The Vandals Were Only Following Orders:

November 19, 1864 [Diary of Dolly Lunt]

“Slept in my clothes last night, as I heard the Yankees went to neighbor Montgomery’s on Thursday night at one o’clock, searched his house, drank his wine, and took his money and valuables. I hastened back to my frightened servants and told them that they had better hide, and then back to the gate to claim protection and a guard. But like demons they rush in!

To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves they come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs, pickles of various kinds – both vinegar and brine – wine, jars, and jugs are all gone.

My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens, chicken, and fowls, my young pigs, are shot down in my yard and hunted as if they are rebels themselves. Utterly powerless I ran out and appealed to the guard. “I cannot help you, Madam, it is orders.” As I stood there, from my lot I saw driven, first, old Dutch, my dear old buggy horse…my mare, who for years had been too old and stiff for work, with her three-year-old colt, my two-year-old mule, and her last baby colt. There they go! There go my mules, my sheep, and, worse than all, my boys (slaves)!

Alas! little did I think while trying to save my house from plunder and fire that they were forcing my boys from home at the point of the bayonet. One, Newton, jumped into bed and declared himself sick. Another crawled under the floor, -- a lame boy he was, -- but they pulled him out, placed him on a horse, and drove him off…threatening to shoot him if he did not go…” Their [slave] cabins are rifled of every valuable, the soldiers swearing that their Sunday clothes were the white people’s, and that they never had money to get such things as they had. Poor Frank’s chest was broken open, his money and tobacco taken. He has always been a money-making and saving boy; not infrequently has his crop brought him five hundred dollars and more.

All of his and Rachel’s clothes, which dear Lou gave her before her death and which she had packed away, were stolen from her. Ovens, skillets, coffee-mills, of which we had three – not one have I left. Seeing that the soldiers could not be restrained, the guard ordered me to have their remaining possessions brought into my house, which I did, and they all, poor things, huddled together in my room, fearing every movement that the house would be burned.

Such a day, if I live to the age of Methuselah, may God spare me from ever seeing again!

(The Blue and the Gray,) Henry Steele Commager, editor, Bobbs-Merrill

TERRIBLE ODDS THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER FOUGHT AGAINST

The following, although written by a Union officer, ought to be in every school history of the South, so that the children of the men who fought the South's battles should know the odds they contended against. In an article which appeared first in the Century Magazine and afterwards in the third volume of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," Union General Buell said: "It required a naval fleet and 15,000 troops to advance against a weak fort, manned by less than 100 men, at Fort Henry; 35,000, with naval cooperation, to overcome 12,000 at Donelson; 60,000 to secure a victory over 40,000 at Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh); 120,000 to enforce the retreat of 65,000 intrenched, after a month's fighting and maneuvering at Corinth; 100,000 repelled by 80,000 in the first Peninsular campaign against Richmond; 70,000, with a powerful naval force, to inspire the campaign which lasted nine months, against 40,000 at Vicksburg; 90,000 to barely withstand the assault of 70,000 at Gettysburg; 115,000 sustaining a frightful repulse from 60,000 at Fredericksburg: 100,000 attacked and defeated by 50,000 at Chancellorsville; 85,000 held in check two days by 40,000 at Antietam; 43,000 retaining the field uncertainly against 38,000 at Stone River (Murfreesboro); 70,000 defeated at Chickamauga, and beleaguered by 70,000 at Chattanooga; 80,000 merely to break the investing line of 45,000 at Chattanooga, and 100,000 to press back 50,000 increased at last to 70,000 from Chattanooga to Atlanta, a distance of 120 miles, and then let go an operation which is commemorated at festive reunions by the standing toast of "One hundred days under fire;" 50,000 to defeat the investing line of 30,000 at Nashville; and, finally, 120,000 to overcome 60,000 with exhaustion after a struggle of a year in Virginia.

In some of the battles thus enumerated by General Buell, the odds were even greater than he states them. To illustrate the implicit confidence with which the Southern soldiers followed their leaders, he draws the following comparison: "At Cold Harbor the Northern troops, who had proven their indomitable qualities by losses nearly equal to the whole of their opponent, when ordered to another sacrifice, even under such a soldier as Hancock, answered the demand as one man---a silent and solid inertia. At Gettysburg Pickett, when waiting for the signal which Longstreet dreaded to repeat, for the hopeless but immortal charge against Cemetery Hill, saluted and said, as he turned to his ready column: "shall move forward, sir."

