Deane,
Your note detailed some of the horrors that were visited on
citizens when the war was escalated from army-army to army-civilians. This
was deemed necessary to bring the war to a swift end and end the bloodshed
on the battlefields. It worked .... well, it sorta worked ... it helped
anyway, to bring the rebels to a surrender in four years instead of eight
or ten or more. I studied the battles of the spring of 1884 more than any
other period in order to do the web site on Five Forks, and realized that
Lee continued long after he'd been defeated. More blood was shed than was
necessary.
After the south was defeated, I suspect that northerners who shed
blood and provided financial support to keep the union together, felt a
need to extract the costs from the south. That is not unusual. It happened
to Germany after WWI and was the evil that led to the rise of Adolph
Hitler. No Hitler arose in the south, thankfully, but the repercussion
towards the former slaves were inhuman.
From the recollections of your ancestors, what was done to
southerners that justified such an aftermath.
Anne
At 06:03 PM 2/9/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Bill & Anne,
>At the risk of setting myself up for another online lynching, I would remind
>this list that last Fall I took a beating from some other members of this
>List for bringing up some of these
>"unpleasantries" regarding how southern old-timers feel toward 'damn
>Yankees'.
>I think it might have been my referring to William T. Sherman as an "old
>bastard" that set things off!
>I wrote why it was that some of my southern relatives/ancestors and their
>ilk felt such bitterness toward the North after the Civil War.
>At the end of the War and for years following the War, during the period
>that came to be known as
>Reconstruction (the period during which both sets of my grandparents were
>born: 3 of them in Tidewater Virginia; one of them in North Carolina; and
>all of whose parents had been involved in the War), there was no Marshall
>Plan for the South.
>After Sherman's rampage which left a swath of destruction that involved the
>burning of southerners' houses and dependencies, the
>salting/poisoning/burning of southerners' fields and the ring-barking or
>chopping down of their fruit and nut trees; the poisoning of their drinking
>water; the slaughter and theft of their live stock; some rape and lots of
>pillage, on the heels of that horror, came a type of 'peace' that brought
>another long-term, enduring nightmare called Reconstruction....which was
>really a form of passive vengeance and revenge.
>Two of my grandparents lived to be 100 and 102 years old; their bodies frail
>but their minds and memories sharp. My 20 first-cousins and I were blessed
>to have them until the oldest of us were nearly 40 years old. These lovely
>people were educated and refined and were not ignorant bigots.
>I vividly recall my grandmother washing my seven year brother's mouth out
>with soap and locking him up in the family library to "think about his ugly
>words" when he experimented with the N-Word.
>My grandfather did not smoke, or drink, or curse, but it was always "damn
>Yankees" when the subject arose.
>Anne, there seems to be little modern day literature on the subject of post
>bellum American history.
>In fact, when one of my daughters was in school at a fine all girls boarding
>school a few years back, her US History class brushed over the Civil War and
>ignored the Reconstruction period entirely. Her teacher allowed my daughter
>to "take the class" herself and tell her classmates about what her great
>grandparents had had to say about and remember about that period of our
>country's history.
>Except for the other Southern girls in the class, to a girl her classmates
>were shocked and flabberghasted at what my daughter taught that day. The
>girls rose up in horror and demanded that their teacher deny to them that
>what they were hearing was true. To his good credit (and he was a fabulous
>teacher) he backed up everything that my child had to say.
>What I am touching on here is a two-fold problem in the field of education
>in America today.
>1. A successful attempt to re-write or totally exclude aspects of history
>that are not politically expedient in today's arena of popular thinking.
>2. And, a la David Horowitz, the blackballing of and defaming of anyone
>who ventures from the track of what is deemed to be acceptable thought.
>What is so perplexing and full of irony when the Liberals start censuring,
>is that it is just SO
>illiberal of them to do that!
>The Civil War happened and it happened for a myriad of reasons.
>But no one wants to take the risk of thoroughly examining all those reasons
>and filtering through them to see what was worthwhile and worth salvaging
>from BOTH sides of the conflict.
>
>Deane Ferguson Mills
>York County, Virginia
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Anne Pemberton <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 2:27 PM
>Subject: Re: eventual phasing out of slavery AND RE-UNIFICATION
>
>
> > Bill,
> >
> > As I said, I'm very ignorant of the problems during
>reconstruction
> > beyond the mention of carpetbaggers coming down and taking political jobs
> > from locals. Can you give me a "quick and dirty" summary of what else was
> > done? I'd love to read the books you mentioned but really don't have the
> > time around other responsibilities. But you have aroused my curiosity.
> >
> > Anne
> >
> > At 01:27 PM 2/9/02 -0500, you wrote:
> > >In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:38:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, Richard
>Dixon
> > >writes:
> > >
> > > > it is my
> > > > opinion the "damnyankee" came not from the war, but from the period of
> > > > Reconstruction, a somewhat unknown era of American history.
> > > >
> > >For many the period of reconstruction was probably a more difficult
> > >"humility" than military defeat. However, there have been some excellent
> > >works written on reconstruction. Two that I found useful in looking at
>the
> > >psychological impact as well as the more commonly addressed economic and
> > >political issues and that are pretty accessible are _Rehearsal for
> > >Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment_, Willie Lee Nichols Rose and
>_The
> > >Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877_, Kenneth M. Stampp.
> > >
> > >Bill Russell
> > >
> > >To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> > >at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
> >
> > Anne Pemberton
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > http://www.erols.com/stevepem
> > http://www.geocities.com/apembert45
> >
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> > at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
> >
>
>To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
>at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
Anne Pemberton
[log in to unmask]
http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.geocities.com/apembert45
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