Featured The Civil War - Why We Care

Thank you very much--I appreciate that! I'll try...
It worked! Made my week---Thanks!
In the olden days before Interstates everyone traveled on two lane highways. Hard to believe, I know. One benefit of the old highway system was that historical markers were placed right along the highway with space to pull in and stop, but usually not enough space to get out. My parents were really great and stopped at almost every historical marker we came to and read it to me. Some of my earliest memories were on old US 2 crossing the northern tier of the country. We stopped at markers dealing with the Lewis and Clark expedition. Later when my dad was assigned to Fort Benning, Jawga, we passed through the Chickamauga Battlefield. I asked the simple question of who was fighting there. When my parents told me it was Americans from the South fighting Americans from the North, I was intrigued. That lead me to read Bruce Catton. Since then I my interest has ebbed and flowed but has always been there and now we are here today.
Why? It was fought here on our turf. It was not that long ago. And it was us against ...us. Feelings run deep even today.

Rhett,
Congratulations on your promotion to sergeant. If you want to use italic letters just look at the tool bar at the top of your post and the second letter in is "I". That is it. B is for bold..........and so forth.:smile coffee:
Thanks! I used it---Made my week! (can't believe I didn't know how before-Thanks again!)
 
My great grandmother used to talk about her father during the war and his activities in the GAR, in part raising the statue on the square in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. My grandmother would take me to Rose Hill Cemetery about 10 blocks from her house to see family graves. The cemetery includes several prominent monuments to Civil War veterans that were fascinating.

My interest in the war grew from that.

Dad showing me the family plot with a soldier's grave began it.
Stumbling upon a Stonewall Jackson biography fed it.
Then Lee.
Then a friend who said, "We love blacks, everyone should own one".
A trip to Gettysburg.
Carthage, MO's Battle sites.
Then Grant's failure to fame biography ending with "Grant Takes Command".
Sherman "The Fighting Prophet"
"Glory"
Personal study of war in Missouri, Jasper County, MO, and Carthage, MO.
Battle reads about Shiloh, First Bull Run
Understanding anti-war rioting, sabotage and unrest in the North
Lincoln's assasination
And finally not too many years ago slave narratives
Finished off the past with Ante Bellum family accounts.

Then I got interested again.
 
By the way, I use capital letters because I can't italicize --don't mean at all to sound menacing--quite the contrary. Thanks.
I'm here because this was a period in our nation that was so great and terrible, beautiful, and devastating, when men and women took their destinies in their own hands and whether or not we like or agree with them- we have to respect that.

I think that we need a thread on forum technical use taught by a young savvy Hanna or anyone else that has it all down.
 
I love it! Thanks!

Thanks. My great grandmother, "Grandma Duncan," was 89 when she died in 1967 when I was 11 and my memories of her were of a grouchy old lady. She was very dour and the only thing that seemed to cheer her were telling tales of her father, Joseph Warren Poole. He was a subsistence farmer most of his life and his only real claim to fame were his activities in the Paul E. Slocum Post 85 of the GAR in beautiful Bloomington.
 
I grew up playing in an abandoned antebellum mansion with slave shacks out front (yes, out front - the road is not where it once was). My cousin lived in a house with a garden on the spot where Nathan Bedford Forrest supposedly once rendesvoused with his officers before a raid. My grandma and mother were friends with Shelby Foote. Half the boys I went to high school with were named "Kirby Price" or "Lee Forrest" or something similar and had Confederate flags in their cars. Some had Confederate sabers over the fireplace. My mother listened to her Fulton cousin's first hand stories of hiding her father and his brothers from the Yankees when he swung by home about the time Forrest was at Fort Pillow. My dad was a huge Bruce Catton fan. And Gone with the Wind is still a really good book.

