Tag Archives: Civil War

Articles of Interest

Is It Time For Christians To Abandon The Military?

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By Breaking News

Pentagon SC Is It Time for Christians to Abandon the Military?

War is hell. Audie Murphy (1925–1971), one of the most famous and decorated American combat soldiers of World War II, said as much in his book To Hell and Back. While considered a war “hero” and recipient of the Medal of Honor, Murphy was deeply affected by his time in the military:

“His first wife, Wanda Hendrix, stated that he once held her at gunpoint. She witnessed her husband being moved to tears by newsreel footage of German war orphans, guilt-ridden that his war actions might have been the cause of their having no parents.”

We just “celebrated” Abraham Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln is considered to be our nation’s greatest president by liberals and conservatives alike even though he presided over America’s most destructive war.

Historians believe the combined Union and Confederate death toll was around 750,000. The number could be higher if we had Confederate war records, most of which “vanished with their defeat.” Thomas Fleming writes in his new book on the Civil War, A Disease of the Public Mind:

“This much is certain: more soldiers died in the four year struggle than the nation lost in all her previous and future wars combined.”

Read More at godfatherpolitics.com . By Gary DeMar.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

History

'Lost' Civil War battlefield added to English Heritage register

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By hnn

The fighting took place at two separate battles, fought around ten days apart, over August and September 1644, near Lostwithiel, Cornwall.

The Royalists had tracked a heavily outnumbered Parliamentarian army to the town and gradually closed in on them. King Charles I himself was present during the campaign and is said to have slept in a hedge. Part of the fighting centred around the ruins of Restormel Castle.

The Parliamentarians had hoped that their navy would be able to navigate into the Fowey estuary to evacuate their troops, but unfavourable weather conditions prevented this. In the end, 6,000 men surrendered and the Parliamentarian leader, the Earl of Essex, was able to escape only after being taken off in a fishing boat.

The two locations are the first new battlefields to be added to English Heritage’s register since it was created in 1995. They take the number on there from 43 to 45….

Source:
Telegraph (UK)

Source URL:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10199961/Lost-Civil-War-battlefield-added-to-English-Heritage-register.html

Date:
7-28-13

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

History

NYT hightlights N-Y Historical Society's "Civil War in 50 Objects"

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By hnn

Tracing history through objects is popular these days. Neil McGregor, the director of the British Museum, did it in 700 best-selling pages, and for the last couple of months, the New-York Historical Society has had an exhibition called “The Civil War in 50 Objects.”

Finding the 50 objects involves something of a scavenger hunt — they are on display in different places at the society, at 170 Central Park West, at West 77th Street. All 50 came from the society’s collection of about 1 million Civil War-era items, “a definitive record of slavery, secession, rebellion and reunion from the time these movements first roiled the city and the nation,” according to the Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer. He made the final decisions on which 50 objects were chosen, and which were not, after members of the museum’s staff had winnowed the possibilities to 75….

Source:
NYT

Source URL:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/revisiting-history-through-objects-and-a-long-gone-game-show/

Date:
7-22-13

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

News, Politics, Government

Suspected Civil war cannonball dug up in Atlanta

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Atlanta police say a construction crew has unearthed what appears to be a cannonball near Centennial Olympic Park.

Police spokesman Gregory Lyon says the crew dug up the suspected cannonball Thursday afternoon and authorities took it to a bomb range.

Centennial Olympic Park is owned by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. Spokeswoman Jennifer LeMaster says the cannonball was removed from the property, but authorities have not yet determined exactly how old it is.

Police spokesman John Chafee says bomb technicians said the artifact may have been from the Civil War era, but authorities say the suspected cannonball has not yet been examined by an expert.

When federal troops besieged Atlanta in 1864, they fired thousands of cannon shells into the downtown area that now includes Centennial Olympic Park.

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

History

'Glory': Civil War fight by black troops recalled

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By hnn

SULLIVANS ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Dozens of Civil War re-enactors gathered Thursday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of a famed attack by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry — a battle in South Carolina that showed the world black soldiers could fight and was chronicled in the movie ‘‘Glory.’’

