This may be the only time I ever agree with this man...

“Where, shall we find such heroic self-denial, such up bearing under every physical discomfort, such patience in poverty, in distress, in absolute want, as we find in the Southern Army?

They fight better for a passion than you do for a sentiment. They fight well and bear up under trouble nobly, they suffer and never complain, they go in rags and never rebel, they are in earnest for their liberty, they believe in it and if they can they mean to get it.”

"Henry Ward Beecher (Northern Abolitionist) to his congregation-

This for anyone that thinks they've got it tough today!

"Doctor Robert G. Stephens of Atlanta, tells me of a Confederate soldier who, returning ARMLESS to his Georgia home, made his wife hitch him to a plow which she drove; and they made a crop. 

Myrta Lockett Avary “Dixie After the War” published 1906"

WHY WASN'T JEFFERSON DAVIS CHARGED AND EXECUTED BY KANGAROO COURTS LIKE CHAMP FERGUSON, MAJOR WIRZ  AND MARY SURRATT? 

Jefferson Davis and Confederate officers were often referred to as traitors, but never charged with treason?   Why?  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in a privately delivered opinion said. “If you bring these leaders to trial it will condemn the north, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion.” Lincoln appointee Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)

The government appointed three separate attorneys to take on the case against Jefferson Davis, but all three eventually declined when they decided the case was “doomed to failure.”  The following quote is attributed to one of those attorneys.  “Gentleman, the Supreme Court of the United States will have to acquit that man under the Constitution, when it will be proven to the world, that the north waged an unconstitutional warfare against the south.” 

  

Because the case against Jefferson Davis was so flimsy, President Johnson was prepared to offer him a pardon in order to avoid embarrassment.   Davis refused a pardon on the grounds that, to accept a pardon is to admit guilt.  Davis wanted a trial to settle the issue of secession, once and for all, in a court of law.

President Johnson choose to give amnesty to the entire South, Davis included, shelving the issue, unresolved.

The fact is, they didn't dare bring President Davis or Vice President Stephens (a brilliant attorney) to trial because together, they would have destroyed the governments case against them.  

 ~Robert~

CSS Arkansas, an ironclad ram, was built at Memphis, Tennessee, in 1861-62. Incomplete when Union forces closed in on Memphis in May 1862, she was towed up the Yazoo River to Yazoo City, Mississippi, and finished as far as circumstances allowed.

On 15 July 1862, her enterprising commanding officer, Lieutenant Isaac Newton Brown, CSN, took Arkansas down the Yazoo, where she encountered the U.S. gunboats Carondelet and Tyler and the ram Queen of the West, leaving the first two badly damaged. Continuing out into the Mississippi River, she boldly fought her way through the assembled Federal fleet and came to rest under the protection of the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg.

While at Vicksburg on 22 July, Arkansas was attacked by the Queen of the West and ironclad Essex, but was not severely damaged. Though badly in need of repairs, she was next ordered to steam down the river to assist Confederate forces in an attack on Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

While carrying out this mission on 6 August 1862, CSS Arkansas suffered a severe machinery breakdown during an engagement with the Essex, drifted ashore and was burned to prevent capture.