An Essential Amendment

“General Leonidas Polk and his staff met with Union officers under a flag of truce in November 1861.

After disposing of matters of business, the men adjourned for a simple luncheon. A Union colonel raised his glass and proposed a toast, “To George Washington, the Father of His Country.”

To that toast General Polk quickly added: “And the First Rebel.” All officers drank to the amended toast.”

(An Essential Amendment, Southern Partisan, Volume XXIV, Number 2, pg. 11)

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Circa1865

This is an informational website created and maintained by North Carolina historian and author John Bernhard Thuersam. Born and reared in New York, he a graduate of Villa Maria College at Buffalo, the SUNY Buffalo, and graduate school at the University of Georgia. His 2022 book, "Rather Unsafe for a Southern Man to Live Here: Key West's Civil War was published by Shotwell Press; his 2022 book "Plymouth's Civil War: The Destruction of a North Carolina Town" was published in 2024 by Scuppernong Press. For the latter, Mr. Thuersam was awarded the 2025 "Douglas Southall Freeman Award" from the Military Order of the Stars & Bars.