Re-enactors portraying members of the black Union regiment as well as Confederate counterparts defending Battery Wagner in Charleston Harbor planned to travel Thursday afternoon by boat to Morris Island, site of the battle, to lay a wreath and fire a salute.

Speeches and Civil War period music also were planned on nearby Sullivans Island — an inhabited barrier island near the harbor entrance — about the time of the evening attack 150 years ago. Luminaries were to be lit by nightfall in memory of the dead….

Source:
Boston Globe

Source URL:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/07/18/marking-anniversary-massachusetts/m22JNh7ygpdXYRy35XavGL/story.html

Date:
7-18-13

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

Articles of Interest

A Missed Opportunity This Past July 4th

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By Spiritof76

Declaration of Independence SC A Missed Opportunity This Past July 4th

July 4 refers to the day the Declaration of Independence from the British monarchical yoke was issued by some 56 noted individuals who risked their lives, fortunes, and their sacred honor for it. Several thousand American colonists fought and perished over a seven year period so that their posterity will live in a free nation governed with the consent of the people to secure their rights as free people.

The first ten amendments to the US Constitution ratified in 1791 contained the Bill of Rights that prohibits transgressions by the federal government into individual life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

In 2013, some 237 years later, the people have lost most of what was enshrined in the US Constitution. The federal government, instead of being limited in scope as intended, has become a dictatorial national government. Patrick Henry opposed the adoption of the Constitution as he feared the uncontained growth of the federal government by destroying the sovereignty of the individual states. He was right!

The American people lost their way in the early 1900s and allowed the concept of big government to come to fruition and to destroy the core principle of federalism during the Woodrow Wilson administration with the enactment of direct federal government taxation of Americans and the simultaneous removal of state representation in Congress by instituting the direct popular election of the Senators.

Article 1, Section 1 is in tatters as Congress has illegally delegated its legislative powers to such unelected agencies as the EPA, IRS, FCC, FDA, and the other hundreds of agencies with the full approval of the US Supreme Court. People did not bother to punish those politicians but accepted the despotic bureaucratic rule that we find today.

The First Amendment is just about erased. Political correctness depending upon the whims of the favorite political groups is allowed to override that right of free speech and declare it hate speech. There is no religious freedom today. If you do not practice what the national government dictates appropriate, you and your group will be punished with the help of the myriad of agencies it controls.

How about the freedom of the press? The government spies on the reporters, tries to intimidate their families, and prevents them from reporting anything unfavorable to it. Wilson jailed some of them for being against the American entry into WWI. Lincoln also did so in the Civil War.

The Second Amendment, whose presence in the Bill of Rights is for preserving freedom (not for hunting or sports shooting), is under severe assault. A national government that has gone rogue will disarm the citizens so that they can be turned into subjects.

The Fourth Amendment is extinct. Americans gave that up in the name of security. The US government with the guidance of the Supreme Court has eliminated the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures without the required warrants based on probable cause. The president maintains a kill list that includes American citizens, deploys armed …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

History

Sharpsburg man unearths live Civil War-era shell

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By hnn

A Sharpsburg man planting trees at his Powell Road home Thursday unearthed a live Civil War-era shell that authorities later disposed of by setting it off at a neighboring farm.

“When I saw it I knew what it was,” J.D. Taylor Jr. said. “It was the second one I found here.
“It was some kind of experience.”

Taylor said he at first thought he hit a rock with his steel shovel while digging in his yard about a mile from Antietam National Battlefield sometime between 8:30 to 9 a.m.

He pushed the shovel under the object, which was five or six inches deep, and knelt to pry it out….

Source:
Sharpsburg Herald-Mail

Source URL:
http://www.herald-mail.com/news/hm-sharpsburg-man-unearths-live-civil-warera-shell-20130411,0,5585312.story

Date:
4-11-13

From: http://hnn.us/articles/sharpsburg-man-unearths-live-civil-war-era-shell

News, Politics, Government

Union soldier's lost Civil War ring returned to kin in Pennsylvania

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A ring lost by a Union soldier from Pennsylvania during the Civil War has completed a long journey home.

