RAMSEUR’S ELITE CORPS OF SHARPSHOOTERS...

Yankee Captain James McKnight’s regular battery had already been overrun once that foggy morning at Cedar Cree, losing a gun and several men. Now as part of Getty’s Division they waited on a low hill outside Middletown, Va. As another Rebel attack materialized out of the mist, the gunners gaped at the Confederate skirmishers loping wolf-like up the hill, howling their trademark yell.

“I could not believe they were actually going to close with us,” said one “until the men on the remaining gun of the left section abandoned it and retreated toward the old graveyard wall. Their front line was not in order, but there was an officer leading them and I distinctly heard him shout: Rally on the Battery! Rally on the Battery!” The Yankee gunners managed to fire off a last shot of double canister, “but as the Rebel veterans understood this kind of business they opened out so that the charge did not hit any of them.

”In a moment the Southerners fell in amongst the gunners, as one recalled, “amid smoke, fog, wreck, yells, clash and confusion…man to man, hand to hand, with bayonets and musket butt on their side and revolvers, rammers and hand spikes on ours!” 
The gunner’s confusion is understandable. Skirmishers were simply not supposed to close with a strongly defended enemy position, much less assault it. 

They did not know that they faced Ramseur’s Division’s elite Corps of Sharpshooters, the shock troops of the Confederacy. They were, as one former member put it, “the spike head of the Toledo Steel” that led both the advance and retreat of the army. The sharpshooters served not only as skirmishers in the usual sense, but instead as powerful combat units in their own right. As a tactical innovation, the Confederate sharpshooters were years ahead of their time, presaging both the “open order” of the late nineteenth century and the German Stosstruppen of World War I.

It has always been the objective of tyrannical regimes to silence the opposition.

The following order was issued to Union General Dix dated May 18th, 1864,”You will take possession by military force of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce… and prohibit any further publication thereof… you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison … the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers.”

What was the Lincoln administration trying to hide, why were over three hundred newspapers in the North forcibly closed during the war? Why were there thousands of political prisoners in Northern jails? This is what one would expect to see from a despotic government and that’s exactly what it was.

Black Confederates? Why haven’t we heard more about them? National Park Service historian, Ed Bearrs, stated, “I don’t want to call it a conspiracy to ignore the role of Blacks both above and below the Mason-Dixon line, but it was definitely a tendency that began around 1910.” 

Historian, Erwin L. Jordan, Jr., calls it a “cover-up” which started back in 1865. He writes, “During my research, I came across instances where Black men stated they were soldiers, but you can plainly see where ‘soldier’ is crossed out and ‘body servant’ inserted, or ‘teamster’ on pension applications.” 

Another black historian, Roland Young, says he is not surprised that blacks fought. He explains that “…some, if not most, Black southerners would support their country” and that by doing so they were “demonstrating it’s possible to hate the system of slavery and love one’s country.” 

This is the very same reaction that most African Americans showed during the American Revolution, where they fought for the colonies, even though the British offered them freedom if they fought for them.

“There is a class of people (in the South), men women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order”  W.T. Sherman 

This type of rhetoric is excused and dismissed by the victors in their histories, but when the same extermination policy was perpetrated on Native Americans it’s called a Massacre.    Why is that?

The Wounded Knee Massacre December 29,1890
White officials became alarmed at the religious fervor and in December 1890 banned the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations. When the rites continued, officials called in troops to Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. The military, led by veteran General Nelson Miles, geared itself for another campaign. 

The presence of the troops exacerbated the situation. Short Bull and Kicking Bear led their followers to the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, to a sheltered escarpment known as the Stronghold. The dancers sent word to Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas to join them. Before he could set out from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, however, he was arrested by Indian police. A scuffle ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain. Six of the policemen were killed.

