Dear Randy,
You are missing only and the only key principle of history: In war: win! The
winner gets to write the history and hang the losers -- and the history of
the moment at hand is the only history that matters -- since mankind's
history is an utter refusal to learn from yesterday.
Of course the counter to that is: the only hope for the future is for the
youth of today to reject any notion that their fathers got anything right
except to launch them.
-------------------------------------------------------------
What be the worth of knowing yesterday other than to stir the today to shape
the text of tomorrow.
Regards, Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Cabell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 10:26 AM
Subject: Puzzling :// More Northern Bias?
Recently I became aware of an observation/theory that one reason that
Jamestowne is downgraded by historians in favor of those latecomers
(Puritans) up in New England, was the Civil War. e.g. Nothing good could
come out of the South, so the first permanent English settlement in the New
World is ignored.
This may also explain a puzzle that I found a few years ago when doing a
booket of our family in the Civil War. On March 9, 1862 the Monitor and the
Merrimac (aka Virginia) fought their classic battle in Hampton Roads. Every
account that I have read concludes that it was a draw, each returning to its
port, of of course some months later the Virginia was destroyed before the
Union Army could take it. But I found a letter written over a month later,
an excerpt below......
"....We have just received news from the Merrimac now called the Virginia.
She left Norfolk this morning at 6 o'clock and returned about one o'clock
with three Yankee vessels, two brigs and a schooner, one of them heavily
loaded. This she accomplished without firing a gun. The Monitor kept under
the protection of the guns at Fortress Monroe, being afraid to meet the
Virginia." Part of a letter from Robert Brown to his wife, 11 April 1862
To paraphrase Gen. Buck Turgidson in that classic "Dr. Strangelove", I
hesitate to draw any conclusions before the all the facts are in, but it
appears that the Virginia emerged at least once, and maybe more, AFTER the
battle and proceeded to do what it started out to do the day before the
Monitor appeared on the scene -- wreak havoc among the Union fleet. --AND
the Monitor did not set forth to stop her. If that is indeed true, then it
looks like to me that the Virginia deserves a bit more credit. It lived and
fought another day, returning to the at the site of the battle -- and was
unchallenged. Of course the letter may be based only on rumors and wishes,
but am I missing something?
Randy Cabell
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