The ring was worn by Levi Schlegel, a Reading-area native who is believed to have lost it nearly 150 years ago at an encampment near Fredericksburg, Va.

Relic hunter John Blue found the ring at a construction site in 2005. Though it was engraved with Schlegel’s name and unit — “Co. G., 198th P.V.,” or Pennsylvania Volunteers — Blue wasn’t sure how to find Schlegel’s descendants, and kept the ring in a box for several years.

A genealogist ultimately helped Blue track down Schlegel’s family. On Tuesday, Blue presented the ring to a distant cousin during a ceremony at Levi Schlegel‘s grave in Reading.

“This is truly a hero’s journey,” said the cousin, Ernie Schlegel.

Another distant relative, James W. Schlegel of Reading, said he felt pride as he touched the ring.

“I think about all the time that passed since Levi and so many others fought for our freedom,” Schlegel, who served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, told the Reading Eagle. “As a veteran, I know the importance of fighting for freedom, and I’m proud to know the Schlegel family did its part.”

After the war, Levi Schlegel returned to Reading, where he worked as a carpenter and helped raise 11 children. He died in 1932 at age 91.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Articles of Interest

Civil War Surrender Document Shows Agreement To End War On April 9, 1865 (PHOTO)

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after the final battle at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, ending the American Civil War. Lee signed an official document on April 10, 1865, a day after his surrender. The document now resides at the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum in Philadelphia.

Below, the official document outlining the terms of the surrender (AP Photo/Justin Maxon):

Read More…
More on Video

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Articles of Interest

False Prophets And Fake Presidents

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By Allan Erickson

Obama Prophet SC False prophets and fake presidents

“I hear all the time the expression ‘the good old days.’ Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren’t good for everybody. It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet, and for immigrants to be on their side of the border.”

So says Rev. Luis León, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, situated not far from the White House.  León’s remarks were part of his Easter message March 31, with the First Family in attendance.  His church and his ministry endorse homosexuality, homosexual marriage, and practicing homosexuals in ‘ministry.’  Obviously, the ‘good’ pastor denies Scripture is inerrant, Christ’s clear assurance. Thus León, completely contradicts the Lord he claims to serve, which is, quite frankly, insane.

“It drives me crazy . . . “

Yes, one would have to be crazy to point the finger of accusation at fellow pastors and other Christian believers, accusing them of ridiculous things, on Easter Sunday no less.  León did not name the “captains of the religious right” who drive him crazy.  In the present day, such captains might include Tony Perkins, Mat Staver, Gary Bauer, Sarah Palin, Cal Thomas, Jay Sekulow, Billy Graham, or James Dobson, all good people holding to traditional values for legitimate reasons, none of which have anything to do with discrimination or persecution.

Not one of these good people has ever suggested blacks return to the back of the bus.  Blacks have not been forced to the back of the bus for more than 50 years.  Just as a reminder, it was the Christian Right in the 19th century that freed the slaves, helped slaves escape the South, died for justice in the Civil War, and ministered to the suffering of all colors during and after the war. Without the religious right, the civil rights movement would not have gained altitude.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian Republican, just for the record. Without Republican votes, the Civil Rights Act would never have passed.

No one has called women back to the kitchen.  Women, like Sarah Palin and millions of others, can freely choose home life, or a professional life, or both; and this has been true in growing measure since Christ liberated women, most especially in America.

Not one of these respectable Americans has insisted homosexuals stay in the closet.  Christians of all political affiliations have been the most loving toward homosexuals, demonstrating that love by providing far and away the most support when the AIDS epidemic struck.  Homosexuals enjoy the greatest freedom and prosperity here in America thanks to the traditions of tolerance and acceptance cultivated by centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition.

And no one from the religious right has ever denied anyone the right to immigrate.  Indeed, Christians have been the most supportive of new citizens.  Christians from the right and …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

News, Politics, Government

Fatally shot West Virginia county sheriff Eugene Crum took aim at drug dealers

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Just months before being gunned down, Sheriff Eugene Crum made good on a campaign promise to do what many in law enforcement have attempted for years in southern West Virginia — crack down on drugs, especially the illegal sale of prescription pills.