General Miles had also ordered the arrest of Big Foot, who had been known to live along the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. But, Big Foot and his followers had already departed south to Pine Ridge, asked there by Red Cloud and other supporters of the whites, in an effort to bring tranquility. Miles sent out the infamous Seventh Cavalry led by Major Whitside to locate the renegades. They scoured the Badlands and finally found the Miniconjou dancers on Porcupine Creek, 30 miles east of Pine Ridge. The Indians offered no resistance. Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, rode in a wagon. The soldiers ordered the Indians to set up camp five miles westward, at Wounded Knee Creek. Colonel James Forsyth arrived to take command and ordered his guards to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the camp. The soldiers now numbered around 500; the Indians 350, all but 120 of these women and children.

The following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers entered the camp demanding the all Indian firearms be relinquished. A medicine man named Yellow Bird advocated resistance, claiming the Ghost Shirts would protect them. One of the soldiers tried to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. A scuffle ensued and the firearm discharged. The silence of the morning was broken and soon other guns echoed in the river bed. At first, the struggle was fought at close quarters, but when the Indians ran to take cover, the Hotchkiss artillery opened up on them, cutting down men, women, children alike, the sick Big Foot among them. By the end of this brutal, unnecessary violence, which lasted less than an hour, 300 Sioux lay dead. Official reports listed the number killed at 90 warriors and 210 women and children.  In comparison, army casualties were 25 killed and 39 wounded (mostly by their own men). Forsyth was later charged with killing the innocents, but exonerated.

Confederate cavalryman John Hunt Morgan, with a knack for raiding and disrupting Union rail and supply lines, embarked on his famed Christmas raid into Kentucky.

Morgan and about 4,000 Confederate cavalry troops under his command left Tennessee on Dec. 22, 1862, beginning a mission to harass and disrupt Union troops and supply lines in the key border state.

All told, his troopers destroyed miles of railroad tracks, cut telegraph lines, burned supply depots and briefly occupied several Kentucky towns along the way, capturing and then paroling numerous Union troops.

By Dec. 28, 1862, he approached a key objective: two tall railroad trestles of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. After an artillery barrage on two nearby Union stockades, Morgan captured hundreds of prisoners and burned the trestles.
Then, after New Year's Eve, his forces retreated into Tennessee. Many in the South would boast of his daring. By May he would be lauded by the Confederate Congress for his heroic service to the secession.

Still later in the war, he was captured and imprisoned by the Union. He later escaped, making his way back behind Confederate lines, only to be shot and killed in Tennessee in 1864.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JIM LIMBER...

Confederate diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote on February 16, 1864, that she saw in the Confederate executive mansion "the little negro Mrs. Davis rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian. The child is an orphan. He was dressed up in little Joe's clothes and happy as a lord." 

The Confederate First Lady Varina Davis recounted the story in her 1890 memoir and claimed that the president "went to the Mayor's office and had his free papers registered to insure Jim against getting into the power of the oppressor again." The free black register and other records that could corroborate or contradict her account apparently have not survived. Nineteenth-century Virginia law did not provide for formal adoption of children, so in Jim's case it was an informal adoption. 

An ambrotype photograph taken of Jim Limber early in 1865 and correspondence between members of the Davis family suggest that he was a close playmate of the Davis children. Late in April 1865, as the Davis family fled southward from Richmond, Varina Davis wrote to her husband: "The children are well and very happy—play all day—Billy & Jim fast friends as ever … "

Jim was separated from the Davises after their capture in May 1865. When the child realized he was to be separated, according to Davis, he "fought like a little tiger and was thus engaged the last we saw of him. I hope he has been successful in the world for he was a fine boy, notwithstanding all that had been done to mar his childhood."

According to a column in the SCV's magazine, Jim Limber is "a person lost in history by revisionist historians, who felt his existence would impair their contrived notions of Davis." 

Oh what wicked webs Yankees weave, when first they practice to deceive. God forbid the world should know the Davis's weren't racists...

Commentator and author Bill O'Reilly is fond of continually saying, “we need leadership in this country, WE NEED ANOTHER LINCOLN.” Just why is that Bill? 

Do we need to kill another million or so Americans, suspend Habeas Corpus and drag folks out of their beds in the middle of the night (there were thousands of political prisoners in Northern Jails uncharged and with no access to representation). Do we need intimidate voters at polling places with armed military or shut down all opposition news media in the country (in which case O’Rielly would be the first one out of a job). Lincoln shut down hundreds of newspapers in the North. 

