“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.” 

He added, after a pause, looking me full in the face: “That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave” Thomas J. Jackson

A man Tennessee can be proud of...

Major-General William Brimage Bate…What a man…what a Brigade…what a story… Where are the men with indomitable spirits like this today??? 

Born near Castilian Springs, Tenn., in the year 1830. Early in his youth he manifested a bold and adventurous spirit that characterized his career as a Confederate soldier. Leaving school to become a clerk on a steamboat plying between Nashville and New Orleans, he subsequently enlisted for the Mexican war and served as a private in a Louisiana and a Tennessee regiment. 

In 1861 Bate entered the military forces as a private. He was speedily promoted captain and then colonel of the Second Tennessee regiment, and during the early months of the conflict served at Columbus, Ky., and elsewhere, in the command of General Polk. His first great battle was at Shiloh, where he shared the work of Cleburne's brigade of Hardee's corps Bravely leading his regiment in the second charge, through a murderous cross-fire, he fell severely wounded, a minie ball breaking his leg and disabling him for field service for several months. This participation in battle, though brief, was marked with such gallantry that he was mentioned with praise in the reports of Cleburne and Hardee, and on October 3, 1862, he was promoted brigadier-general. 

In February, 1863, he was again in the field, assigned to command of Rains' brigade in Polk's army, and in June, commanding the Ninth Alabama, Thirty-seventh Georgia, Fifteenth and Thirty-seventh and Twentieth Tennessee and Caswell's battalion, in the division of A. P. Stewart, he took part in the Tullahoma campaign with much credit, fighting the battle of Hoover's Gap on the 24th, driving the enemy back, and holding at bay the Federal advance. In this action he was in command of the Confederate forces, Stewart not arriving on the field until nightfall. According to Rosecrans' report, Bate delayed his army at this point thirty-six hours, preventing the Federals from getting possession of Bragg's communications and forcing him to disastrous battle. 

General Bate and his men took a prominent part in the fighting at Chickamauga. They fired the first gun in this historic struggle on "the river of death," driving the Federal guard from Thedford's ford, in preparation for the Confederate advance. Crossing the stream next morning, they went into action ONLY A THIRD ARMED, but drove the enemy back toward the position subsequently held with such heroism by Virginian George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga." As a result of this first day's fight, the brigade was fully armed with Enfield rifles. 

About 11 o'clock Sunday morning, Stewart threw his division again upon the enemy, the brigade of Brown, "followed by the gallant Clayton and indomitable Bate," pressing on beyond the Chattanooga road and driving the enemy within his line of entrenchments. "During this charge, which was truly heroic," Stewart reported, "General Bate and several of his staff had their horses killed--the second lost by General Bate that morning." In the evening he again led his brigade in an action near Kelly's house, in an action of the division, routing the enemy and capturing many prisoners; and finally the Eufaula artillery, attached to his brigade, fired the last gun of the battle. 

At Missionary Ridge, commanding Breckinridge's division, he was first on duty in the trenches at the base of the ridge, and later held a position on the crest near the headquarters of General Bragg. Fighting in a position where the whole magnificent panorama of the overwhelming army advancing upon them was visible, his troops bravely held their ground until both their left and right were turned, and then with the personal aid of General Bragg, a second line was formed, which checked the headlong advance of the victorious Federals. General Bragg reported General Bate among those distinguished for coolness, gallantry and successful conduct through the engagements and in the rear guard on the retreat. He continued in division command, after this battle, of his own brigade, Lewis' Kentuckians and Finley's Floridians, and was commissioned major-general February 23, 1864. 

Throughout the Georgia campaign he commanded a division of Hardee's corps, so often and so bravely in action; at Resaca handsomely repulsed the enemy from his front; at Dallas vigorously assailed Logan's entrenched Fifteenth Federal corps with his single division; on July 22d led the flank movement under Hardee which brought on the famous "battle of Atlanta." In the ill-fated campaign under General Hood, which brought General Bate and his men back to their native State, but with circumstances of suffering and disaster, he led his division, now including Jackson's brigade, from Florence, Ala., November 21st; marched with Cheatham's corps to Spring Hill, where he was in readiness for orders to attack; fought heroically at Franklin, in the desperate assault many of his men gaining the interior works and remaining there until the Federal retreat; and after attacking Murfreesboro in co-operation with Forrest, marched his men, a fourth of them BAREFOOTED OVER ICEY ROADS to Nashville, where upon arrival he encountered stragglers already in rapid retreat, indicating the disaster that was impending. 