But despite all that I managed not to be more than passingly interested in the Civil War until fairly recently, when I set out to build a late 19th century NC town in the Sims. I make textures for video game models for a living, and the Sims is kind of a busman's holiday for me - it allows me to sit back, enjoy someone else's work, and create environments from my imagination without having to build the models for it. I also like the challenge of creating something specific using a limited toolbox that wasn't created for that purpose - thus the 19th century town, as opposed to a modern one which would be easy. I also find the period immediately after Reconstruction in NC particularly interesting. Everything changed so much in such a short period of time, and with a few differences, so much that happened could have turned out very differently.

Being the kind of person I am, I can't just stop with building, though. I have to learn stuff. So I started asking, what kind of architecture was there? When was this building built? When was the town square built, and what was there before that? What history did this town have? Who lived there twenty years ago? And before I knew it my little town was two towns, one starting in the 1880's and moving forward into the 20th century, and an older version, set during the War. My little town had its own little company of Confederate mounted riflemen, and some Union sympathizers, and a pro-secession congressman, and a judge with secret abolitionist sympathies. All the time I was doing research for this I was learning something else: the Civil War is really interesting. Amazing things happened, quite often next door to you. Larger than life people did larger than life things.

At the moment I'm researching my own family history, with a focus on one company of the 7th TN Cav (CSA), and learning all kinds of things about every aspect of the war. But my little town is still there, and in my spare time I'm still working on it.
 
I grew up playing in an abandoned antebellum mansion with slave shacks out front (yes, out front - the road is not where it once was). My cousin lived in a house with a garden on the spot where Nathan Bedford Forrest supposedly once rendesvoused with his officers before a raid. My grandma and mother were friends with Shelby Foote. Half the boys I went to high school with were named "Kirby Price" or "Lee Forrest" or something similar and had Confederate flags in their cars. Some had Confederate sabers over the fireplace. My mother listened to her Fulton cousin's first hand stories of hiding her father and his brothers from the Yankees when he swung by home about the time Forrest was at Fort Pillow. My dad was a huge Bruce Catton fan. And Gone with the Wind is still a really good book.

But despite all that I managed not to be more than passingly interested in the Civil War until fairly recently, when I set out to build a late 19th century NC town in the Sims. I make textures for video game models for a living, and the Sims is kind of a busman's holiday for me - it allows me to sit back, enjoy someone else's work, and create environments from my imagination without having to build the models for it. I also like the challenge of creating something specific using a limited toolbox that wasn't created for that purpose - thus the 19th century town, as opposed to a modern one which would be easy. I also find the period immediately after Reconstruction in NC particularly interesting. Everything changed so much in such a short period of time, and with a few differences, so much that happened could have turned out very differently.

Being the kind of person I am, I can't just stop with building, though. I have to learn stuff. So I started asking, what kind of architecture was there? When was this building built? When was the town square built, and what was there before that? What history did this town have? Who lived there twenty years ago? And before I knew it my little town was two towns, one starting in the 1880's and moving forward into the 20th century, and an older version, set during the War. My little town had its own little company of Confederate mounted riflemen, and some Union sympathizers, and a pro-secession congressman, and a judge with secret abolitionist sympathies. All the time I was doing research for this I was learning something else: the Civil War is really interesting. Amazing things happened, quite often next door to you. Larger than life people did larger than life things.

At the moment I'm researching my own family history, with a focus on one company of the 7th TN Cav (CSA), and learning all kinds of things about every aspect of the war. But my little town is still there, and in my spare time I'm still working on it.

Ok. I like the Sims but have been told I'm too old. So now you have to PM me and tell me your age....I'm 51.
 
Ok. I like the Sims but have been told I'm too old. So now you have to PM me and tell me your age....I'm 51.
You're five years older than I am. But it's part of my job not to be too old to play video games. The sims forum I used to post on had many older people, including one lady in her 70's. The average gamer today is in his mid-thirties, and getting older.
 