Perhaps we need to burn down a few of our cities, hang or shoot a few innocents to make an example; disarm the border population and blockade a few of our states for the sole purpose of collecting taxes as Lincoln stated? Should we have a leader that deports his congressional opponents and incarcerates state legislators at will, allows his generals to oversee the theft of private property, rape indiscriminately and dig up the graves of his citizens looking for valuables? 

How about relocating thousands of citizens based on ethnicity as Grant did to American Jews with general order #11, or deporting and colonizing the entire black population back to Africa which was Lincoln’s ultimate goal. Entire volumes have been written about war crimes against Southern civilians perpetrated by his generals and condoned by the president, in some cases even promoting them afterwards.

Almost immediately after taking office, Lincoln became a self appointed military dictator, trampling the constitution and suspending civil liberties. He provoked a war while Congress was in recess and refused all attempts at diplomacy. The principles of separation of powers and checks and balances were nearly nonexistent. He even went so far as to threaten the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with imprisonment. 

So just why do we need another Lincoln Bill? If it's a totalitarian dictatorship your looking for I'd suggest North korea or Cuba...

"It is to me simply incredible, that a people so shrewd and practical as those of the United States, should expect us to have discarded, through the logic of the sword merely, the convictions of a lifetime; or that they could be deceived by us, should we be base enough to asset it of ourselves. 

They know that the people of the South were conquered, and not convinced; and that the authority of the United States was accepted by us from necessity, and not from preference.

The people of the South went to war, because they sincerely believed (what their political fathers had taught them, with one voice, for two generations) that the doctrine of State-sovereignty for which they fought, was absolutely essential as the bulwark of the liberties of the people." R. L. Dabney

A CHRISTMAS STORY..."Ten Cent Bill"

The year was 1919, one year after the end of World War I, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia were celebrating the Christmas Season. Many people attended Church or Synagogue and gave thanks to God for his many blessings. Folks, while shopping, were uplifted by sweet sounds of Christmas music played by the Salvation Army Band. There was a friendly and charitable atmosphere during this time of the year.

There were, however, some who were not as fortunate!

The aging veterans, in the Confederate Soldier’s Home, were proud men who had braved many a battle in the 1860s. One of these men was former Captain Thomas Yopp who saw such battles as that of Fredericksburg where a cannon shell burst knocked him unconscious.

The man who stayed with him until he recovered was his servant who had also joined the 14th Georgia Regiment, Company H. Bill Yopp was more then a servant; he and Thomas Yopp were friends who hunted and fished together.

Bill Yopp, a Black Confederate, was sympathetic to the men of Atlanta’s soldiers home who had been his compatriots in arms over fifty years earlier.

During the War Between the States, 1861-1865, Bill Yopp was nicknamed “Ten Cent Bill” because of the money he made shining shoes. He did this for the soldiers at a dime a shine and ended up with more money than most of his comrades. These men, also, cared for him when he was sick.

During the Christmas of 1919, Bill wanted to pay back the kindness that was shown to him. He caught a train from Atlanta to Macon, where he was offered help from the editor of a local newspaper [The Macon Telegraph]. He then caught a train to Savannah to raise Christmas money for the old veterans. Bill met many generous people on his trip.

Just weeks before the Christmas of 1919, he had raised the money and Georgia’s Governor Hugh Dorsey helped him distribute envelopes of three dollars to each veteran. That was a lot of money in those days.

The old Confederates were speechless. Tears were shed because of Bill Yopp’s good heart and kind deed. Many of these men had little or nothing. Bill was invited to come into the home’s Chapel and say a few words.

Bill Yopp was later presented a medal of appreciation for his support of the old soldiers and also voted in as a resident of the Confederate Soldier’s Home.

Bill died on June 3, 1936, the 128th birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He was buried at Marietta, Georgia’s Confederate Cemetery with his compatriots.
The Confederate Soldier’s Home was located at 401 Confederate Ave., in Atlanta, Georgia.


Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus!!

The source of information for this story came from the book, entitled: Bill Yopp “Ten Cent Bill” Narrative of a Slave! This book was written in 1969 by Charles W. Hampton.

"In the War Between the States, Southerners believed that they were fighting to defend the government as it was laid down at Philadelphia in 1787 and as recognized by various state ordinances of ratification. This was a government of restricted power, commissioned to do certain things which the states could not do for themselves, but strictly defined as to its authority." 

As long as each state was viewed as a sovereign entity, "the maximum amount of self-determination by the states" preserved, and states' rights rigorously upheld, any drift towards despotism was automatically nipped in the bud. That was ultimately the issue over which the South went to war since it held that the North "was rebelling against this idea which had been accepted by the members of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Or to put it another way, the North was staging a revolution, the purpose of which was to do away with this older concept of the American government." 

The South rejected this revolution and sought to defend what it insisted were its God-given rights. When the War Between the States is seen in these terms, the issue of slavery, firmly fixed in the minds of so many Americans as the true cause of the war, is understood rather to be merely the catchword of the War Party in the North, and a shallow excuse to wage war and impose a social revolution.”  Richard M. Weaver  

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Howell Hinds joined the Confederate Army and gave Collier his freedom papers. Collier immediately tried to join the Confederate forces alongside Hinds, but was told he was too young to fight. He ran away from the plantation and stowed away on a riverboat in the Mississippi for almost a year and then joined the 9th Texas Brigade by his own choice and served throughout the war. He finished his service as one of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s most trusted cavalry scouts, known as a superb horseman and marksman.

During the time of Reconstruction, Collier was accused of murdering a Yankee soldier, Captain James King, but was acquitted by a military tribunal in Vicksburg. King and Howell Hinds were involved in a fight and during the dispute, Hinds, though a much older man, knocked the youngster down several times. King’s anger grew with every knockdown. Finally, the thoroughly infuriated young man drew a knife on his unarmed opponent, but a bystander fired shots killing King, preventing him from drawing blood with his knife. It was never fully proven that Holt Collier was the man behind the gun. Soon after the trial, Collier left Mississippi and headed for Texas to lay low and let the controversy of the trial and King’s death blow over.

While in Texas, Collier used his skills as a horseman to work as a cowboy for one of the Lone Star State’s Founding Fathers, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, on Ross’ large ranch. Ross was one of the first Texas Rangers and eventually Governor of Texas, which adds a bit of irony to the story considering Collier was biding time waiting for a murder accusation to pass.

Who would have dreamed that the 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt and Holt Collier bear hunt near Onward, Mississippi would become famous and spawn the birth of the Teddy Bear?   In January, 2004, legislation sponsored by Senator Thad Cochran and Congressman Bennie Thompson established the Holt Collier National Wildlife Refuge. 

Eddie Inman –Shared on Southern Heritage Preservation Group…

Many of the men from Haywood County (current location of Confederate flag controversy) served in the 26th NC. This is what the regiment's leader, Col. John R. Lane, spoke of them at the 1903 Gettysburg reunion --

“Pardon my pride--I do not ask you to pardon my loving remembrance of them, and the tears that gather in my heart and rise to my eyes--but pardon my pride, when I say a finer body of men never gathered for battle. 

May I mention some of the things that went to make them good soldiers? In the first place the soldiers came of good blood. I do not mean that their parents were aristocratic--far from it; many of them never owned a slave. They were the great middle class that owned small farms in central and western North Carolina; who earned their living with honest sweat and owed not any man. 

They were good honest American stock, their blood untainted with crime, their eyes not dimmed by vice.. These boys had grown up on the farm and were of magnificent physique. Their life between the plow handles, and wielding the axe had made them strong. They had chased the fox and the deer over hill and valley and had gained great power of endurance that scorned winter's cold--or the parching heat of a July sun. Again these men, many of them without much schooling, were intelligent, and their life on the farm, and in the woods had taught them to be observant and self-reliant. 

