Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Unionblue:
If I offended you, yesterday, upon any or all of my reply to you, I fully apologize and sincerely ask forgivance.
Being relatively new to the board, and enjoying it very much, I do not wish to become part of the problem but a part of the healing in becoming a valuable and honorable member.I sincerely ask for your consideration upon my further participation with friendship rather than as a dishonorable person.
Neil, I fully and sincerely apologize for my comments to you and Cash. Let it be said, Alabaman (Rob Adams) admits when he is wrong. I was and I'm sorry.
I appreciate your post above and thank you for it.
I also appreciate the fact the you were trying to asist a friend and admire you for it.
As one of my favorite Union Generals said, after the war, "Let us have peace."
I will follow your recomendation and also endeavor to be part of a healing process so that this board can continue to do what it does best, debate and discuss the war in a civil and fun manner. Thank you for your efforts to understand.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
I appreciate your response and I most definitely do forgive, and I consider the incident closed.
For what it's worth, while I may disagree with both you and Ashley, I sense that you are both really excellent folk, and it's not my purpose to insult either of you. As I said in an earlier post, I'm not here to offend anyone, and if some have been offended by my posts, it has not been my intent to do so. One can tell if I am joking because I will include an emoticon or some other indication that I'm not being serious.
I hope we can all avoid misconstruing each other's posts in the future.
Cash:
Thank You. What you said makes good sense. I appreciate the sincerity and will look for those little emoticons closer. Webtv is a very 'different' type of computer, if you follow my meaning; its slower & harder to see things due to your computer screen being as large as your tv. In this case larger is not better!
Lookout....we will commence fire soon! ;-)
Mrs. C. G. Richardson was born near what is now Brunson, Hampton County, but then old Beaufort District, 81 years ago. Her father, Mr. W. E. Brunson, owned a large plantation and the present town of Brunson later grew up in what was his cornfield.
Mrs. Richardson, then Hattie Brunson, was very small at the time the Civil War began, but she remembers the day her three brothers rode off to join the Confederate army. She knew they were going to war, but that meant nothing to her and she was excited and happy because when any of her brothers went away on horseback, he always took her in front of him on the saddle as far as the gate. She thought she was going to get the usual ride this time and was very much hurt and disappointed when none of them even noticed her except to kiss her goodbye. She was puzzled, too, because her mother was crying and the entire family looked serious and sad. She remembers, as though it were yesterday, standing with the rest of the family on the porch and watching her brothers gallop off down the road, turn and disappear from sight.
In a short while she heard the sound of the horses returning and was surprised to see her brothers coming back up the drive. They brought their horses close to the porch, leaned across the bannisters, kissed their mother again and galloped away once more. This scene has been like a vivid picture in her memory all through the years and she says she had a strange experience sometime ago while watching a moving picture which had to do with Civil War days. The identical picture was re-enacted so exactly like the one she experienced that it gave her a distinct shock.
From the time she watched her brothers ride away to war, Mrs, Richardson says her memory seems to be a blank until the news came that Sherman's army was on the way. She recalls the great excitement on the plantation then as slaves and members of the family scurried about picking valuables and food preparatory to leaving home for the upcountry. The Brunsons had planned to travel with their neighbors in a sort of caravan to escape the path of Sherman's march and the five Brunson children were thrilled at the prospect of traveling.
The day came on which they were to start and she remembers the disappointment they all felt when her mother, sitting at the breakfast table, announced that she had decided not to leave, but remain and take her chances with the Yankees right in her own home. Their nearest neighbors, the Richardson family, whose plantation adjoined their own and whose son, Dr, C. G. Richardson, the little Hattie Brunson later grew up to marry, decided to remain at home, also.
The change of plans necessitated a lot of work to hide food and valuables. Food and articles of values were secreted in the walls of the house and buried in the lot where they were covered with dirt and manure. Mr. Brunson, who was beyond the age limit and did not get into the army until toward the last, divided all the meat and provisions which he was unable to hide between his slaves, as he did not believe the Yankees would take food from them. At last they saw Sherman's army marching up the road. Five men approached first and searched Mr. Brunson, but found nothing. He had taken the precaution of giving his oldest daughter, a girl of about fourteen, his much prized watch several days before and Mrs. Richardson accompanied her sister into the woods where they hid it beneath the gnarled root of a large tree.