Ok. I like the Sims but have been told I'm too old. So now you have to PM me and tell me your age....I'm 51.
I grew up playing in an abandoned antebellum mansion with slave shacks out front (yes, out front - the road is not where it once was). My cousin lived in a house with a garden on the spot where Nathan Bedford Forrest supposedly once rendesvoused with his officers before a raid. My grandma and mother were friends with Shelby Foote. Half the boys I went to high school with were named "Kirby Price" or "Lee Forrest" or something similar and had Confederate flags in their cars. Some had Confederate sabers over the fireplace. My mother listened to her Fulton cousin's first hand stories of hiding her father and his brothers from the Yankees when he swung by home about the time Forrest was at Fort Pillow. My dad was a huge Bruce Catton fan. And Gone with the Wind is still a really good book.

But despite all that I managed not to be more than passingly interested in the Civil War until fairly recently, when I set out to build a late 19th century NC town in the Sims. I make textures for video game models for a living, and the Sims is kind of a busman's holiday for me - it allows me to sit back, enjoy someone else's work, and create environments from my imagination without having to build the models for it. I also like the challenge of creating something specific using a limited toolbox that wasn't created for that purpose - thus the 19th century town, as opposed to a modern one which would be easy. I also find the period immediately after Reconstruction in NC particularly interesting. Everything changed so much in such a short period of time, and with a few differences, so much that happened could have turned out very differently.

Being the kind of person I am, I can't just stop with building, though. I have to learn stuff. So I started asking, what kind of architecture was there? When was this building built? When was the town square built, and what was there before that? What history did this town have? Who lived there twenty years ago? And before I knew it my little town was two towns, one starting in the 1880's and moving forward into the 20th century, and an older version, set during the War. My little town had its own little company of Confederate mounted riflemen, and some Union sympathizers, and a pro-secession congressman, and a judge with secret abolitionist sympathies. All the time I was doing research for this I was learning something else: the Civil War is really interesting. Amazing things happened, quite often next door to you. Larger than life people did larger than life things.

At the moment I'm researching my own family history, with a focus on one company of the 7th TN Cav (CSA), and learning all kinds of things about every aspect of the war. But my little town is still there, and in my spare time I'm still working on it.
Allie...All I can say is WOW!
 
You're five years older than I am. But it's part of my job not to be too old to play video games. The sims forum I used to post on had many older people, including one lady in her 70's. The average gamer today is in his mid-thirties, and getting older.

Part of my job is to not get to old enjoy comedy cartoon movies.
Like Hammy from "Over the Hedge"
Or Scrat in the "Ice Age Borethons"
And the Lemur King in "Madagascar", (who likes to 'Move it, Move it' and invites you to meat "the New York Pansies")
Or even old classics like Disney's "Robin Hood" featuring the hit song "Not in Nottingham"
 
It's a long story. Mix together "Gone with the Wind" (required back in 8th grade history), an old novel by GW Cable stuck in with other miscellaneous items in my parents' book collection, "Gettysburg" (seen in the mid 1990s), my eldest son who 10 years ago bought a small acreage and a horse and started re-enacting (6th Ohio Cavalry), his invitation to the 150th Gettysburg (BGA), Shelby Foote, then lots of other history, diaries, letters, etc. All that is responsible for my becoming "hooked" on the era in my mid-70s. I have come to realize that the ACW was a defining moment in the nation's history, changing the course of events of the whole nation. It's still having consequences., including but definitely not limited to the Civil Rights movement.

Besides, I especially enjoy the "time machine" aspect of re-enacting!
 
Here in Minnesota, I have no battlefields to walk, no graves to visit, no sites of the war period. All we have are lots and lots of Native American names of cities, towns, creeks/falls, etc. Anyone see that stupid movie with Charlie Sheen, "Hot Shots"? He was talking to a chief, supossedly in Sioux, and every word out of his mouth was a Minnesota place. (That part, actually, WAS kinda funny). But I have said this before--I envy those of you who live out there, and I might just move myself, seriously...
 
Both MrsMRB and I have been fascinated in the Civil War for many, many years. We also feel very much "at home" when visiting Gettysburg. Were we there in a past life? Would be interesting to be able to digress to learn more. Some parts of the battlefield peak an un-explainable emotion and feeling much more than others. While there are some folks that think this may be bunk, the many who share the sensitivity know better.