They were quick to see, quick to understand, quick to act. Again, every man to them had been trained from boyhood to shoot a rifle with precision. Gen.. Pettigrew, observing the deadly execution of the muskets on this field, remarked that the Twenty-sixth shot as if shooting squirrels. Again these men were patriots; they loved their country, they loved liberty. Their forefathers had fought the British at King's Mountain and Guilford Court House. They had grown up to love and cherish their noble deeds. 

Now every man of them was convinced that the cause for which he was fighting was just; he believed that he owed allegiance first to his home and his State. He was standing to combat an unjust invader. Finally, these men had native courage--not the loud mouthed courage of the braggart--but the quiet, unfaltering courage that caused them to advance in the face of a murderous fire. The men of this regiment would never endure an officer who cowered in battle. They demanded in the officer the same courage they manifested themselves; they would endure no domineering, they would suffer no driving.”

WHY WAS IT ALRIGHT IN HIS DAY AND NOT IN OUR DAY?

NOW THEREFORE, I, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States of America, do hereby invite all of the people of our country to take a direct and active part in the Centennial of the Civil War. 

I request all units and agencies of government, Federal, State and local, and their officials, to encourage, foster and participate in Centennial observances. And I especially urge our Nation's schools and colleges, its libraries and museums, its churches and religious bodies, its civic, service and patriotic organizations, its learned and professional societies, its arts, sciences and industries, and its informational media, to plan and carry out their own appropriate Centennial observances during the years 1961 to 1965; all to the end of enriching our knowledge and appreciation of this great chapter in our Nation's history and of making this memorable period truly a Centennial for all Americans. 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed. 

DONE at the City of Washington this 6th day of December in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-fourth. 

By the President: 

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Main stream (Northern) historians often site the South’s being prevented from expanding slavery into the territories as a reason for secession. However, once the South seceded, it no longer had any claim to the territories, so their argument makes little sense. 

In 1856 there were 55 reported slaves in Kansas and by 1860 there were only two. In the Arizona territory, which includes parts of present day Arizona and New Mexico, there were less than 20.

The prospect of slavery moving west in the mid-fifties when Lincoln began exploiting the issue that made him president was non-existent. The real reason was stated by Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton of Massachusetts. He supported the free soil movement in the West in order to “confine the Negro within the South.” 

Every time a state was admitted into the Union as a “free state” it meant two more Senators and based on population a number of Congressmen for the North. With 19 Free states and only 15 Slave states, the South was in a precarious situation politically. Congress was dominated by the industrial North and things were not going to get better any time soon with the election of a sectional president from a sectional party. 

Lincoln played on racist fears and demonized the South. That legacy survives today in the myth that the war was about the South’s desire to protect and expand slavery.

December 20th 1860...

The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to SECEDE from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the CONFEDERACY was formed.

Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union. Just as Springfield, Illinois celebrated the election of its favorite son to the Presidency on November 7, so did Charleston, South Carolina, which did not cast a single vote for him. It knew that the election meant the formation of a new nation. The Charleston Mercury said, "The tea has been thrown overboard, the revolution of 1860 has been initiated."

South Carolina ordinance of Secession:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.
Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.

They often didn’t look like much but they fought like hell…

In 1863 Louisiana soldier Robert Newell watched 400 Texas Rangers ride into camp. Newell was repulsed at the sight. "If the Confederacy has no better soldiers than those we are in a bad roe for stumps, for they look more like Baboons mounted on goats than anything else."

An interesting fact about Terry's Texas Rangers is that unlike most Cavalry units they rarely used sabers at all. They were generally armed with short rifles, shotguns, and multiple six-shooters per man. They made it their habit not to let the enemy get close enough to have to use sabers in hand to hand combat.

