Category: Patriotism

“Rebels and Patriots”

The following address was delivered to those attending the annual Confederate Memorial Day observance in Columbus County, North Carolina.

“Rebels and Patriots”

In this cemetery today we honor brave American patriots who defended their families, hearths & country against an invading enemy 1861-1865, many of whom died doing so. Many also remain in distant unmarked graves, and whose families waited and waited for their return. Their tombstones are the many granite monuments erected all across the South.

Let us never cease to remember that these patriots were no different than the patriots of 1776, as both fought for freedom, political independence and self-government. They both proclaimed that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it is most important for us today to recognize that the very root the 1776 -1783 war was secession from England; and the very root of the 1861-1865 war was secession from the United States.

Today’s good news is that more are coming to recognize that the 1861 war was simply another American war of independence, though there are some holding onto their long monopoly of the narrative who do not like competition.

During the 1776-1783 Revolution, local men of the militia – mostly farmers and laborers – fought Tories & Loyalists who adhered to the British crown. This militia fought bravely at several engagements not far from this spot where we are today.

Please allow me to pose this question to you: What difference existed between the patriots at the Moore’s Creek battle in 1776, and the patriots defending Fort Fisher in January 1865? We know in both cases they defended the very same thing – political independence – with their homes, farms and families behind them. They both were there to repel an invader whose intent was to deny them political independence.

Then how is it that we are told incessantly that the patriots of 1776 fought for political independence from England, but the “rebels” of 1861-1865 were “defending slavery?”

Let’s examine the facts.

In June of 1775 a desperate North Carolina Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, proclaimed African slaves free and armed those who adhered to his authority. Only 4 months later, an equally desperate Virginia Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, creating a black “Corps d’Afrique” to assist in subduing the “rebels.” From this point on, and as Washington did not enlist slaves, the “rebels” were fighting the emancipators.

Eighty-seven years later, when Americans in the South sought political independence from what they viewed as an oppressive government, a desperate Abraham Lincoln called them “rebels” and then followed the royal example of proclaiming African slaves free – but only within the new Confederacy.

In mid-January 1863, Ohio’s “Copperhead” US Congressman Clement Vallandigham excoriated his fellow northern congressmen for denouncing “Southern rebels,” stating:

“After 2 years of brutal warfare the North has failed to subjugate 10 million “rebels” you say. And you call them “rebels? “Your own fathers & grandfathers were “rebels.” The large canvas portrait of General Washington looking down upon us in this chamber was a “rebel.” Yet we, sitting here today, and cradled in rebellion, make the word “rebel” a reproach.”

You have every right to honor annually the “rebels” buried around us and hold them up as worthy of emulation. In 1861, your local “rebels” formed several companies to join North Carolina regiments, and as the war took its toll, your Junior Reserves did their part in the ranks.  We must also recognize the supreme dedication of the ladies at home – “rebels” as well – who formed Soldiers’ Aid Societies to collect supplies and maintain roadside hospitals.

As a last word, I want to emphasize that the “rebels” we honor today fought a just cause defending the sacred 10th Amendment – simply interpreted as home rule and “States rights” – without which the United States Constitution would not have been ratified by North Carolina.

Deo Vindice!

John Bernhard Thuersam, Historian and Author

www.circa1865.org

 

Devotion to Land, Bible and Constitution

The writer below notes that historians burdened with modern egalitarian standards often “do not grasp the most elementary concept of the sound historian: the ability to appraise the past by standards other than those of the present. They accept a fanatical nationalism which leaves no room for sectional variations.”

Devotion to Land, Bible and Constitution

Jefferson Davis [is condemned by biographers] as a prolonged conspirator against the Union. But the facts show that as late as 1860 he, as a United States senator, was advocating appropriations for the army he was to fight in less than a year. A proper sympathy for the sectional values would perhaps lead to a condemnation of Davis because he did not become a conspirator against the Union soon enough.

