Author: Ultimate Flags Store

Private Sam Watkins’ Company H of the 1st Tennessee was camped on the Duck River, at a moment when there were no battles to win. The thing is, a soldier needs stuff to do or he gets bored and up to trouble. As the  Bible says, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”  Or at least it can cause him to get into some sort of mischief. It seems that Sam’s sweetheart was living in Colombia, Tennessee, just down the river from his camp. Well, the Duck River at the time was high. As Sam put it, it “had on its Sunday clothes.” Sam got an idea to “slip off and go down the river in a canoe.” It was a great idea except for one problem: the boat leaked and soon sank. So Sam put his “sand paddles to work and landed in Columbia that night.”  A Rebel knew how to march, and It was a matter of “damn the consequences.”

Sam put it this way: “Some poet has said that love laughs at grates, bars, locksmiths.” Sam was laughing, but he did think ahead. He asked his sweetheart to pray for him “because I thought the prayers of a pretty woman would go a great deal further ‘up yonder’ than mine would.” When Sam got back to camp, his superiors were waiting for him. He was sentenced to thirty days’ fatigue duty that’s (digging trenches, fetching water, and other labor intensive duties.) On top of that, the worst of it was he had to forfeit four months’ pay at eleven dollars per month – that’s $44. His sweetheart’s prayers must have worked, though, because General Leonidas Polk “issued an order that very day promising pardon to all soldiers absent without leave if they would return.” So, Polk ordered Sam’s release, but unfortunately never didn’t say anything about the fine. So, in Sam’s words,

“The Confederate States of America were richer by forty-four dollars.”

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John Baxley shares the economic reasons for the civil war. High schools and politicians have changed history to make this war solely about slavery, but that issue was not the main reason for the war. The struggle was about unfair taxation, at least according to the author. The background is examined in more detail in the story.

Key Takeaways:

• The unfair 40-percent tariff on cotton was paid by the five Deep South cotton states, which financed 80 percent of the U.S. Treasury.
• The South felt the only way it could change this unfair arrangement would be to legally secede and form its own country.
• my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery.

“With all this hate and economic warfare against the South, the folks in Dixie had no choice but to leave the Union or face economic ruin. Truly a sad choice, as that is what happened to the South in the end despite their heroic attempt to form their own nation.”

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The Confederate monuments honor the sacrifice that many people made. There are many people that descended from war veterans of the Civil War, and they are upset at the recent removal of monuments that they care a lot about. Confederate history and heritage has been under attack lately and many people are upset by this.

Key Takeaways:

• a closer reading of the orations given at the countless dedicatory ceremonies, of the newspaper articles that accompanied those events, and of correspondence surrounding that history, reveal that by far the underlying sentiment was to honor the veterans and others who suffered, fought and died decades earlier.
• forty years after Vietnam—an excellent example, among many, being the recent erection of the monument to Vietnam veterans on the Capitol Square in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Indeed, instead of taking monuments down or hiding them, we should be putting more monuments up. That is the true spirit of North Carolina and the spirit that, I would suggest, mirrors the overwhelming sentiment of the citizens of this state.

“Throughout our history, usually forty or fifty years after the conclusion of each war or conflict, there are efforts to honor the old veterans who are quickly passing away.”

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There is a side of the Civil War that many don’t know about, or just ignore.  It was not so unusual for troops from opposite sides to mingle, talk and share or trade items, and generally act friendly when not engaged in fighting each other.

Here is a portion of a letter sent from a Confederate soldier in North Georgia to his sister. July 15th, 1864“Dear Sister,  

Pickets don’t fire at each other now. We go down to the edge of the river on our side and the Yankees come down on their side and talk to each other. The men on picket opposite are from Ohio, and seem very tired of the war. They say that their term of enlistment will be out in three months and most of them say that when it is out they are going home.

Gen. Johnson has issued an order that there shall be no more communication between with them, and I think it is well that he has done so because they were getting too intimate. Some men don’t know what should be concealed. The Yankees are very much in want of tobacco, and our Government gives it to us, and we used to trade tobacco with them for knives and canteens.

There is a rock near the middle of the river to which they would swim and trade. After a while they got so well acquainted that some of our men would swim clear across and land among the Yankees. The Yankees were not so bold for a long time, but a few days ago they got to coming across also. That has been broken up now and if any trading is carried on, it is done contrary to orders

I took some tobacco down with me the other day but I found out when I got there communication had been stopped. As I was sitting on the banks, one of the Yankees from the other side called to me to know if I had any tobacco. I told him I had. He said that he had a good knife to trade for it. I told him that trading was prohibited. He said ‘Your officers won’t see you, come over, I want a chew of tobacco very bad.’ I asked some of them who they were going to vote for President. One of them said ‘Old Abe’ but most of them said they were for McLellan.