The soldiers entered the house and plundered it from cellar to attic. They ripped open mattresses and pillows, scattering feathers and cotton everywhere, and took whatever they fancied. Mrs. Richardson tells how they took the children's rag dolls and tore then to pieces before their eyes. However, they saved their best-beloved china dolls by hiding then on their persons. Having wrought havoc to their satisfaction in the house, the soldiers then proceeded to destroy what they could on the outside. The gin house, full of cotton, was just across the road from the house and this they set on fire. They killed all the chickens, hogs and cattle for their own uses, and what they could not use of the flour, rice and grits, they emptied together on the ground. They carried off all the horses and mules and left the plantation bare of all food. Fortunately, they did not burn the house, and also missed a lot of cotton which Mr. Brunson had stored in an empty house on the place.
The oldest Brunson girl was very pretty and several of the young Northern soldiers were smitten with her charms and tried to present her with gifts which they had pilfered from her father's house. Mrs. Richardson relates an incident which was far from funny to her then, but which, at this distance, often causes her to smile. She was sitting on the front porch with her sister when one of the soldiers offered her two hams from her father's smokehouse.
The older sister refused the hams and the smaller child was astonished at such behavior for, in her opinion, hams were not to be spurned at that time when food was at a premium. The soldier put the hams on the edge of the porch and told her sister: "Well, I'll just leave them here for you in case you change your mind." She could scarcely keep from jumping up and grabbing the hams herself, but her sister rose contemptuously and kicked then to the ground.
Terrible as the situation was, the Brunson family got at least one good laugh at the expense of the Yankees. Mr. Brunson kept bees and one of the soldiers decided he would like to have some honey. It was obvious that he knew nothing of the habits of bees, for he marched boldly up to one of the hives and, stopping, smashed it open. When he raised his head it was literally black with bees. With a wild yell, he tore off frantically down the road to the accompaniment of the delighted laughter of the Brunsons.
Sherman's army was three days in passing the plantation and pitched camp on the Richardson place a mile away. From there, foraging parties would descend upon the Brunson home all during the day and night. If they found any of the children eating, they would snatch the food out of their hands and throw it away. The only food they had while the soldiers were in the vicinity were potatoes which their mother baked in the fireplace and they learned to slip the potatoes in their clothes when they heard soldiers coming.
Once five officers visited their home and looking about at the disorder, inquired of Mrs. Brunson whether their soldiers were responsible. Mrs. Brunson, a quiet, retiring woman, spoke up with withering sarcasm: "You don't think I did it, do you?" They told her that she could have had a guard around her home if she had asked for it and she retorted that she bad asked and had been refused. Spying the piano, one of the officers sat down and played a merry tune while another danced about the room. Mrs. Richardson says she never heard that tune before or since until recently when she heard it ever the radio. It brought back to her vividly that scene of 73 years ago.
After the Yankees had moved on, they spent trying days in an effort to bring order out of the chaos. The children thought they had the hardest task of all - separating the rice from the flour and grits which the Yankees had emptied on the ground.
There were thirty-five or forty slaves on the Brunson plantation. Instead of living in quarters in what was known on most plantations as "the street", each family had its own little cabin located to give as much privacy as possible. With each cabin went a patch of ground for vegetables and chickens. The food given them was practically the same which the family ate and their clothes were made of homespun woven on the plantation. The house servants, washer women and those whose regular tasks allowed then a certain amount of free time, made the clothes of their own families, but the two sewing women sewed for the field hands. The health of the slaves was always carefully looked after for illness meant lose of time. The nearest physician was twelve miles away, but he was always called when slaves were sick just as he was for members of the family.
Mr. Brunson never bought slaves when it would mean a separation of families. He once came home from a slave sale bringing a woman with five children and the woman's aged mother. When asked why he had bought an old woman who could do no work, he replied that she could look after the children while their mother was in the field and, besides, he could not bear to separate the old woman from her daughter and grandchildren.
No attempt was made to educate the slaves, but they were allowed to hold their own religious meetings and Mr. Brunson saw that all those who wished to attend his own church, where a place was set apart for them, got transportation. They could visit neighboring plantations in the evenings and on Sundays. When runaway slaves began to give trouble, it was necessary to give the slaves passes when they left the plantation so that they would not be taken up by the patrol. During the war It was the custom to hire out slaves to the army, but Mr. Brunson never hired but one and he was a man who had frequently run away and who, he was afraid, would cause trouble among the other slaves.