“Those very people who basely submit to the despotism so unrelenting and cruel invade our soil without a shadow of right, and declare it to be their purpose to force us back into the Union, which they have destroyed, under a Constitution which they have rendered a mockery and made a nullity.” John Tyler 10th president 

The Northerner sheeple submitted to Lincoln’s despotism of suspending habeas Corpus, jailing legislators, closing down newspapers, confiscating arms, intimidating the chief justice of the Supreme Court and general suspension of Constitutional civil liberties. Those same people invaded the South in order to subject our people to their despotism. Fiercely independent Southernors would not put up with such tyranny and thousands died defending against it…

That’s why the Confederate flag is often held as a symbol of freedom across the globe except here in the politically correct US; where it is often regarded as a symbol of slavery, racism and oppression by the historically ignorant and those who profit from an agenda of keeping it thus. 

Photo: The Confederate Battle Flag in the UK

The Chicago Daily Times expressed the prevailing sentiment of the north in an editorial dated March 2nd 1861 and titled “WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR REVENUE.” 

“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states or the port must be closed to importations from abroad is generally admitted. If NEITHER of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; THE SOURCES WHICH SUPPLY OUR TREASURY WILL BE DRIED UP; there shall be no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. 

There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our Navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of the public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”

And all the time they were only after Southern money. That's not what I read in their history books.

“PEARL HARBOR DAY” DECEMBER 7TH GOD BLESS ALL WHO SERVED…

BUT WAS NOT THE FIRST “DAY OF INFAMY”….ON APRIL 12TH 1861 THE US GOVERNMENT EXECUTES AN UNPROVOKED SNEAK ATTACK ON CHARLESTON SOUTH CAROLINA…RESULTING IN THE DEATHS OF NEARLY A MILLION AMERICANS... 

When the new emperor takes office, he waits for Congress to go on recess, and then he swings in action for his Grand Plan - Provoking the South into war.

Lincoln, by Himself: (1) Ignored former president John Tyler’s Peace Commission (2) Ignored the advice of his General Winfield Scott not to Send a War Fleet to Sumter (3) Ignored the advice of his Cabinet not to Send a War Fleet, (4) While still under Peace agreement with S.C. Governor not to Send additional Troops to Sumter - Sent a War Fleet to Sumter & Announced the Departure. (5) Ft. Pickens Retaken "Under Force" - While under a Peace Agreement (6) War Fleet Sails into Charleston Harbor - and the Fort is Shelled [there was no other option for S.C.] (7) Lincoln by himself and without approval of Congress [it's on recess and he knows it] Calls up 75,000 Troops from the South & Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Maryland are drawn into the Conflict (8) Lincoln Immediately Orders a Blockade [An Act of War] without Congress. 9) Lincoln Immediately sends troops into Border States, (10) Lincoln Invades Virginia the day the Citizens vote by consensus to leave the Union, with 3,000 troops in Alexandria / Arlington and (11) Jails members of the Maryland State Legislature before they could vote on Seceding from the Union. 

Alexander Stephens identified the beginning of the war as Lincoln's order sending a "hostile fleet, styled the 'Relief Squadron'," to reinforce Fort Sumter. "The war was then and there inaugurated and begun by the authorities at Washington.

General Beauregard had to strike the first blow, as he did; otherwise the forces under his command might have been exposed to two fires at the same time-- one in front, and the other in the rear." The use of force by the Confederacy, therefore, was in "self-defense," rendered necessary by the actions of the other side.

Jefferson Davis, who, like Stephens, wrote his account after the Civil War, took a similar position. Fort Sumter was rightfully South Carolina's property after secession, and the Confederate government had shown great "forbearance" in trying to reach an equitable settlement with the federal government. But the Lincoln administration destroyed these efforts by sending "a hostile fleet" to Sumter. "The attempt to represent us as the aggressors," Davis argued, "is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf against the lamb in the familiar fable. He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that strikes the first blow or fires the first gun."

Lincoln escaped blame by inducing southerners to attack Sumter, "to assume the aggressive and thus put themselves in the wrong in the eyes of the North and of the world." By sending a relief expedition, ostensibly to provide bread to a hungry garrison, Lincoln turned the tables on the Confederates, forcing them to choose whether to permit the fort to be strengthened, or to act as the aggressor. By this "astute strategy," Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot.