…One of the Yankee Lieutenants promised to mail some letters for one of our officers and I wrote to Aunt Martha expecting to send it at the same time but Gen. Johnson stopped the proceeding so I did not send it. There is a force of Yankees on this side of the river and have been there for some time. Why Gen. Johnson don’t drive them back I don’t know he must have some object in view.Write to me soon.. Yours truly,(s)O.D. Chester”

The last paragraph of the letter talks about the coming election in November, a very important issue to the South.  They figured that that McLellan as the peace candidate so they supported him. So, if most of the Yankee soldiers said they would vote for McLellan, as indicated above, wouldn’t that make some of those Yankees who wanted peace, too, see maybe just a little bit pro-South?  

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Some may wonder why the South remembers the Civil War as it does. After all, the losses were horrific to both North and South. Most of the war was fought on Southern soil. Small towns and countryside were trampled, occupied and battered for years. Major urban centers were ripped to pieces. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman is pretty well known, but what about Fredericksburg? When Union troops began to pour through the city, discipline broke down. Artillery shells had blown open many buildings, revealing their contents. For nearly 24 hours the city was sacked. When Rebel soldiers retook the city a few days later they were astonished at the destruction. During the siege of Vicksburg, 22,000 shells rained down. Cities like Charleston, Petersburg, Richmond saw vast destruction from siege. Shot and shell plunged down through roofs into parlors and bedrooms.   There were 50,000 civilian deaths during the Civil War. Food problems existed on both sides, but were far worse for Confederate soldiers and civilians. Union corn production was 400 million bushels, compared to the 250 million in Southern states. Union wheat production was 100 million bushels; Southern, 35 million bushels. And with soldiers marching back and forth across the South, you can imagine how much pillaging took place. One in five men of military age died in the war. Of course memorials sprang up across the South. Political, economic and social factors aside, losing 20% of the adult male population was a hard memory to erase.

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A biographer has called him the “Tejano Tiger.” His name is Col. Santos Benavides.  He was the highest-ranking Hispanic in the Confederacy. Over 10,000 Tejanos, the Mexican-American inhabitants of southern Texas, fought in the Civil War in South Texas in over 100 significant battles.  Here is his inspirational story.

Before serving with the Confederacy, Benavides had a reputation as an Indian fighter. He gained commission as captain in the 33rd Thirty-third Texas Cavalry (or Benavides’ Regiment) and went to serve the Rio Grande Military District. His his reputation as a fighter continued. He drove Juan Cortina back into Mexico in the battle of Carrizo in May 1861, and ended other local revolts against Confederate authority.

Benavides was offered a Union generalship, but turned it down to protect his homeland of Texas. He and his brothers, Santos, Refugio and Cristobal were a formidable fighting force, making up a significant part of the corps of Confederate officers in Texas.

In November 1863 Benavides was promoted to colonel and authorized to raise his own regiment of “Partisan Rangers,” including remnants of the Texas 33rd.

According to sources,

“His greatest military triumph was his defense of Laredo on March 19, 1864, with forty-two troops against 200 soldiers of the Union First Texas Cavalry, commanded by Col. Edmund J. Davis, who had, ironically, offered Benavides a Union generalship earlier.”

Wagon trains full of cargos of cotton, “white gold,”  came across the Río Grande and were loaded on Mexican flagships for safe passage past Union warships. The Union Army wanted to  stop these shipments that were funding the Confederate Army.

It was on March 18, 1864, when Union Major Alfred Holt led a force of 200 men from Brownsville. Their mission was to destroy 5,000 bales of cotton stacked at the San Agustín Plaza in Laredo.  

But Benavides was a Union mission spoiler.  After three Union attacks he and  just 42 men forced the Yankee invaders back down the Río Grande. These Confederates saved the town and the cotton trade into Mexico.

Colonel Benavides and his troops were said to be:

“the peer of any soldier or officer in the Confederate armies” and received a citation from the Confederate Texas Legislature for “vigilance, energy, and gallantry.”

Well done, “Tejano Tiger.”

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Union General William T. Sherman called them “the most dangerous set of men which the war turned loose upon the world.”  The cowboys of of the 8th Texas Cavalry were known as Terry’s Texas Rangers, reckless men who didn’t much like discipline. A Confederate colonel once recommended that the commander of a Union regiment surrender because he had five hundred Texas Rangers that he “couldn’t control in a fight.”  One night in Nashville, three or four Rangers slipped out of their barracks, got drunk and went to a play. When the actress playing Pocahontas was “roughed up” as part of a scene, one Ranger took offense and fired his six-shooter at the offending actor. A captured Union officer wrote in a letter: “The Rangers are as quick as lightning. They ride like Arabs, shoot like archers at the mark, and fight like devils. They are wholly without fear themselves, and no respecter of a wish to surrender.”Of the more than 1,000 Rangers who were mustered in, less than 300 returned home. In Austin, Texas there is a bronze statue depicting a Terry’s Texas Ranger wearing a poncho, a slouch hat and carrying a shotgun astride a spirited horse. One of the inscriptions is: “There is no danger of a surprise when the Rangers are between us and the enemy.”

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