Davis was not one of the great revolutionists of history; he was too honorable for that. Unlike William L. Yancy and R. Barnwell Rhett, he was slow in understanding that the North was in a revolutionary conspiracy against the Constitution as he interpreted it and could be answered effectively only by counterrevolution. Allen Tate, the poet, is the only biographer who condemns Davis for not understanding that the aim of the plutocratic democracy of the North was to crush his beloved homeland.

Davis should be praised for finally recognizing the forces arrayed against his section and then heroically defending its concept of truth and justice. Despite physical weaknesses, he maintained a proud but ragged nation for four years against the powers of wealth, progress and patriotism. After defeat he did not repent.

For his failure to repent, historians will not forgive Davis. He did not respond to the new wave of nationalism which came after the Civil War. He was no pragmatist, no evolutionist. Until his death, he remained devoted to his section, the soldier who found greatest virtue in continuing the battle charge after the enemy has inflicted a grievous wound and remained the scholastic who accepted the Bible and the Constitution just as they are written. He was as optimistic in his devotion to the antique values of the South as was Don Quixote to the antique values of an older land.

If the historians of the South were as tolerant of our past as are the European historians of theirs, they would confer on the defeated President of the Confederacy as many honors as have been conferred on the famous Spanish knight.”

Tolerating the South’s Past. Francis Butler Simkins. Journal of Southern History, Vol. XXI, No. 1, February 1955, pp 33-8)

The Union’s “Veteran’s Corps”

In some northern States the amount of total bounty money for one man had risen to $1500 – a very large sum in 1863. If one consults Robert L. Dabney’s “Discussions, Volume IV (1897), he states: “the Secretary of War wrote that “after May 1, 1863, there were 1,634,000 enlistments. And if the cost of each enlistment was $300, which is far below the average bounty, somebody had to pay them a total of $490,000,000. It is then likely the “bounty jumpers” as it is well-known, perpetrated immense frauds with the number of bounties paid being far larger than that of the enlistments.”

The Union’s “Veterans Corps”

“In early November 1863 the veteran northern troops occupying Plymouth, North Carolina first read of financial incentives to reenlist, made necessary due to high bounties paid for new enlistees. To avoid mass desertions of veterans the US War Department needed incentives for existing troops. The following month a New York soldier recorded in his diary that “those regiments whose time expires next fall are asked to reenlist for three years or the war’s duration.” He wrote that the men “were lured by money in sums not imagined earlier: payment of an unpaid original bounty of $100, a new bounty of $400 plus a $2 recruiting premium paid in $50 installments every six months.

This was at a time when the annual family income in New York may have been $350. In addition to the $402 financial incentive was a month-long furlough home to see loved ones while wearing the blue uniform adorned with a gold sleeve chevron of the new “Veterans Corps.” Once at home, the soldier would also receive a $50 bounty from the State of New York and whatever bounty was offered by the soldier’s county and town. The total sum of $750 or more was sufficient to “build a house on his little farm on the road up home.”

As a town or county did not require residency to receive the bounty-paid credit, the soldier home on reenlistment furlough could shop area communities and counties for the highest amount and credit his reenlistment to them. Civilians unwilling to enlist and employers wanting to retain trained workers both contributed to each town’s bounty account to attract substitutes.

Some blowbacks did occur as some “Veteran Volunteers” visiting home would credit themselves to another community so as to not shelter those they considered “shirkers” in their hometowns who avoided the draft.”

(Plymouth’s Civil War: The Destruction of a North Carolina Town. John Bernhard Thuersam. Scuppernong Press, 2024, pp. 160-161)

Grant’s Request for a Confederate Commission

The following is extracted from October and November 1907 issues of Confederate Veteran. While Derosset’s assertion that U.S. Grant requested a commission from President Davis was questioned in subsequent issues, that of Farragut and Thomas, both Southern men, were provable. In Grant’s case it should be pointed out that he resigned his US Army commission in early 1854 at Fort Humboldt, north of San Francisco. The charge was being inebriated while supervising pay call and it was carried out by Col. Robert C. Buchanan, the half-brother of Franklin Buchanan. Grant was given the choice of immediate resignation or courts-martial; he chose the former though his reputation as an inebriate became widespread, in the military and publicly.