General Buell then speaks of another influence which nerved the hearts of the Confederate soldiers to valorous deeds: "Nor must we give slight importance to the influence of the Southern women, who in agony of heart girded the sword upon their loved ones and bade them go. It was to be expected that these various influences would give a confidence to leadership that would lead to bold adventure and leave its mark upon the contest."

The writer of the above words, which do so much honest justice to the soldiers of the South, was Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, the man whose timely arrival at Shiloh saved General Grant's army from utter annihilation and capture of what remained. Grant's army was crouched under the banks of the Tennessee River, and would have been captured or killed had not Buell arrived as soon as he did. He is about the only Northern general who has had the honesty to tell the real truth in regard to the numbers engaged on each side during the war.

Confederate Veteran, Vol. IX, No. 12 Nashville, Tenn., December, 1902.

Diversity in The Confederate Armies

Prepared by the Gainesville Vols, Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 373, Pearl River County, MS, http://www.geocities.com/scvcamp373, huffman1234@bellsouth.net, with input from the Education Committee of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and numerous other sources. Please visit the aforementioned website, as well as http://www.mississippiscv.org and http://www.scv.org, for further information on your proud Confederate "Heritage of Honor"!

AFRICAN-CONFEDERATE HERITAGE

This fact sheet is prepared by the Sons of Confederate Veterans Education Committee. The SCV hopes this information will enrich the celebration of Black History Month during February. "There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty...as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets...." Frederick Douglas, former slave & abolitionist (Fall, 1861). How many? Easily tens of thousands of blacks served the Confederacy as laborers, teamsters, cooks and even as soldiers. Some estimates indicate 25% of free blacks and 15% of slaves actively supported the South during the war. Why? Blacks served the South because it was their home, and because they hoped for the reward of patriotism; for these reasons they fought in every war through Korea, even though it meant defending a segregated United States. Emancipation? President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave. Issued at a time when the Confederacy seemed to be winning the war, Lincoln hoped to transform a disagreement over secession into a crusade against slavery, thus preventing Great Britain (and France) from intervening on the side of the South. The proclamation allowed slavery to continue in the North as well as in Tennessee and large parts of Louisiana and Virginia. It applied only to Confederate-held slaves, which Lincoln had no authority over, but not to slaves under Federal control. Lincoln's Views? "I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office...." 9/15/1858 campaign speech "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery...." 3/4/1861 First Inaugural Address "I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District [of Columbia]...." 3/24/1862 letter to Horace Greeley "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it...." 8/22/1862. Letter to Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor. Confederate: Famed bridge engineer and former slave Horace King received naval contracts for building Confederate warships. A black servant named Sam Ashe killed the first Union officer during the war, abolitionist Major Theodore Winthrop. John W. Buckner, a black private, was wounded at Ft. Wagner repulsing the U.S. (Colored) 54th Massachusetts Regiment. George Wallace, a servant who surrendered with General Lee at Appomattox, later served in the Georgia Senate. Jim Lewis served General Stonewall Jackson, and was honored to hold his horse "Little Sorrel" at the general's funeral. Captured black cook Dick Poplar suffered cruelty by Yankee Negro guards at Pt. Lookout, MD for being a "Jeff Davis man." The first Black regiment -- North or South -- raised during the war was the Louisiana Native Guards, a band of 1100 free "Men of Color" who formed their own regiment in New Orleans and served in the Confederate Army. (See "The Louisiana Native Guards," by James Hollandsworth.) This fact should not be surprising, as over 1300 Black Southerners were slaveowners, with some of the largest slaveowners in SC and LA being Black. Black slaveowners of the Cane River region of LA even formed and equipped several Confederate companies. A Black member of the 9th TX Cavalry, Pvt. Holt Collier, who was a native Mississippian and a slave, was the guide for Teddy Roosevelt's famous Mississippi Bear Hunt that resulted in the creation of the first Teddy Bear. Colonial: The first man to die for the American cause of freedom was Crispus Attucks, a black seaman from Boston. At the time of the American Revolution, New York City held almost as many slaves as all of Georgia combined. Surprising Facts: In St. Louis, General John Fremont freed slaves of "disloyal" Missouri Confederates; an angry Lincoln fired him. Slaves in Washington, D.C. were not freed until April 1862, a year after the war began with the firing at Ft. Sumter. Slavery continued throughout the entire war in five Union-held states: DE, MD, WV, KY and MO. The New York City draft riots of July 1863 resulted in burning of a beautiful black orphanage and lynching of blacks. A provision in the Confederate Constitution prohibited the African slave trade outright (unlike the U.S. Constitution). Encouraged by General Lee, the CSA eventually freed slaves who would join the army, and did recruit and arm black regiments. C.S. General Robert E. Lee freed his family slaves before the war; Union Gen. U.S. Grant kept his wife's slaves well into the war. Many blacks owned slaves themselves. In 1861 Charleston, for example, a free colored planter named William Ellison owned 70 slaves. Even in 1830 New York City, three decades before the war, eight black planters owned 17 slaves. Blacks Today: Nelson W. Winbush, a retired educator and SCV member, lectures on his black Confederate ancestor, private Louis N. Nelson. A black Chicago funeral home owner, Ernest A. Griffin, flies the CSA battle flag and erected at his own expense a $20,000 monument to the 6,000 Confederate soldiers who are buried on his property, once site of the Union prison Camp Douglas. Black professor Leonard Haynes (recently deceased) of Southern University (Baton Rouge) spoke regularly on black Confederates. American University's professor Edward Smith also lectures on the truth of black Confederate history and, with Nelson W. Winbush, has prepared an educational videotape entitled "Black Southern Heritage" (available at (954) 963-4857) Info? Contact: Dr. Edward Smith, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016 (202) 885-1192; Dean of American Studies, Dr. Smith (a black professor) is dedicated to clarifying the historical role of blacks. Sons of Confederate Veterans, International Headquarters - http://www.scv.org Books: Charles Kelly Barrow, et al. Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners (1995) Iver Bernstein. The New York Draft Riots (1990) Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (1995) Larry Koger. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slaveowners in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (1985, 1995) Richard Rollins. Black Southerners in Gray (1994). The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is a patriotic, historical, and educational organization, founded in 1896, dedicated to honoring the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier and sailor, and to preserving Southern Culture. For more information, call 1-800-380-1896 or visit the SCV website at http://www.scv.org.

