Southern Sentinel COMMANDER S TENT. Cliff Roberts. Fellow Compatriots, Deo Vindice!

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1 Southern Sentinel November 2013 Vol. XI #11 www. scv1642.com Col. Hiram Parks Bell Camp # 1642 Sons of Confederate Veterans A Southern Heritage and Historical Society OFFICERS FOR 2013 CMDR: CLIFF ROBERTS LT. CMDR: BRANDON HEMBREE ADJ. DAN BENNETT CHAPLAIN: JOEL ANDERSON OUR NEXT MEETING Monday, November 25th At 7:00 PM Social time starts early around 6:30 PM Bell Research Center 101 School St. Cumming GA Everyone is Welcome! Call for Directions COMMANDER S TENT Fellow Compatriots, Our October meeting was quite the special occasion for our camp. It was a fun birthday celebration and an excellent October Meeting. Melissa Bassett and Elaine Zimney with our Confederate Rose Chapter did a great job with the food and refreshments. Joel Anderson, Frank Clark, and Clark Rye were honored for their years of service to the SCV and to our camp in particular. Each received an Antique Membership certificate modeled after early 1900 UCV membership certificates. We are honored to have Jack Marlar at our November meeting. He is invariable both entertaining and informative. Please look at our upcoming events calendar as there is a lot of interesting events coming our way. Deo Vindice! Cliff Roberts 1

2 UPCOMING EVENTS: Nov 25 November Camp Meeting Jack E. Marlar, SCV Field Representative One, will give a spirited talk on How Confederates Celebrated Christmas. Camp elections for December 16 Camp Christmas Dinner. Foster House Restaurant, 6:30 PM, 305 West Main Street, Cumming. Jan 9 Caravan to 27 th Georgia Infantry SCV Camp 1404, Longstreet's Old Piedmont Hotel, 827 Maple Street, Gainesville, author David Bridges is the speaker. Jan 12 General Longstreet Memorial 1 P.M. Alta Vista Cemetery, Gainesville Jan 18 Field Trip to Sparta, Georgia with David Mitchell of the Mitchell Foundation. Jan 27 January 2014 Camp Meeting Historian Brad Quinlan will speak about his new book Confederate Hospitals in Georgia. Feb 8, 9 Chickamauga Civil War Show - Northwest Georgia Trade Center, Dalton, Georgia Feb 24 February Camp Meeting Camp Hardtack Please join us on December 16 th for our annual Camp Christmas Dinner at the historic 1877 Foster House in Cumming. This is always a fun night and you are encouraged to bring your wife or significant other. The dinner buffet will have turkey/dressing/green beans/salad/ peach cobbler or carrot cake, ice tea and coffee. The food will be served at 7 PM with beer and wine available for purchase starting at 6:30. The dinner is $20 per person. Please reserve your seats by bringing your money to Dan Bennett at our November meeting. Several states are putting together Confederate grave online databases. Tom Watson of Franklin, Georgia is building a website for Georgia. Presently 14,748 Confederates in 2,550 cemeteries are in the Georgia database. 117 of Georgia s 159 counties have been entered so far. Tom reports that Forsyth will soon be entered. Visit for an excellent web resource. 2

3 Our camp will be launching a car caravan to the Gainesville Camp on Thursday, Jan 9 th, to hear author David Bridges of Virginia. David is a historian, former Presbyterian minister, professor, and author whose new book The Broken Circle tells the dramatic untold story of David s great-great uncle who was posthumously awarded the Confederate Medal of Honor by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in David will explain how the war affected the cultural, religious, and economic structure of the South during the 1860 s through the experience of Dr. James Breathed, a young physician turned warrior. Under JEB Stuart's guidance James Breathed and John Pelham started the Stuart Horse Artillery. Major James Breathed was classically educated, deeply religious, and was studying medicine when his country was invaded. Breathed reluctantly became one of the South s fiercest warriors, wounded several times and fighting from the beginning to the end in 71 battles. This historical novel, according to Don Livingston of the Abbeville Institute, is unique in that it seeks to bring to life the story of a kinsman and is as faithful in historic details as a novel can be. Several of the Georgia boys were in action as Yankee invaders at the Battle of the Armory Reenactment in Tallassee, Alabama. The crowds saw a spirited engagement. The Bell Research Center continues to expand its collection of resources on the American Revolution. Thank you to Kathy Bush and the Daughters of the American Revolution for contributing the book South Carolina in the American Revolution by Erick Grundset. 3

4 October year Camp birthday party. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. John Quincy Adams from his 1839 speech celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the Constitution 4

5 SCV members present at the October Camp Meeting: Leighton Young #1642 Clark Rye #1642 Dan P. Miles #1642 Mike McAlpin #1642 Dan Bennett #1642 Hugh McMillian #1642 Tim Bassett #1642 Richard Thompson #1642 Tony Lett #1642 John Adair #1642 Joe Bailey #1642 Joel Anderson #1642 Jerry Sanders #1642 Frank Clark #1642 Cliff Roberts #1642 Brandon Hembree #1642 Mike Couch #1404 Dave Barnett #1642 Victor Fisher #1642 Larry Bennett #1642 Dennis Nelson #1642 Jim Nelson #1642 Aaron Guthrie #1642 The Georgia Armory Rifle By Leighton Young In 1862 the state of Georgia established an armory to manaufacture rifles. It was set up in the old State Penitentary building in Milledgeville. Peter Jones, who had been the armorer at Harper s Ferry, was in charge. The Georgia Armory produced around 400 rifles from 1862 to Production stopped in the first quarter of This was probably because of a lack of materials. The two-band Georgia Rifle was based somewhat on the brass mounted 1855 Springfield rifle. The stock barrel bands, butt plate, pouch box, and sites were from the 1855 design. The barrel and lock favored the 1841 Mississippi Rifle. An unusual feature of this.58 caliber Georgia Rifle was the use of an English trigger guard and lock screw washers. The rifle used a sword bayonet. The first few bayonets had a brass handle. Later bayonets used wooden gripes. The Georgia Rifle is an example of a beautiful brass mounted rifle. CSS Georgia Recovery from the murky Savannah River Phil Gast writes an excellent blog called the Civil War Packet about Civil War news in Georgia. He has made several posts about the raising of a section of the Confederate ironclad CSS Georgia. It was lifted by U.S. Navy divers just a couple miles east of the famed River Street in Savannah, Ga. Archaeologists want to analyze this 64- square-foot section before proceeding with the removal of the rest of the shipwreck as part of the deepening of the shipping channel. The CSS Georgia was scuttled in late December 1864, just a day before Union forces took the port city. 5

6 The Civil War near downtown Nashville In October, I had the opportunity to visit two Civil War sites near downtown Nashville. Sitting on a hill above the Tennessee capital is Fort Negley, the anchor of the Union defenses build around the city. It is the largest inland masonry fort built during the war. The construction was overseen by Captain St. Clair Morton of the Corp. of Engineers. 2,768 runaway slaves were enrolled as construction laborers, though few would be paid for their three months of hard work. After the war the hilltop fort reverted to forest. It was not until 2004 that a restoration project permited the public to visit the site. Below Fort Negley is the old Nashville City Cemetery, which dates to Among its 22,000 graves are three prominent Confederate generals. Lee s Corp. Commander Richard Ewell died on his Spring Hill farm in Felix Zollicoffer was a former Tennessee Congressman turned general. He was the first Confederate general to be killed in the Western theater, falling in an invasion of Eastern Kentucky in January Bushrod Johnson was at the Appomattox surrender. He died in

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