Could not have said it better!

Here in Minnesota, I have no battlefields to walk, no graves to visit, no sites of the war period. All we have are lots and lots of Native American names of cities, towns, creeks/falls, etc. Anyone see that stupid movie with Charlie Sheen, "Hot Shots"? He was talking to a chief, supossedly in Sioux, and every word out of his mouth was a Minnesota place. (That part, actually, WAS kinda funny). But I have said this before--I envy those of you who live out there, and I might just move myself, seriously...

Rhett, at least you are living on the same continent... *sigh*
And that Charlie Sheen movie really is very funny...
 
I think that we need a thread on forum technical use taught by a young savvy Hanna or anyone else that has it all down.

I think that'd be helpful for me too! There seems to be a fair amount of forum and tech savvy members here, so maybe a tutorial with one big master post and other posts adding on it and a sticky on the thread would be helpful when we have these niggling questions.
 
Here in Minnesota, I have no battlefields to walk, no graves to visit, no sites of the war period. All we have are lots and lots of Native American names of cities, towns, creeks/falls, etc. Anyone see that stupid movie with Charlie Sheen, "Hot Shots"? He was talking to a chief, supossedly in Sioux, and every word out of his mouth was a Minnesota place. (That part, actually, WAS kinda funny). But I have said this before--I envy those of you who live out there, and I might just move myself, seriously...

There were two--Hot Shots and Hot Shots Part Deux. In one of them his word for struck out was "Hershiser," as in Orel Hershisher. :smile:
 
I think that'd be helpful for me too! There seems to be a fair amount of forum and tech savvy members here, so maybe a tutorial with one big master post and other posts adding on it and a sticky on the thread would be helpful when we have these niggling questions.

Niggling? Is that a thing? A word? Did you have to drop back to the Oxford English Dictionary to get it?
What was it's origin?


Why don't you take your fresh, young mind to a moderator and further press this point so that us old farts can get 90% of the benefit that you don't really need, but are nice enough to act like it?

You've had a smart phone in your hand since you could walk and computers are your thing.

Typewriters were my thing.

In my first year of college while writing for the Chart at MSSU my prof invited me down to the basement under the Communications department to write my next article on the "word processor".

It was as big as a couch and had a crappy monitor, before Windows, and was weaker than Microsoft Word.

But it was HUGE step up from my MANUAL typewriter!
 
Niggling? Is that a thing? A word? Did you have to drop back to the Oxford English Dictionary to get it?
What was it's origin?

Yes, yes it is. It means slight but persistant irritation. Have no clue about origin.

Why don't you take your fresh, young mind to a moderator and further press this point so that us old farts can get 90% of the benefit that you don't really need, but are nice enough to act like it?

You've had a smart phone in your hand since you could walk and computers are your thing.

Typewriters were my thing.

In my first year of college while writing for the Chart at MSSU my prof invited me down to the basement under the Communications department to write my next article on the "word processor".

It was as big as a couch and had a crappy monitor, before Windows, and was weaker than Microsoft Word.

But it was HUGE step up from my MANUAL typewriter!

I still have problems with computers! Don't worry. Is difficult. :smile: But I don't think half as difficult as what typewriters sound.
 
Yes, yes it is. It means slight but persistant irritation. Have no clue about origin.



I still have problems with computers! Don't worry. Is difficult. :smile: But I don't think half as difficult as what typewriters sound.
Niggling is a word often used in my family.
nig·gle
ˈniɡəl/
verb
gerund or present participle: niggling
cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety.
"a suspicion niggled at the back of her mind"
synonyms: irritate, annoy, bother, provoke, exasperate, upset, gall, irk, rankle with;More
informalrile, get to, bug
"his behavior does niggle me"
find fault with (someone) in a petty way.
"colleagues say he loved to niggle and criticize people"
synonyms: complain, quibble, nitpick, fuss, carp, cavil, grumble, gripe, grouse, moan
"he niggles about the prices"
 
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