The early months of 1861 found Grant a broken, disheveled and near destitute man who left a long trail of failed business ventures depending upon charity to feed his family. After Fort Sumter, his letters requesting US military commissions were ignored. At his deepest despondence about May-June 1861, he may have written to President Jefferson Davis – the man who as US Secretary of War in 1854 duly signed Grant’s resignation letter.

Grant’s Request for Confederate Commission

“Mr. [Franklin] Pierce was elected President of the United States in 1852, and appointed Mr. Jefferson Davis his Secretary of War. Later, at the suggestion of Mr. Davis, for good reasons then-Captain Ulysses S. Grant resigned from the United States Army and lived in afterwards in Illinois.

Upon the secession of the Southern States in January 1861, former-Captain Grant applied to the Governor of Illinois for a military commission to raise a regiment to serve in the U.S. Army, war then being the talk. His request for a commission was ignored at that time.

He then wrote to Mr. Jefferson Davis, newly inaugurated Provisional President of the Confederate States at Montgomery, Alabama, asking for a commission in the army of the Confederate States of America.

While in New Orleans a little while ago I mentioned this incident to Colonel Chalaron, Custodian of the Louisiana Historical Association, who has charge of the State Museum. He told me the information regarding Grant’s commission request was correct, and that he had then possession of the original letter from Grant, late of the U.S. Army, to President Davis and making the request; but in accordance with the terms of Mr. Davis’s will, the correspondence could not be published until two years after the death of Mrs. Davis.

Further, the Colonel informed me that he also held letters to President Davis requesting Confederate States military commissions from David Farragut of Tennessee and George H. Thomas of Virginia, later United States admiral and major-general, respectively. I am informed that the wife of each man either dissuaded or objected to the resignation of these officers from federal service.”

(Interesting Statement by Judge Robert Ould. Capt. A.L. Derosset, Confederate Veteran, Vol. XV, No. 10, October 1907, pg. 456)

Derosset Letter – Explanatory

Captain A.L. Derosset of Wilmington, N.C. writes in explanation and correction of his article in the Veteran for October concerning the application of Generals Grant and Thomas and Admiral Farragut to President Davis for commissions in the Confederate Army and Navy:

“I wrote that Mr. Davis’s correspondence could not be published until two years after his widow’s death. So, it is now apparent to me that I wholly misunderstood Col. Chalaron, for in writing me he said, ‘that very likely letters from them [Grant, Farragut and Thomas] and others might be found among the Davis papers in my keeping,’ and did not positively assert it.

As far as Thomas is concerned, Dr. J. William Jones had testified to the fact of a letter in his possession acknowledging that he had applied to President Davis for service. As to Farragut, I have conclusive testimony that in the Spring of 161, at the residence of Col. Gaston Meares, on Twenty-first Street, New York City, he emphatically stated that nothing could induce him to raise his sword against the South. My whole regret is about the article is in relation to the conversation with Col. Chalaron.”

(The Derosset Letter – Explanatory. Capt. A.L. Derosset, Confederate Veteran, Vol. XVI, No. 1, January 1908, pg. xii)

That Was the Problem We Inherited

Below, John Randolph Tucker reviews the constitutional issues which brought war 1861-1865, and poses the question:

“Was slavery so bad that the Constitution which shielded it, was violated in order to destroy it? That is the question which has been answered by the roar of artillery in the affirmative. But can that answer by force be justified in the forum of morals? If a solemn compact can be violated in order to destroy that which the compact guaranteed, what value is there in a written Constitution? It only awaits a new fanatical sentiment to justify a new crusade upon its integrity.” 

That Was the Problem We Inherited

“The [North’s] crusade not only destroyed slavery but entailed upon the South a social condition for which the crusaders suggest no relief, and a condition which seems to be without the hope of peaceful solution. Those who had no interest in the relation [of black and white] have inoculated the South with a social and political disease for which their statesmen have provide no remedy and can find no panacea. These were the issues upon which the Southern States seceded, and defended their imperiled rights with a valor, constancy and fortitude which has made them immortal.