Several weeks after Sherman's army had gone, the news came that the slaves were free. Mr. Brunson sent for all his Negroes and explained the situation to them. They could either leave and go down to Beaufort where it was reported land was being divided up for them, or they could work on the plantation for wages or rent land for a third of what they made. He made it clear, however, that if they chose to leave, they could not come back. The Negroes were wild with enthusiasm over their freedom and without exception they decided to go to Beaufort, where they had dreams of becoming land owners. By the next morning they had all gone, having first carried back to their former master all the meat and provisions he had given them at the approach of the Yankees.
Between the slaves and their master's family there often existed a real affection. Such was the case between little Hattie Brunson and her nurse, Amy. She died when the little girl was too small to understand about death and one day she saw a wagon, in which was a long box, going toward the cemetery. One of the other Negroes told her that Amy was in the box. Horrified, the little girl ran after the wagon and when she saw the box being lowered into the grave, she ran screaming in protest and was caught by one of the grave-diggers just in time to keep her from falling into the grave. She says she has never forgotten this experience.
"Debauchery Afflicted on the Negroes"
by Dr. Daniel Trezevant
Columbia, South Carolina
The Yankees' gallantry, brutality and debauchery were afflicted on the negroes.... The case of Mr. Shane's old negro woman, who, after being subjected to the most brutal indecency from seven of the Yankees, was, at the proposition of one of them to "finish the old *****," put into a ditch and held under water until life was extinct.
Mrs. T.B.C. was seized by one of the soldiers, an officer, and dragged by the hair and forced to the floor for the purpose of sensual enjoyment. She resisted as far as practical- held up her young infant as a plea for sparing her and succeeded, but they took her maid, and in her presence, threw her on the floor and had connection with her.
They pinioned Mrs. McCord and robbed her. They dragged Mrs. Gynn by the hair of her head about the house. Mrs. G. told me of a young lady about 16, Miss Kinsler, who three officers brutally ravished and who became crazy from it.
"My God! I Pity Your City!"
by John T. Trowbridge
Northern journalist
Early in the evening [of February 17] as the inhabitants, quieted by General Sherman's assurances, were about retiring to their beds, a rocket went up in the lower part of the city. Another in the center, and a third in the upper part of town, succeeded. Dr. R.W. Gibbes was in the street near one of the Federal guards, who exclaimed on seeing the signals, "My God! I pity your city!" Mr. Goodwyn, who was mayor at the time, reports a similar remark from an Iowa soldier. "Your city is doomed! These rockets are the signal!" Immediately afterwards fires broke out in twenty different places.
The dwellings of Confederate Treasury Secretary George A. Trenholm and General Wade Hampton were among the first to burst into flames. Soldiers went from house to house, spreading the conflagration. Fireballs, composed of cotton saturated with turpentine, were thrown in at doors and windows. Many houses were entered and fired by means of combustible liquids poured upon beds and clothing, ignited by wads of burning cotton, or by matches from a soldier's pocket. The fire department came out in force, but the hose-pipes were cut to pieces and the men driven from the streets. At the same time universal plundering and robbery began.
The burning of the house of R.W. Gibbes, an eminent physician, well-known to the scientific world, was thus described to me by his son:
"He had a guard at the front door; but some soldiers climbed in at the rear of the house, got into the parlor, heaped together sheets, poured turpentine over them, piled chairs on them, and set them on fire. As he remonstrated with them, they laughed at him. The guard at the front door could do nothing, for if he left his post, other soldiers would come in that way.
"The guard had a disabled foot, and my father had dressed it for him. He appeared very grateful for the favor, and earnestly advised my father to save all his valuables. The house was full of costly paintings, and curiosities of art and natural history, and my father did not know what to save and what to leave behind. He finally tied up in a bedquilt a quantity of silver and gems. As he was going out the door the house was already on fire behind him -- the guard said, 'Is that all you can save?" "It is all I can carry,' said my father. 'Leave that with me,' said the guard; 'I will take charge of it, while you go back and get another bundle.' My father thought he was very kind. He went back for another bundles, and while he was gone, the guard ran off on his lame leg with all the gems and silver."
The soldiers, in their march through Georgia, and thus far into South Carolina, had a wonderful skill in finding treasures. They had two kinds of divining-rods," negroes and bayonets. What the unfaithful servants of the rich failed to reveal, the other instruments, by thorough and constant practice, were generally able to discover. On the night of the fire, a thousand men could be seen in the yards and gardens of Columbia by the glare of the flames, probing the earth with bayonets.
The dismay and terror of the inhabitants can scarcely be conceived. They had two enemies, the fire in their house and the soldiery without. Many who attempted to bear away portions of their goods were robbed by the way. Trunks and bundles were snatched from the hands of hurrying fugitives, broken open, rifled, and then hurled into the flames. Ornaments were plucked from the necks and arms of ladies, and caskets from their hands. Even children and negroes were robbed.
