I appreciate both of the posts. I have similar stories as Rick, except my 
ancestors fought for the Union out of Pennsylvania.

Old Men Make Wars for Young men to Fight.

Anita


>From: Rick Paddock <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history         
>      <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Loving the slaves (Sidebar)
>Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:53:33 -0600
>
>Loretta wrote:
>
>"There is in the Bedford County TN Heritage History book published within
>the last five years a story of a black man who followed his white slave
>owner into war. The soldier was a Confederate. When he was wounded his 
>black
>servant cared for him until he could travel and took him home to 
>recuperate.
>The white family for whom he had been a slave was left landless and
>penniless by the war...To be sure, the world is full of meanness. But it is
>also full of kindness."
>
>-------------------------
>The Civil War devastated families, and my ancestors in Henderson CO, TN,
>were not spared. One of them was a woman of means before the War but
>destitute during and after. One of her brothers was killed in fighting in
>Georgia. The family had hardly assimilated this news when word came that
>another brother lay languishing in a primitive field hospital in Vicksburg.
>
>Gritty and determined, she gathered provisions, a feather mattress, her
>grandmother’s quilt, and put them into a wagon. All the horses on her farm
>had been commandeered earlier by General Forrest, leaving her with one mule
>and a cow to pull her wagon. But that didn't stop her. She enlisted an
>elderly member of the the freedmen who had stayed on out of loyalty and
>served as houseman, and set off for Vicksburg, some 500 miles to the
>south-to bring her brother home.
>
>There were no road maps of course, ands no inns. Most roads were little 
>more
>than dirt tracks, and dangerous ones at that. The farm people they met 
>along
>the way were not much better off than she and the freedman. At one point,
>they spent the night with a family who had a new baby. The were overjoyed 
>to
>swap a mule for the cow and her milk and the two could make much better 
>time
>with a team of mules. It was a long, arduous journey, filled with horror 
>and
>comedy, tales too numerous to recount and perhaps lost over time but 
>against
>the odds, they finally reached Vicksburg. They found her brother still 
>alive
>and nursed him until he was strong enough to travel.  They brought him him
>home to the farm. She never would have succeeded without this wonderful man
>s help.
>
>NOT a historian either but addicted to genealogy.
>
>Regards, Rick

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