We cannot be placed in the false position of having fought to hold men in slavery. The American South never made a free man a slave and never took from Africa one human being to shackle him with servitude. The South inherited the institution which had been put upon us by the cupidity of European and New England slave traders against the protests of our colonial fathers. That was the problem we inherited.

Shall they remain slaves and how long? Or be at once emancipated and then be put into possession of equal power with the white man to direct a common destiny?

Shall our constitutional power, our inherent natural right to regulate this special interest, be wrested from us and vested in aliens to that interest, to be exercised by them to create social and political relations never known in the history of civilized man, and for the right regulation of which no prophecy could forecast a law, and our sad experience has been unable to devise a remedy? To put it forensically, the South did not plead to the issue of slavery or no slavery, but to the proper jurisdiction. To create the jurisdiction was to, by force, give up self-government.

Let no censorious criticism suggest a doubt of our faithful devotion to the Constitution and Union of today because we honor and revere the patriotism of those who died for the lost cause of political independence. The heroic purpose failed; our Confederacy sank beneath the political horizon in clouds which could not blacken history.  The sun of the Confederacy illuminated them of its own transcendent glory. The fame of its American heroes, of their genius for leadership, of their fortitude, marital prowess and devotion to duty, all Americans will one day claim to be the common heritage of the Union.”

(Address of John Randolph Tucker, Vanderbilt University, June 1893, (excerpt). Confederate Veteran, August 1893, pg. 238)

 

Bounty Money in Buffalo

The bloody carnage of 1862, capped by the north’s bloody Fredericksburg defeat in late December of that year, brought voluntary enlistments to an end. But rather than ending the war between Americans, Lincoln’s Republican party resorted to a conscription law in March of 1863 to fill their depleted ranks This was in practice a “whip” to gain those attracted by the generous bounty monies from federal, State, county and towns to satisfy Lincoln’s quotas. Recent immigrants, especially unskilled laborers, were a prime target of bounty monies or substitution.

Bounty Money in Buffalo

“I was born on the 16th day of November 1843 in the province of Brandenburg, district of Potsdam, Kreis (county) Prenzlau in the Uckermark. I emigrated with my parents (Phillip and Auguste Albertine Schultze Milleville) to this country in the year 1847, landing in Buffalo on the 4th of July 1847. My parents settled in the town of Wheatfield, Niagara County, in a German community called Neu Bergholz.

I lived at home until the age of 16, and then apprenticed to tailor Friedrich Parchart for three years for room and board. All the cash money I had during the three years was 75 cents which I received from a political candidate for delivering a letter.

In April 1862 I went to the city of Buffalo and got a job with tailor Adam Sipple on Main Street. I worked for $6 a month and board; after 6 months I asked for more pay, he let me go. Then I got work at nearby Fort Erie, Canada, at $8 a month with board for about 4 or 5 months. Then I got a job again in Buffalo, but my boss was a drunkard. He would work all day Sunday, and Sunday night he would go to a saloon and often not come home until Tuesday morning while his family suffered. Then I got a job at 32 Main Street with tailor Jacob Metzger.

There I stayed until the 20th day of January 1864 when I enlisted in Company I, 2nd New York Mounted Rifles. For enlisting I got $300 government bounty, $75 State bounty, and $110 County Bounty. Of the government bounty we got $50 every six months – the State and County money we received immediately.

As recruits we were taken to Fort Porter on the banks of the Niagara River. After a few days a fellow enlistee asked to borrow my overcoat to go into town for tobacco but forgot to come back. I guess he was a Bounty jumper. We then needed a pass to go into the city, but the boys would arrange with the guards to walk in opposite directions in order to slip through.

In early June 1864 we had our first battle at Petersburg, Virginia. The Rebels were following us and attacked in the rear. They then went around our left flank. We lost 13 men out of our company; some of the boys threw away everything and ran. The next day the Rebs had us bottled up and we barely slipped out.”