HISPANIC-CONFEDERATE HERITAGE

This fact sheet is prepared by the Education Committee of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The SCV hopes this information will enrich the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Confederate: The Cuban patriot Narciso López approached Mexican War heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in 1848 with the request to head a liberation army to free Cuba from Spain -- Lee seriously considered the offer, but turned it down. José Agustín Quintero, a Cuban poet and revolutionary, ably served Confederate President Jefferson Davis as the C.S. Commissioner to Northern Mexico, ensuring critical supplies from Europe flowed through Mexican ports to the CSA. Santiago Vidaurri, governor of the border states of Coahuila and Nuevo León, offered to secede northern Mexico and join the Confederacy; Jefferson Davis declined, afraid the valuable "neutral" Mexican ports would be then blockaded. The Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol offered the Confederacy his advanced submarine Ictineo to smash the Federal blockade. Never purchased, Jules Verne apparently based the Nautilus on this, the world's most advanced vessel of the day. Ambrosio José González, a famous Cuban revolutionary, served Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard as his artillery officer in Charleston; earlier, in New York, he helped design the modern Cuban and (inversed) Puerto Rican flags. The Mexican Santos Benavides, a former Texas ranger, commanded the Confederate 33rd Texas Cavalry, a Mexican- American unit which defeated the Union in the 1864 Battle of Laredo, Texas. He became the only Mexican C.S. colonel. Thomas Jordan, a Confederate general responsible for early codes used in spying on Washington, after the war led the Cuban revolutionary army as Commander-in-Chief, training its generals and in 1870 routing the Spaniards at two-to-one odds. Lola Sanchez, of a Cuban family living near St. Augustine, had her sisters serve dinner to visiting Federals, while she raced out at night and warned the nearest Confederate camp. The Yankees thus lost a general, his unit and a gunboat the next day. Loretta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban woman, claimed to have fought in the war disguised as a Confederate soldier, Lt. Harry Buford. She chronicled her amazing and harrowing adventures in an account called The Woman in Battle. James Hamilton Tomb, a Confederate engineer on the innovative semi-submarine ship David, accepted a post-war offer from the Brazilian emperor as technical expert on torpedoes (submarine mines) in the Paraguayan War of 1865-1870. Hunter Davidson, a Confederate torpedo (submarine mine) scientist, assumed the head of the Argentine Torpedo and Hydrographic Bureau for some years, training its leadership, and retired to Asunción, Paraguay, where he is buried. John Randolph Tucker, head of the Charleston Confederate Naval Squadron, accepted a post-war position as Vice-Admiral heading the combined Peruvian-Chilean fleets in a Pacific conflict against Spanish coastal incursions. John Newland Maffitt, who before the war captured illegal slave-trading ships, served the Confederacy as the CSS Florida's commander. Afterwards, he served in the Paraguayan war and commanded the Cuban gun-runner Hornet. Thomas Jefferson Page, a Confederate naval commander who learned of the war's end in Cuba after sailing the ironclad CSS Stonewall from Spain, settled in Argentina, his son becoming an Argentine naval commander, his grandson an admiral. Mexican service influenced Confederate general Stonewall Jackson; he often spoke Spanish endearments to his wife, Anna. After the war, many prominent governors and other Confederates established a colony, Carlotta, in Mexico. American Revolution: Bernardo de Gálvez, Governor of Spanish Louisiana, defeated the British during the American Revolution at Baton Rouge, Mobile, Pensacola, St. Louis and in Michigan, diverting away thousands of British troops as America's forgotten ally. More Info? Website: www.clark.net/pub/ jbustam/ heritage/heritage.html. Books: James W. Daddysman, The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy and Intrigue, 1984. Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 1965 (reprint, 1940 edition). Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico, 1965. Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy, 1973. John O'Donnell-Rosales , Hispanic Confederates, list of several thousand who served the Confederacy (1997), reprint 1998. cost is $18.00. order: item #9362, Clearfield Publishing Co., 200 E. Eager St., Baltimore, MD 21202.