Fortunately the streets of Columbia were broad, else many of the fugitives must have perished in the flames which met them on all sides. The exodus of homeless families, flying between walls of fire, was a terrible and piteous spectacle. Some fled to the parks; others to the open ground without the city; numbers sought refuge in the graveyards. Isolated and unburned dwellings were crowded to excess with fugitives.
Three-fifths of the city in bulk, and four-fifths in value, were destroyed. The loss of property is estimated at thirty millions. No more respect seems to have been shown for buildings commonly deemed sacred, than for any others. The churches were pillaged, and afterwards burned. St. Mary's College, a Catholic institution, shared their fate. The Catholic Convent, to which had been confided for safety many young ladies, not nuns, and stores of treasure, was ruthlessly sacked. The soldiers drank the sacramental wine, and profaned with fiery draughts of vulgar whiskey the goblets of the communion services. Some went off reeling under the weight of priestly robes, holy vessels and candlesticks.
Yet the army of Sherman did not in its wildest orgies forget its splendid discipline. "When will these horrors cease?" asked a lady of an officer at her house. "You will hear the bugles at sunrise," he replied; "then they will cease, and not till then." He prophesied truly. "At daybreak, on Saturday morning," said Gibbes, "I saw two men galloping through the streets, blowing horns. Not a dwelling was fired after that; immediately the town became quiet."
Some curious incidents occurred. One man's treasure, concealed by his garden fence, escaped the soldiers' divining-rods, but was afterwards discovered by a hitched horse pawing the earth from the buried box. Some hidden guns had defied the most diligent search, until a chicken, chased by a soldier ran into a hole beneath the house. The soldier, crawling after and putting in his hand for the chicken, found the guns.
A soldier, passing in the streets and seeing some children playing with a beautiful little greyhound, amused himself by beating its brains out. Some treasures were buried in cemeteries, but they did not always escape the search of the soldiers, who showed a strong distrust of new-made graves.
Of the desolation and horrors our army left behind it, no description can be given. Here is a single instance: At a factory on the Congaree, just out of Columbia, there remained for six weeks a pile of sixty-five dead horses and mules, shot by Sherman's men. It was impossible to bury them, all the shovels, spades, and other farming implements of the kind having been carried off or destroyed.
Columbia must have been a beautiful city, judging by its ruins. Many fine residences still remain on the outskirts, but the entire heart of the city is a wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees killed by the flames. The fountains of the desolated gardens are dry, the basins cracked; the pillars of the houses are dismantled, or overthrown; the marble steps are broken. All these attest to the wealth and elegance which one night of fire and orgies sufficed to destroy.
"For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure." ~Emerson~
Hi Dawna,
If I remember correctly, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, a city in Pennsylvania (Chambersburg?) burned by Confederate troops in 1863? due to a 'turned down' request for ransom money by the Mayor, was compensated by Federal funds. Are you or anyone else familiar on the subject?
Lets see. If fair is fair and the Southland was compensated by the US Feds due to their US Armies burning our cities during the WBTS, we Souherners would live in a "showplace" of beautiful Towns, for all the World to view.
US Military Revenge was ugly and telling of character.
Although the emotional as well as property damage inflicted on whites was very high, few realize that slaves also paid a tremendous toll at the hands of Sherman’s men. The Yankees often stole what little they could from the black residents of the South and did not perform their duties as "liberators" very effectively in the state. One slave remembered that the soldiers were even confused about what role they should play. When one soldier threatened to whip her, "Another say: ‘No, us come to free ******s, not to whip them." The Northern men were deeply divided over their feelings towards blacks; although many soldiers were true abolitionists, racism was pervasive in the army as well. Soldiers' beliefs in the inferiority of blacks undoubtedly contributed to the harsh treatment slaves received.
Many slaves interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project reported being tortured, robbed, or even forced to accompany the army against their will. Both slaves and plantation mistresses concur that the soldiers treated blacks cruelly. One woman in southern Fairfield County near Ridgeway wrote "The Yankees had treated our Negroes shamefully; stolen the little silver some had, killed, eaten or stolen their fowls . . . . One of the slave girls, they had dressed in their own regimentals and carried her off." The soldiers appeared to have treated the slave women with little respect, and one woman claimed that the men "took notice of me! They was a bad lot dat disgrace Mr. Lincoln dat sent them here. They insult women, both white and black . . . ." On the Brice plantations, several slaves reported receiving similar treatment. One slave who belonged to Jane Brice Younge, the married daughter of William Brice, passed rather harsh judgment on the troops.
