COMMANDER S CORNER by Larry Joe Reynolds

Transcription

1 ol. 2, No. 2 Copyright 2016 February 2016 COMMANDER S CORNER by Larry Joe Reynolds The year has indeed gotten off to a good start. Although we have many battles to still fight we are making progress on some fronts. (See this month s article from Division Commander Gary Bray about the proposed new Texas License Plate). We have received our Camp Number (2270) and our new members should be receiving their numbers and paperwork any day now. Our camp is already listed on the National Web Site and I m in the process of getting it listed on the Division s Web Site as well. At this time, I would like for our Camp to focus on Recruiting New Members and signing up to become Guardians for our ancestors that are buried her in Titus County. I hope to eventually have every Confederate Hero s grave assigned to a member of our camp. At the Division Executive Committee meeting on January 9th it was brought up that very few have registered for the 2016 Texas Reunion in Kerrville in June. We should have six delegates and I encourage you to attend to ensure we cast all of our votes. UPCOMING EVENTS Monday, February 1st, 7:00 p.m. Refreshments at 6:30 p.m. Old Union Community Center Hwy 67E, Mount Pleasant, Texas MARDI GRAS UPRIVER CELEBRATION JEFFERSON, TEXAS February 6, 2016 Muster at 12:00 Parade at 2:00 Muster on Walnut Street, East of Tracks For more information, see: TEXAS REUNION June 3-5, 2016 YO Ranch Resort and Conference Center 2033 Sidney Baker (TX Hwy 16) Kerrville, TX See for full information 2016 NATIONAL REUNION July 13 th 17 th, 2016 Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel 900 E. Lookout Drive Richardson, Texas See for full details. DAVIDRREYNOLDS.ORG This month the following changes have been made to our web site: I ve added a page containing Notable members of Sons of Confederate Veterans. Continuing to add Bio pages of our Confederate Ancestors I m still looking for biographies of your Confederate Ancestor. Please try to come up with a short bio that we can put on-line. If you have any suggestions, recommendations or comments you can send me an to:

2 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 2 Joe.Reynolds@davidrreynolds.org and I promise to give it my full consideration. dress him to look like a color bearer for Hoods Texas Brigade. Our Charge "To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will commit the vindication of the cause for which we fought. To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved and which you love also, and those ideals which made him glorious and which you also cherish." Remember, it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations! Lt. General Stephen Dill Lee, Commander General, United Confederate Veterans, New Orleans, Louisiana April 25, 1906 ROBERT E. LEE, AMERICAN ICON Compatriot Adams sent me this article published in the Washington Post on Robert E. Lee s Birthday, and since we just celebrated Confederate Hero s Day, I thought I would share it here. From: Commander Gary Bray, Texas Division SCV Compatriots, 1/25/2016 The decision has been made that our Texas Division will move forward with the SCV State License plate project. The money from the plate will help fund the many battles we face almost daily. As you know we can "not" use our battle flag or our SCV logo on the tag so we are doing a redesign for the plate. We want to show our pride as Sons of Confederate Veterans but also our pride for being Texans and our Texas Division. A number of plate designs were given to the DEC for a vote. One was a standout design and is the one that won. The artwork does not belong to us so we are going to have a little fun with this project. We are going to have a photo contest and the winning photo will be the art work for the plate. The photos will be judged by the DEC. The idea here is to get some member as a model and The son of Virginia defended the South and rejoiced in abolition. Robert E. Lee rode south on a morning in April 1861, crossing the Potomac to his estate in Arlington. He had turned down President Lincoln s offer of every soldier s dream command of the army of the United States, a position he had longed for, and now he rode toward a position and a destiny he had never dreamed of. He could not know what lay ahead, but he could see a storm gathering. Lee had hoped Virginia would not secede, indeed, hoped that none of the states would. The man who has been called America s greatest soldier hardly resembles the mean caricature drawn by the