ASIAN-CONFEDERATE HERITAGE

While there were only a few hundred Asians living in the South at the time of the War for Southern Independence, records exist for several of these men becoming Confederate soldiers. Charles Chon, a Chinese National, was a private in Company K, 24th Texas Dismounted Cavalry Regiment, C.S.A. He was killed at the Battle of Franklin, TN, on Nov. 30, 1864, and is buried on the battlefield at the McGavock Confederate Cemetery. Another Asian-Confederate was William Henry Kwan of Co. B, 15th (or 12th) Virginia Battalion of Light Artillery. Kwan is a Cantonese (Chinese) name. The Military Image magazine showed his picture in their 1993 issue, where he appears to be of mixed Asian and Caucasian parentage. Another verified Asian Confederate is John Fouenty, a native of China, who was a cigar-maker in Savannah, GA, when the war broke out. He served in the Confederate army for a year, then was released because he was under age. Private Fouenty later returned to his native China. Research by Chinese-American researcher Shaie Mei Deng Temple of New Orleans, LA, reveals at least eighteen Asian-Confederates in various LA units, with names like Chou, Coo, Ding, Fai, Foo, Gong, Hai, Ho, Joung, Lin, Lee, Lou, Pang, Poo, Ting, and Wong. Perhaps the most famous Asian-Confederate soldiers were the two sons of famed P.T. Barnum Circus world-renowned Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. (The Thai twins took the name "Bunker" to Americanize themselves.) Chang & Eng, joined at the chest from birth, were devoted Confederates, tobacco growers, and slave-owners, living as farmers in North Carolina after they retired from the circus. In 1865, Gen. Sherman tried to conscript (draft) a most unwilling Eng for the Union Army, but could not, since Chang had not likewise been conscripted! If Sherman had known more about their family, he wouldn't have bothered to even try to draft a Bunker, so fierce was the family's devotion to the Confederacy. The twins had married the Yates sisters and had several children, rotating between each others' houses every few days. During the war, the Bunkers strongly supported the South, providing food, clothing, and nursing to Confederate troops. Chang's son, Christopher, served in Co. I, 37th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry. He was wounded and captured at Moorefield, WV, and spent several months in a Yankee POW Camp before being exchanged. He had to eat rats to keep from starving in the Yankee POW Camp. Stephen Bunker, son of Eng Bunker, joined the same cavalry unit. He was wounded at Winchester, VA, and again before war's end. He and his brother both became farmers after the war. Specific research into Asian-Confederates is only now in its infancy. Many more Asian-Confederates are expected to come to light as this research progresses. Please see www.members.aol.com/gordonkwok/cacwpart26.html for additional details on the above Asian-Confederates.