In three months and two days on the job, he’d already helped indict dozens of suspected drug dealers through Mingo County‘s new Operation Zero Tolerance. Authorities haven’t said whether that work was related to his shooting death at midday on a street in the small town of Williamson on Wednesday, but residents and county officials suspect it.

Williamson, a town of 3,200, sits along the Tug Fork River in a part of the state long associated with violence. Mingo and neighboring McDowell County are home to the legendary blood feud between the Hatfield family of West Virginia and the McCoy family of Kentucky, a conflict dating to the Civil War.

To be sure, The West Virginia Gazette reported that some refer to the town as ‘Pilliamson’ because of the amount of prescription drug use in the area. Crum’s county was dubbed “Bloody Mingo” during the early 20th century mine wars, when unionizing miners battled Baldwin-Felts security agents hired by the coal operators.

His team has targeted people “who spread the disease of addiction among our residents,” said County Commission President John Mark Hubbard.

Resident Jerry Cline stood near the site of the slaying hours later, the drug crackdown clearly at the forefront of his thoughts.

“He told them right before he got in as sheriff, `If you’re dealing drugs, I’m coming after you. I’m cleaning this town up,”‘ Cline said. “He got out just to do one thing, and that’s to clean this town up. That’s all that man tried to do.”

Authorities were mum about a possible connection between Crum and the suspect, 37-year-old Tennis Melvin Maynard, who was shot and wounded by a Mingo deputy following a chase and after state police said he pulled a weapon.

At a news conference hours after the killing, officials mourned the fallen sheriff, but released few details of the shooting, which happened just blocks away from the county courthouse.

“We were and we are proud of him and his service,” State Police Capt. David Nelson Hubbard said. “To say Eugene will be missed is a vast understatement.”

Crum’s wife was out of town visiting their children in Indiana at the time of the shooting and was flown back late Wednesday.

A bouquet of red roses with a red ribbon was fastened to a guardrail above the parking lot where the shooting happened.

Though there is no indication of any connection, Crum’s killing comes on the heels of a Texas district attorney and his wife being shot to death in their home over the weekend, and just weeks after Colorado’s corrections director also was gunned down at his home. Those bold killings and others have led authorities to propose more protection for law enforcers.

Crum was killed in the same place where he parked his car most days to eat lunch, near the …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

The First Telecom Revolution and the Last Day of Dirt-Cheap Oil

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By Alex Planes, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

On this day in economic and financial history…

The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, predecessor to Western Union , was founded in Rochester, N.Y., in April of 1851. It was less than 15 years after Samuel Morse successfully tested the telegraph and only eight years removed from Morse’s successful lobbying for the nation’s first “long-distance” telegraph line. The Smithsonian’s HistoryWired site describes the telegraph’s business climate at the time:

By 1851, there were over 50 separate telegraph companies operating in the United States. This corporate cornucopia developed because the owners of the telegraph patents had been unsuccessful in convincing the United States and other governments of the invention’s potential usefulness. In the private sector, the owners had difficulty convincing capitalists of the commercial value of the invention. This led to the owners’ willingness to sell licenses to many purchasers who organized separate companies and then built independent telegraph lines in various sections of the country. 

Hiram Sibley moved to Rochester, New York, in 1838 to pursue banking and real estate. Later he was elected sheriff of Monroe County. In Rochester, he was introduced to Judge Samuel L. Selden who held the House Telegraph patent rights. In 1849, Selden and Sibley organized the New York State Printing Telegraph Company, but they found it hard to compete with the existing New York, Albany, and Buffalo Telegraph Company. 

After this experience, Selden suggested that instead of creating a new line, the two should try to acquire all the companies west of Buffalo and unite them into a single unified system. Selden secured an agency for the extension throughout the United States of the House system. In an effort to expand this line west, Judge Selden called on friends and the people in Rochester. This eventually led in April 1851 to the organization of a company and the filing in Albany of the Articles of Association for the “New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company,” a company which later evolved into the Western Union Telegraph Company.