"By instint, a ****** can make up his mind pretty quick ‘bout de creed of white folks, whether they am buckra or whether they am not. Every Yankee I see had de stamp of poor white trash on them. They strutted ‘round, big Ike fashion, a bustin’ in rooms widout knockin’, talkin’ free to de white ladies, and familiar to de slave gals, ransackin’ drawers, and runnin’ deir bayonets into feather beds, and into de flower beds in de yards."
The soldiers also tied up two Brice slaves already mentioned (belonging to Walter and William) because they refused to reveal the location of the family silver. Overwhelmingly, slaves in the area seemed to look down upon the invading soldiers as "poor white trash" and "buckra" probably because they thought that civilized people would not rob and pillage in such a fashion. One woman who lived slightly north of Fairfield County wrote that the Northern soldiers forced her slaves at gunpoint to bring them valuables and that "Our Negroes were too indignant over this treatment ever to have any use for Yankees. They believed them to be the lowest types of ‘poor buckra’." Thus the same soldiers who supposedly freed the slaves from cruel treatment became perpetrators against the slaves as well.
For this reason, many slaves, especially those in Fairfield County, despised and feared the Yankees as much as their owners. In fact, of all the seventy or so slaves interviewed in the county, only one expressed overwhelming support for the soldiers. "Us looked for the Yankees on dat place like us look now for de Savior and de host of angels at de second comin’." Several other slaves in Fairfield County expressed mixed emotions about the invasion and most of these slaves mentioned that they were happy not because of the Yankees visit but because they were free. One slave who belonged to the Simonton family (the Brices and the Simontons intermarried) said that he "was glad when marster called us up and told us we was free." At the same time, he stated that the Yankees "made me run after chickens and I had to give up my onliest hen dat I have. My pappy was took off by them to Raleigh, wid dat I ‘member, was de saddest day of slavery time." In other words, slaves welcomed liberation but not the liberators and the destruction they brought.
Slaves also viewed the Yankees with disdain because they, like whites, considered the Northern troops to be invaders in their homeland. Although blacks and whites were divided on many issues, they were united in their identification as Southerners and respect for their land of birth. Slaves possessed a distinct "pride in their homeland, now being ravaged by strangers who evinced little regard for the property and lives of Southerners, white or black." Because both groups were victims during this invasion and were residents of the same locality, they could at least identify with one another on these grounds even if they disagreed on the justice of slavery and the Confederate cause. For this reason, it is possible that the Union troops and the immediacy of the invasion and its results caused slaves temporarily to identify with their masters more than before. Even if slaves did not support the slave system per se, they still loved their homeland and resented the invasion of the Northern army.
Slaves in great numbers considered themselves to be Southerners and "they did sense that their lives and destinies were intricately bound with the white people of the South." Slave and master shared a common goal of protecting the honor of their homeland and this goal brought the two groups together out of necessity during the trying times of Sherman's march. Thus because black and white received the same treatment by the army and were residents of the same locality, Sherman’s army perhaps temporarily strengthened the bond between slave and slaveowner on certain plantations.
"Normal is not something to aspire to, it something to get away from." ~Jodie Foster~
Hi Dawna,
If I remember correctly, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, a city in Pennsylvania (Chambersburg?) burned by Confederate troops in 1863? due to a 'turned down' request for ransom money by the Mayor, was compensated by Federal funds. Are you or anyone else familiar on the subject?
Lets see. If fair is fair and the Southland was compensated by the US Feds due to their US Armies burning our cities during the WBTS, we Souherners would live in a "showplace" of beautiful Towns, for all the World to view.
US Military Revenge was ugly and telling of character.
Rob Adams (Alabaman)
If you don't want the effects of a war on your countryside, then don't start one.
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"The guard had a disabled foot, and my father had dressed it for him. He appeared very grateful for the favor, and earnestly advised my father to save all his valuables. The house was full of costly paintings, and curiosities of art and natural history, and my father did not know what to save and what to leave behind. He finally tied up in a bedquilt a quantity of silver and gems. As he was going out the door the house was already on fire behind him -- the guard said, 'Is that all you can save?" "It is all I can carry,' said my father. 'Leave that with me,' said the guard; 'I will take charge of it, while you go back and get another bundle.' My father thought he was very kind. He went back for another bundles, and while he was gone, the guard ran off on his lame leg with all the gems and silver." 
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