NATIVE-CONFEDERATE HERITAGE

Native Americans had to choose which side to support during the War for Southern Independence. Overwhelmingly, they chose to side with the Confederacy. Who could blame them for choosing the South over the North? After all, their experiences with the United States government since 1776 had not been particularly beneficial to their people. So, the Cherokees in North Carolina, the Choctaws in Mississippi, and many tribes in the "Indian Territory" (modern day Oklahoma) joined the ranks of the Confederacy, with many individual Native-Confederates joining scores of Confederate companies all across the South. In NC, several companies of Cherokees joined the Confederate troops of Thomas' Legion and were designated the North Carolina Cherokee Battalion. Lt. John Astooge Stoga, a full-blooded Cherokee, commanded one of the Cherokee companies. Unlike the Union army, the Confederate Army allowed non-Whites to become officers. The Legion served in VA, TN, and NC and even in Jubal Early's attempt to take Washington, DC. In late 1864, an additional two Cherokee companies were recruited into the Legion. In MS, the First Battalion Choctaw Cavalry was formed in 1862, with Maj. J.W. Pearce in command. The two companies of this battalion were formed in Newton County. This unit met with disaster at Tangipahoa, LA, when many of its members were captured; several Choctaws were humiliated by their Yankee captors by being taken North and put on exhibit as curiosities of war. However, some of the Choctaws escaped capture and were transferred to Maj. Spann's Battalion of Independent Scouts, where they served as dismounted scouts. In the Indian Territory, a number of Native-Confederate companies were formed from the Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes that had been forcibly relocated there by the US Government. Brigadier General Stand Watie, a full-blooded Cherokee, was the only Native-Confederate or Native-American to rise to that rank in the War of Northern Aggression. Watie was a slave-owning planter, like many Native-Americans in the South before the war. He was also the very last Confederate general to surrender an army during the war, his surrender coming on June 25, 1865, some two and a half months after Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Clearly, the thousands of Native-Confederates who served the South made invaluable contributions to the Southern bid for freedom and independence.

A SOLDIER'S DIARY ENTRY TESTIFIES AS TO THE DIVERSITY

Corporal Robert Watson, 1st Florida Cavalry, Civil War Diary: "1862---Feb 23. Sunday. Truly this is a cosmopolitan company, it is composed of Yankees, Crackers, Conchs, Englishmen, Spaniards, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Poles, Irishmen, Swedes, Chinese, Portuguese, Brazilian, I Rock Scorpion Crusoe [i.e., Watson's friend Crusoe, who may have been an Iraqi]; but all are good southern men. There are also Scotchmen, Welshmen and some half Indians, surely this is the greatest mixture of nations for a small company that I ever heard of."

FEMALE CONFEDERATES

The story of Ginnie and Lottie Moon is a fascinating one - two sisters who cleverly and brazenly spied for the Confederates during the Civil War - and got away with it. They smuggled medicines and messages for the Confederacy. Read their incredible story (too long for inclusion here) at http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/moon.html. (Note: This is not the Lottie Moon of Southern Baptist fame.) Emmeline Piggott became North Carolina's most famous spy and smuggler. She is said to have carried dispatches in the large pockets under her full skirts. She avoided capture many times but was finally caught, arrested and imprisoned. She was eventually released and sent home. Elizabeth C. Howland, trained in medicine by her father, was highly successful as a Confederate spy. She often sent her young son and daughter to carry dispatches. Appearing innocent, the children were allowed to pass through enemy lines undisturbed. The trials and tribulations of Lt Harry T. Buford, Confederate Officer, later found to be Madam Loreta Velazquez, have also been recorded. Her book - "Loreta Janeta Velazquez The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army." Richmond, Va: Dustin, Gilman & Co., 1876 has become controversial. S.M. Blaylock, a woman, served in Co. F, 26th NC Infantry, until her discovery. One anonymous woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private was found dead on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 17, 1863, by a burial detail from the Union II Corps. Based on the location of the body, it is likely the Southern woman died participating in Pickett's charge. Current research is turning up more and more actual female Confederate soldiers. The most accepted current estimate is that at least 250 women (disguised as men) served as CS soldiers.

NON-HUMAN CONFEDERATES

Confederate companies took various mascots to war with them. An Arkansas regiment took a wildcat, a Louisiana regiment fittingly took a pelican. Most unusual of all was the 43rd MS Infantry's "Old Douglas" the camel, who served with the unit until killed by Yankee sharpshooters at Vicksburg; he has a tombstone in that city's Cedar Hill Cemetery.