(Excerpt, Civil War Diary of Herman Henry Milleville: Historical Society of North German Settlements in WNY, Winter 2025 Issue. Eugene W. Camann Collection)

 

Two American Generals with Such Perfect Rapport

After the absolute rout of the enemy at Chancellorsville, Lee rode into a clearing “where his soldiers rushed around him, waving their hats in celebration of the victory.” Some were in tears of worship, reaching out to touch him and his horse Traveller. Lee’s aide described the scene as “one long, unbroken cheer, in which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose high above the roar of battle, and hailed the presence of the victorious chief.” The aide mused that “it must have been from such a scene that men in ancient times rose to the dignity of gods.”

Two American Generals with Such Perfect Rapport

“If Lee, outnumbered and initially outmaneuvered, had been someone else, he might have tried anything else than a venture so dangerous. After all, there was a prudent alternative and honorable under the circumstances: retreat to a more defensible position.

Instead of that, he chose to risk disaster – because he was Lee, and because the man beside him was Jackson. Whether it was because his opponent was Joe Hooker is less clear. Lee had known Hooker in Mexico, where the young officer earned his reputation before he earned his nickname. But Hooker had not been in a command position there – instead, he was the eager executor of others’ decisions. Yet Hooker’s record since as an aggressive division and corps commander should have told any sensible opponent that it was foolish to chance destruction in detail by his powerful force.

For Lee, however, Hooker’s performance in the previous two days, twice pulling back on Chancellorsville when his generals wanted to drive on, must have outweighed the rest of that war record. If Lee had not firmly concluded that Hooker would stay behind his fortified lines, he was willing to gamble on it. The clinching reason was Stonewall Jackson.

American history offers no other pair of generals with such perfect rapport., such sublime confidence in each other. Jackson had said, “Lee is the only man I know whom I would follow blindfolded.” Lee, from the beginning, had insisted that he was fighting to protect the Virginia of his fathers; Jackson could say he was fighting now to recover his own Virginia, the mountain land that was cut off as a new federal State.

But Lee upped the ante at Chancellorsville when he proposed going all the way around to hit Hooker’s army from its far flank. Jackson, as if challenged, upped it again when he told Lee he not only would go, but he would also take all three of his divisions along to do it right. Lee, fully realizing that this would leave him to hold Hooker’s overwhelming force with about one-fifth its number, met that challenge when he said calmly, “Well, go on.”

This was the climax of two great military careers, each made greater by the other.”

(Chancellorsville, 1863: The Souls of the Brave. Ernest B. Furgurson. Random House, 1992, p. 146)

 

America’s Greatest Military Leader

General Lee visited Wilmington briefly in early 1870 after visiting father’s gravesite in coastal Georgia. This son of Gen. “Lighthorse Harry” Lee also fought bravely for political independence and led brave American soldiers who venerated him.

In a postwar address to the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, Col. Charles Marshall alluded to Gen. Lee’s “wonderful influence over troops under his command, saying that that such was the love and veneration of the men for him that they came to look upon the cause, [the struggle for political independence] as General Lee’s cause, and they fought for it because they loved him. To them he represented cause, country and all.”

America’s Greatest Military Leader

“April 30, 1870.

At Wilmington, they spent a day with Mr. & Mrs. George Davis. His coming there was known only to a few persons, as its announcement was by private telegram from Savannah, but quite a number of ladies and gentlemen secured a small train and went out on the Southern Road to meet Lee. When they met the regular passenger train from Savannah which Lee was aboard, he was taken from it to the private one and welcomed by his many friends. He seemed bright and cheerful and conversed with all. Lee spoke of his health not being good, and on this account begged that there would be no public demonstration on his arrival, nor during his stay at Wilmington.

On reaching that place, he accompanied Mr. George Davis to his home and was his guest during Lee’s sojourn in the city. Mrs. Davis was the daughter of Dr. O. Fairfax of Alexandria, Virginia. They had been and were very old and dear friends and neighbors.

There was a dinner given to my father that day at Mr. Davis’s home, and a number of gentlemen were present.  He was looking very well, but in conversation said that he realized there was some trouble with his heart, which he was satisfied was incurable.