Even under such circumstances his troops bravely took position, entrenched as best they could in such weather, and made a gallant fight against the Federal assault. After the supporting troops were driven back, he rode along his advanced line, urging the men to hold fast, though under fire from three directions. His Tennesseans at the" angle" were almost annihilated; two Georgia regiments fought until surrounded; all three brigade commanders were captured. 

The military service of General Bate was closed in the spring of 1865, with the capitulation of the army of Tennessee. During the four years he had been three times severely wounded, and had demonstrated in a remarkably brilliant way the ability of the American volunteer to rise to important command and win renown there as well as in the ranks. He resumed his legal practice, making Nashville his home. As he has eloquently said of the Confederate soldier in general, "He returned home from the fields of disaster, vanquished but not destroyed; sorrowful, but not without hope; . . . the irrepressible pride and indomitable pluck of Southern manhood were still with him." 

At the dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park he was selected by the secretary of war to speak for the Confederates, and his words on that occasion are monumental in their strength and calmness, presenting in unassailable force the rectitude of the Confederate cause…

Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in a small Missouri town called Florida on November 30, 1835. At the age of 18, Twain left home for the New York City and Philadelphia where he worked at various newspapers. He eventually returned home in 1857 and became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. This new career came to a halt when the Civil War began and river traffic was disrupted. 

He decided to join a Confederate militia, the Marion Rangers, but only lasted two weeks before he quit and went West. It is not known exactly why Twain quit the militia. He defended his actions throughout the years by describing his confusion while enrolling and explained he was ignorant of the politics behind the war.

Years after his military service, Twain continued to face criticism on all sides for his involvement in the war and his alleged deserter status. 

Photo: Twain in 1850 at age 15... 

The country would have been considerably smaller if we’d followed the advice of New Englanders. The men of New England declared that Britain's terms to end the War of 1812 were just and liberal and advised that granting them would be political wisdom. These same folks threatened secession if Jefferson followed through with the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France."

Here are Britain's demands to end the War of 1812: 

America would yield all the Northwest including Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, parts of Indiana and one third of Ohio as a perpetual Indian Territory and barrier between Canada and the US. 

Renounce the right to keep armed vessels on the lakes and military posts on the shores and relinquish a considerable portion of Maine to the British. 

Later New England would fight to keep Texas out of the Union but, once in, refused to let Texas go...

Another example of Iron Willed Southern Women...

"Phoebe Yates Levy Pember (August 18, 1823 - March 4, 1913) was a member of a Jewish family from Charleston, South Carolina and a nurse and female administrator of Chimborazo Hospital at Richmond, Virginia during the WBTS.

She assumed the responsibility informally at the age of 39 and eventually over 15,000 patients came under her direct care during the war. By 1861 she was a childless widow, living with her parents in Marietta, Georgia where they had fled to escape the ravages of war. Unhappy at home, Pember accepted an invitation to serve at Richmond's Chimborazo Hospital. She reported for duty in December 1862.

A sprawling institution on the outskirts of the city, Chimborazo was reportedly the largest military hospital in the world in the 1860s. By the end of the Civil War, the hospital had cared for some 76,000 patients.

Pember's job was to head up one of the facility's five divisions. It was an unusual job for a woman, at a time when virtually all nursing was done by men. Pember's varied duties surely required what one of her contemporaries described as her "will of steel under a suave refinement."

Although Pember had to thwart efforts by her staff to pilfer supplies, once reportedly threatening a would-be thief with a gun, she also seems to have been accepted and valued by patients. In a male-dominated environment, she was able to give soldiers a warm, feminine presence. Lacking adequate food, medicine, and other supplies, often that warm presence was the best that Pember and her staff could offer. Although she dedicated herself to relieving the suffering of soldiers, she was often simply a final companion for the dying.

Pember remained at Chimborazo until the Confederate surrender in April 1865. After the war, she wrote her memoirs, which were published as A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, in 1879. This book, which details her daily life through anecdotes of the war years, remains one of the best sources for understanding the experiences and ideas of Southern Jewish women before and during the Civil War."

Once you get them running, you stay right on top of them, and that way a small force can defeat a large one every time… Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger; it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson

"General Longstreet’s chief of artillery General E. Porter Alexander wrote in his memoirs, “As of the causes of the war it will of course be understood that every former Confederate, repudiates all accusations of treason or rebellion in the war, and even of fighting to preserve the institution of slavery….The unanimity and the desperation of our resistance… clearly show our struggle, to have been for that right of self-government…”