Things keep goin the way there goin, some of us may be sayin the same thing…

After leading a charge at Gettysburg and falling at the head of his troops, mortally wounded General William Barksdale asked his Yankee captors to give his wife a message as he lay dying – 

“Tell my wife I am shot, but we fought like hell!” 

Next to Longstreet and Jackson, I consider A.P. Hill the best commander with me. He fights his troops well and takes good care of them. - Robert E. Lee

General Ambrose Powell Hill (1825-1865), an important military figure in the War.

A graduate of West Point, A.P. Hill served in the U.S. Army in the antebellum period, fighting in the Mexican War and in the Seminole Wars. On the eve of the WBTS, he resigned his commission to fight for his home state of Virginia. Known as "Little Powell," Hill rose through the ranks to command of the famous "Light Division." 

He rescued Lee's Army at Sharpsburg, resplendent in a red battle shirt. Among the most promising of Lee's commanders, serious illness prevented him from reaching his full potential. Nevertheless, Powell was killed a week before Appomattox, in command of one-third of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Both Lee and Jackson called for A.P. Hill with their dying breaths. 

This page is dedicated to heroes like A.P. Hill and his men who showed "valor, and fortitude, and devotion. There need be no discussion on the causes which called them into action; they are intrinsically noble, and worthy of the most ardent applause and emulation."

The Missouri Brigade, and the 2nd Missouri Infantry wrote a blazing chapter of dedication, fierceness in battle, loyalty to their leaders and an undying admiration of soldiers from both sides, that led a Yankee General to write. "The Missouri Brigade are the best soldiers in the world, I only wish I had them".

After Vicksburg, the Second Missouri Infantry was combined with the Sixth Missouri and was known as the Second and the Sixth. This was duly noted on the battle flag. General Cockrell put the Missouri Battalion back together and continued to fight on. The Brigade and the 2-6 Missouri, saw action at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia and the Atlanta campaign, with particular heroism at the battle of Allatoona Pass in Georgia. Finally, after many months of hard fighting, the 2-6 MO Infantry, drew up before a small town in Tennessee named Franklin...."A carnival of death........"

The history of the 2-6 Missouri comes to a terrible close with this battle. The charge against artillery shot, shell and Yankee repeating rifles almost closed the history of this famous unit along with the Missouri Brigade as the men fell like leaves before a terrible hurricane. Cockrell's famed Missouri Brigade lost 60.2% of it's whole strength. Missouri lost 419 men officially, out of 696 men who made the charge. This was the first time in the history of the Missouri Brigade that it had made a charge upon the enemy and and failed to drive it from it's works. Other portions of the army had failed, but the Missouri Brigade, never! It was stated after, that Cockrell's Brigade had driven the farthest into the town of Franklin than any other commands, and the fame and heroism of this command constitutes the brightest chapter in the history of the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Vicksburg. (St. Louis Star, 1904)

What was left of the Missouri Brigade fought on for the remainder of the war finally surrendering at Fort Blakley, Alabama on April 9, 1865.

There are tales of Chaplain Jones having holes cut in ice-covered ponds; baptisms in clear view of enemy pickets and videttes, and baptisms under fire, with some of those participating being wounded.

During the revival, Jones told of how Confederate soldiers would form “reading clubs,” in which soldiers would pass around a well-worn Bible, sharing the Gospel. Always hungry for scarce Testaments and religious tracts, the soldiers would see Jones approaching camp and cry out “Yonder comes the Bible and Tract man!” and run up to him and beg for Bibles and Testaments “as if they were gold guineas for free distribution.” Jones would quickly exhaust his supply of reading material, and sadly have to turn away most of the men. “I have never seen more diligent Bible-readers than we had in the Army of Northern Virginia.”

Bibles and Testaments, along with all other printed matter, were declared to be contraband of war soon after Ft. Sumter, so began the problem of acquiring Christian printed material.  Bibles and Testaments were ordered from England, but few made it through the blockade.  But as in most other things in the Confederacy, necessity attained results, and at its height, more than a million tracts a week were being printed and distributed, along with many thousands of Bibles, Testaments, soldiers’ hymnbooks, Bible readings, etc.