Western Union was created five years later after Selden and Sibley had acquired 11 competitors — and the rights to the vital Morse technology. Western Union paid its first dividend at the end of 1857.

By the eve of the Civil War, a transcontinental telegraph line was seen as a vital element of national commerce, and by the war’s outbreak it became important to the national defense as well. Sibley was the most ambitious of the telegraph company leaders, and he won the bidding to build a line that would link the east and west coasts. The effort succeeded within one year, ending the Pony Express and establishing Western Union‘s dominance over the maturing telegraph industry.

Western Union‘s lead was insurmountable by the 1880s, as the company had grown to control 432,000 miles of telegraph …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

An Empire Built With Two Pennies and an Industry Upset for the Ages

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By Alex Planes, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

On this day in economic and financial history…

Travelers  began doing business in the closing days of the Civil War, on April 1, 1864. On this day, company founder James G. Batterson issued the first Travelers written insurance policy to himself, a ceremonial transaction that nevertheless marked the official beginning of travel insurance in the United States. Several days earlier Batterson had engaged in the first unofficial insurance transaction for the yet-to-be-created accident-insurance company. Travelers recounts the incident on its history timeline:

Travelers was founded more than a century ago through an off-hand transaction of only two cents. The two cent incident occurred on March 24, 1864, when a Hartford businessman, James G. Batterson, met a local banker, James E. Bolter, in the post office. Bolter had heard that Batterson and several fellow townsmen were organizing a company for the purpose of introducing accident insurance to North America.

“I’m on my way home for lunch,” Bolter said. “How much would you charge to insure me against accident between here and Buckingham Street?”

“Two cents,” Batterson quoted promptly, as he took Bolter’ two pennies and tucked them into his vest pocket. Bolter walked the four blocks to his home without mishap. His two cent “premium” is a souvenir treasured by the company Mr. Batterson founded, Travelers.

In the years that followed, Travelers became the go-to source of travel insurance, with a client roster including legendary circus showman P. T. Barnum, department store pioneer John Wanamaker, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and James Harper, co-founder of the Harper Brothers publishing house (the flagship imprint of today’s HarperCollins). As transportation opportunities expanded from steamships to railroads to automobiles and finally to aircraft, so too did the travel insurance industry. Today, more than $1 billion in travel insurance premiums are collected by Travelers and other insurers each year.

Travelers went through two notable mergers between the end of the 1990s and the middle of the 2000s. The first, which formed Citigroup , is directly responsible for repealing Glass-Steagall and ushering in a new era of megabanks. Two years after Citi divested the insurer in 2002 (insurance and banking didn’t go together quite as harmoniously as chocolate and peanut butter), Travelers and St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance, another Civil War-era insurer, merged to create the Travelers of today. This merger was completed on April 1, 2004, exactly 140 years after James G. Batterson sold that first Travelers policy to himself and began an insurance empire.

Small beginnings for the biggest of Big Tobacco
Philip Morris & Co, the predecessor of Altria , was incorporated in New York in April of 1902 as the American arm of a London tobacconist with the same name. As the U.S. was then the world’s primary tobacco-grower, it made little sense for London‘s Philip Morris to export there, particularly in light of the U.S.’ high tobacco-importation tariffs. In its first full year of operation, Philip Morris sold …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Confederate flag at old NC Capitol raises ire

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A Confederate battle flag hung inside the old North Carolina State Capitol to mark the sesquicentennial of the Civil War is raising concern with civil rights leaders.

State Historic Sites Director Keith Hardison says the flag raised last week inside the House chamber is part of a historical display replicating how the antebellum building appeared in 1863. Hardison says the flag should be viewed in its historical context and shouldn’t be offensive.

North Carolina NAACP president Rev. William Barber disagreed. He says that flag represents Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings.

Sessions of the General Assembly moved to a newer building 50 years ago, but the old capitol still hosts official events. Gov. Pat McCrory has an office on the first floor.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News