathetic" in today's usage. The New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition, says: ORIGIN late 16th cent. (in the sense 'affecting the emotions'): via late Latin from Greek pathetikos "sensitive,' based on pathos 'suffering.'

⁴ Recollections Grave and Gay, New York (Scribners), 1916, p. 70.

⁵ T. C. De Leon, op, cit., p. 67.

⁶ This account of the life of Mrs. Davis in Richmond is revised from D. S. Freeman, "When War Came to Richmond," published in the Bicentennial Supplement of the Richmond News Leader, Sept. 8, 1937.

⁷ History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, New York (Macmillan), 1920, v. 5, pp. 169-170. Mr. Rhodes noted: "The forfeiture by Mrs. Davis of the copyright of her book, through an informality, gave the American Congress an opportunity for a graceful deed. In 1893, the Senate and the House unanimously passed an act restoring the rights and privileges of copyright . . ."

⁸ Louisville, Ky. (The Prentice Press).

⁹ See supra, pp. 37 ff.

¹⁰ Edited by Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. Croxall, Richmond (Waddey), 1911.

¹¹ All these facts are from the biographical sketch that precedes the Journal.

¹² Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, with an Introduction by Warrington Dawson, Boston (Houghton, Mifflin), 1913, pp. 381 ff.

¹³ Ibid., pp. 392-93.

¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 439-40.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 440.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. xi.

¹⁷ Nashville (Cullom & Ghertner), 1934.

¹⁸ Op. cit., pp. 52, 53.

¹⁹ Op. cit., p. 55.

Robert E. Lee and Me

Robert E. Lee and Me

A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point

Don’t Be Fooled by Ty Seidule's "West Point Professor/Brigadier General" Misleading Credentials

Click Here for Bode Lang's excellent video, "The Civil War Was Not for Slavery."

Click Here for a short video by the Abbeville Institute on the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Legendary Dalton Snowball Fight;

and

Sticks, Fists and Rocks at Orange Courthouse

Snowball Battle at Dalton by S. R. Watkins

A Battle with Snowballs. by Thomas Perrett, Faison, N. C.

Deo Vindice!

The War Through Women's Eyes

Click Here for Bode Lang's excellent video,
"The Civil War Was Not for Slavery."

Click Here for a short video by the Abbeville Institute on the
Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Snowball Battle at Dalton
by S. R. Watkins

A Battle with Snowballs.
by Thomas Perrett, Faison, N. C.