Civil War

[mickey cassiba]

Mickey, thanks for sharing a portion of Charlotte's family history. Your description of the family gave me a chuckle. Both sides of my family came to Georgia from North Carolina. My mother's family is just about as close to "mountain folk" as the day they left NC. I'm a combination of mountain and swamper - not a good mix! One of my ancestors, Grandpa Luck, lost a leg to the Battle of Chicamauga. Prior to that he was known as Matthew. He earned the nickname "Luck" after he survived being wounded, having the leg amputated essentially on the field, having the amputation site become infected and having more of the leg removed. According to the stories after he returned home even with a woooden leg he could still outrun anyone in the county. Grandpa Luck was not a wealthy man. While he was away the homeplace had started to fall into a state of disrepair. The roof needed to be patched so Grandpa climbed up the ladder to fix the roof. The only problem was he didn't fix the ladder before he tried to fix the roof. Just as he got to the top of the ladder two of the rungs broke and he fell to the ground. My grandmother heard all the commotion and ran to the window only to hear Grandpa say, "Dang, I broke my leg." This caused no small amount of concern in grandma as she didn't know how she would manage with grandpa laid up until his leg healed. She said, "Oh, Luck, how bad is it?" Grandpa said, "Well, it's gonna' take a little while to whittle a new one."

Belinda, thanks for the story about Grandpa Luck! Definitely made my evening.

[Steve Schoene]

I really have to disagree about the Civil War. For the South, it clearly was about slavery. The messages of the states as they attempted to leave the union clearly indicated that. Where states rights was mentioned it was in the context of needing state independence to preserve slavery. The South fought to preserve slavery. The slaveholders fought to keep their wealth intact and the non-slave whites fought to keep intact a social group clearly beneath them on the pecking order. Mostly the states rights myth arose after the War to rationalize it and give it a semblance of honor as a Cause rather than simple venality.

It was also likely a really bad political misjudgement. The South could quite likely have blocked emancipation for decades, just as it blocked civil rights legislation for so long.

[Dan Forman]

I doubt this will change any minds that haven't been changed by other evidence, but this popped up today in The New York Times - about Tennessee and it's delayed decision to secede. Makes things pretty clear. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-turned-south/

Dan