The Northerners Fundamental Mistake:

The average Northerner’s image of the antebellum American South was based primarily on the exaggerations and fiction of writers who either had not journeyed southward in their lives, or knew by firsthand accounts what they were writing about.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute

The Southern legend was unique…[and] begun innocuously by a young Baltimorean, John P. Kennedy. After visiting the plantation of his mother’s Virginia kin, he wrote a charming book called Swallow Barn (1832) – a series of sketches of a past time on plantations as it had come down to him through the pathos of distance and sentiment. Kennedy went on back North [and] the byplay of his imagination became the genesis of that glamorous plantation world that never was. From this model grew a body of glowing literature whose composite impression soon passed into folklore.

Writing even more from imagination than had Kennedy, the abolitionist authors drew a gaudy picture of harems of bright-skinned girls from the Potomac to the Gulf, being slavered over by a goateed colonel with a whip in one hand and a julep in the other. A composite character developed of this colonel, a sort of Cottonfield Caligula, who lived in imperious and splendid sin. The colonel was invariably lazy and proud, self-indulgent and quick-tempered, pleasure-loving and courtly, an utterly thriftless wastrel who squandered the wealth (which, despite these traits he had somehow acquired) in ostentatious and ruinous hospitality.

The apogee was reached in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1851, and the figures of Mrs. Stowe’s vivid imagination entered American folklore on the other side. From the enemy’s side, the worst was attributed to all. Much that European travelers found charming, Northern observers found deplorable, invariably attributing the conditions to lack of Southern lack of get-up-and-go and a slothful incapacity for material well-being.

The Northerners made a fundamental mistake: they measured the South by the yardstick they brought from home. To the Northerner, his factories represented “progress.” Upon this industrial progress were based the standards of an acquisitive competitive society which valued material possessions, the physical symbols of success – “conspicuous consumption” – and the traits and habits that directed a life toward these things. The observers, unable to conceive of a people without those values, cited the lack of factories as indicating backwardness and judged the people as failures for not achieving something they never wanted. As with Americans ever since, they could not believe that people different from themselves actually liked their own way of life.

While in the capitalistic North power fed on power – men who made money pooling their wealth with other money men, formed combines of power for wider spheres of exploitation, toward the ultimate goal of government control – the Southern planter wanted to enjoy what he had. To him the doctrine that “time is money” would have been incomprehensible and monstrous. Time belonged to man, not to the bank: it was his heritage from God.

Where Northern leaders regarded the Union as a nation of people, Southerners regarded it as a confederation of semiautonomous principalities. In their confederation with other States, no member of the ruling class ever dreamed of placing a strongly centralized government over himself. Even Jefferson, when old and dying, wrote his highest praise to Judge Spencer Roane for his outraged stand against a central government which presumed to encroach on the rights of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

(The Land They Fought For, Clifford Dowdey, Doubleday & Company, 1955, pp. 11-13)

Meaning of plantation:
The planting, or setting in the earth for growth by farmers.



Most Southern Plantation/Farm homes look like this. Not like those in movies.

"The Beast of New Orleans"

Benjamin Butler

"As the Officers and Soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women calling themselves ladies of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any Female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." So declared Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler in his infamous General Orders no. 28, issued in New orleans on May 15, 1862.

For three weeks since the surrender of New Orleans to the Union's army and naval forces, Butler's men had endured many contemptuous snubs from the city's patriotic Confederate women. Blue soldiers walking down the streets would be confronted by indignant women who would either gather in their skirts when the soldiers passed as though any contact would be contaminating or quickly cross to the other side of the street. The women would make derisive comments or loudly sing patriotic Confederate songs. Some of the "ladies" would go so far as to spit on the blue uniforms, and Capt. David G. Farragut even had the contents of a chamber pot dumped on his head from an upstairs window.

Butler's outrageous threat to treat these women as common whores had the desired effect of stopping the insults. Few women were arrested for violating General Orders no. 28, but one, Mrs. Philip Phillips, was confined on Ship Island for more than two months for laughing when a Union officer's funeral procession passed her house.

The order embarrassed many in the North and caused widespread indignation as an affront to womanhood throughout the South and in Europe. The nickname "Beast Butler" was bestowed on the general, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared him to be an outlaw to be executed when caught.

Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War"