The next day, May 1st, Lee left by train for Norfolk, Virginia.”

(Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee, II. Garden City Publishing, 1904. pp. 400-401)

Running Wilmington’s Blockade

Lt. John M. Kell served as executive officer aboard the raider CSS Alabama which was sunk in battle off the coast of France in June 1864. He survived and four months later was aboard a British mail packet from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia, thence to Bermuda on another. Determined to return to the Confederate States, Kell boarded a steamer there to run the enemy blockade at Wilmington, North Carolina.

While at Wilmington, Kell contacted the family of Alabama midshipman Edward Maffitt Anderson, who believed he had perished in battle. Anderson was born at Savannah – his father was Col. Edward C. Anderson, wartime commandant of Fort Jackson on the Savannah River. In the prewar US Navy, Anderson and John Newland Maffitt were friends – each giving their sons the last names of each other as their middle name.

Running Wilmington’s Blockade

“We found the little side-wheeler steamer Flamingo ready to sail and took passage on her. The sea was smooth and beautifully adapted to our little vessel which only drew three or four feet of water and skimmed the surface of the ocean like a bird.

We began the voyage very well but our first experience nearing the Cape Fear shore was disappointing with the difficulty of ascertaining our bearings and whereabouts. At morning light, we discovered two enemy blockaders ahead and three on our quarters, then put on all the steam we could carry and proceed eastward. The blockader ahead made every exertion to cut us off and fired upon us, but the shot fell short, and we continued on our course – fairly flying – and soon our pursuers were out of sight and we greatly relieved to have made so narrow an escape.

About eight o’clock we got out instruments to establish our position accurately on the chart, took our bearings on Fort Fisher. As the evening drew on, we made all steam and passed in under the very guns of the enemy blockaders, like a flash of lightning and were soon safely under the guns of the fort. A basket of champagne was at once ordered up and a toast to our successful run was heartily quaffed.

We discovered the cause of our first missing our bearings offshore was due entirely to the drunkenness of the steamer’s officers. The risks they ran seemed to inspire the desire to get up a little “Dutch courage” as the occasion required and came very near precipitating us – after all our hair-breadth escapes – into the hands of the enemy!”

In Wilmington I met a friend of the Anderson family, who informed me of the report that had reached them that their brave young son had perished in the CSS Alabama’s fight off Cherbourg, being “literally torn to pieces by the explosion of an 11-inch shell.” I had the great satisfaction of telling them of his safety, he being one of the last to bid me good-bye in Liverpool.”

(Recollections of a Naval Life, including the Cruises of the CSA Steamers, Sumpter and Alabama. John McIntosh Kell. Neale Company, Publishers. Washington. 1911, pp. 262-263)

Independence the Fulfillment of American Nationalism

Independence the Fulfillment of American Nationalism

“The nationalist movement with which the American Confederacy most frequently identified with was- paradoxically yet logically – the American War of Independence. A central contention of Confederate nationalism, as it emerged in 1861, was that the South’s effort represented a continuation of the struggle of 1776.

The South, Confederates insisted, was the legitimate heir of the American revolutionary tradition. Betrayed by Yankees who had perverted the true meaning of the Constitution, the revolutionary heritage could be preserved only by secession. Southerners portrayed their drive for independence as the fulfillment of American nationalism.

Evidence of this self-image abounded in the new nation. The figure of Virginian George Washington adorned the Confederacy’s national seal and one of the earliest postage stamps; Jefferson Davis chose to be inaugurated at the base of a statue of Washington on the latter’s birthday in 1862; a popular ballad hailed the new president as “our second Washington.”

Songsters used by soldiers and civilians alike were filled with evocations of past glories such as the battles of Cowpens and Yorktown – events, like the figure of Washington himself, at once American and Southern.

“Rebels before,

Our fathers of yore, Rebel’s the righteous name Washington bore.

Why, then, be ours the same.”   

(The Creation of Southern Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. Drew Gilpin Faust. LSU Press, 1988. Pp. 14-15)