3 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 3 politically correct in the strife and tumult of the present day. He had opposed secession, and he had opposed slavery, writing in 1856 that Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. He would free his own slaves and declare, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. But wasn t the Constitution a contract of consent and not coercion? A Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, Lee wrote, has no charm for me. Moreover, a precedent had been set by those who now shouted the loudest against the South. New England had convened a secession convention about the War of 1812, mooted only by the end of that war. Still, Lee, who was born on this day 209 years ago, could see the folly of secession, but there it was. He could not raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. In a word, Virginia. Slavery had caused the schism. But secession was far more complicated than some in later generations would surmise. Gen. George B. McClellan, like many Northern Democrats, was for the Union but against abolition. Ulysses S. Grant owned five slaves, four through his wife and one that he bought himself. Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne of Arkansas, a native of Ireland who was called the Stonewall Jackson of the West, died in defense of Southern independence, but worked against slavery. In January 1864, he wrote a letter to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, urging that all slaves should be freed who swore allegiance to the South. The letter, alas, was not forwarded to Richmond by his superiors. When Nathan Bedford Forrest, who sold slaves in Memphis before the war, heard that, he protested, If we do that, what are we fighting for? In his petition, Gen. Cleburne answered: It is said [that] slavery is all we are fighting for, and to give it up is to give up all. Even if true, which we deny, [the abolition of] slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely a pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties. Slaves who fled plantations in the late months of the war were often forced back to the plantations by Union soldiers, or interned in camps where they died by the thousands. The historian C. Vann Woodward, a professor of history at Yale, wrote that the handling of the freed slaves by the Union army wrote some of the darkest pages of war history. Slavery as an issue gradually became less important to the South than independence, and Cleburne s petition pushed the South to within a step of abolition. In March 1865, with the war lost and Cleburne dead at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee, the petition became moot. But upon what meat did the North feed to have grown so pious? The South had bought only those slaves the North had sold to her. By 1800 over half of Northern exports were sullied by it. One historian said that it was the wealth accumulated by the West Indian slave trade which more than anything else underlay the prosperity and civilization of New England and the Middle Colonies. At war s end, the South s economy was ruined. Many of her cities lay in ashes. One in five white Southern men had been killed or crippled. The slaves had been liberated but the Negro abandoned, totally unprovided for, as Frederick Douglass said, turned loose, naked and hungry to the open sky. With the poor whites marginalized, the impoverished of both races were pushed into the de facto slavery of the sharecropping system and the reign of Jim Crow, to be set against each other by demagogues. The Confederate flag developed a tragic binocularity, Southern whites seeing one thing and blacks another. America s enemies would get the Marshall Plan after World War II. The South got Reconstruction after the Civil War, and traces of its poison fruit survive still. Against the backdrop of Reconstruction, Lee crossed his own Rubicon, pleading with the South to avoid the anger and bitterness of a lost cause, and become

4 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 4 good and loyal Americans. He became the beloved of his people, the great icon, and deserves the honor the South pays him still. Phillip McMath, the son of a former Democratic governor of Arkansas, is a lawyer in Little Rock. T. J. STONEWALL JACKSON GENERAL, CSA (Continued from Last Month) In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson remarried. Her new husband, Blake Woodson, an attorney, did not like his stepchildren. There were continuing financial problems. The following year, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother Willam Wirt Woodson, Julia died of complications, leaving her three older children orphaned. Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in a homemade coffin in Westlake Cemetery along the James River and Kanawha Turnpike in Fayette County within the corporate limits of present-day Ansted, West Virginia. As their mother's health continued to fail, Jackson and his sister Laura Ann were sent to live with their half-uncle, Cummins Jackson, who owned a grist mill in Jackson's Mill (near present-day Weston in Lewis County in central West Virginia). Their older brother, Warren, went to live with other relatives on his mother's side of the family, but he later died of tuberculosis in 1841 at the age of twenty. Thomas and Laura Ann returned from Jackson's Mill in November 1831 to be at their dying mother's bedside. They spent four years together at the Mill before being separated Laura Ann was sent to live with her mother's family, Thomas to live with his Aunt Polly (his father's sister) and her husband, Isaac Brake, on a farm four miles from Clarksburg. Thomas was treated by Brake as an outsider and, having suffered verbal abuse for over a year, ran away from the family. When his cousin in Clarksburg urged him to return to Aunt Polly's, he replied, "Maybe I ought to, ma'am, but I am not going to." He walked eighteen miles through mountain wilderness to Jackson's Mill, where he was welcomed by his uncles and he remained there for the following seven years. Cummins Jackson was strict with Thomas, who looked up to Cummins as a schoolteacher. Jackson helped around the farm, tending sheep with the assistance of a sheepdog, driving teams of oxen and helping harvest wheat and corn. Formal education was not easily obtained, but he attended school when and where he could. Much of Jackson's education was self-taught. He once made a deal with one of his uncle's slaves to provide him with pine knots in exchange for reading lessons; Thomas would stay up at night reading borrowed books by the light of those burning pine knots. Virginia law forbade teaching a slave, free black or mulatto to read or write; nevertheless, Jackson secretly taught the slave, as he had promised. Once literate, the young slave fled to Canada via the Underground Railroad. In his later years at Jackson's Mill, Thomas served as a schoolteacher. The Civil War has sometimes been referred to as a war of "brother against brother," but in the case of the Jackson family, it was brother against sister. Laura Jackson Arnold was close to her brother Thomas until the Civil War period. As the war loomed, she became a staunch Unionist in a somewhat divided Harrison County. She was so strident in her beliefs that she expressed mixed feelings upon hearing of Thomas's death. One Union officer said that, though she seemed depressed at hearing the news, her Unionism was stronger than her family bonds. In a letter, he wrote that Laura had said she "would rather know that he was dead than to have him a leader in the rebel army." Her Union sentiment also estranged her later from her husband, Jonathan Arnold. (Continued next month)

5 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 5 LAST CAMP MEETING Our first meeting of 2016 proved to be a very productive meeting. We had a very good member attendance and several guests. Three of the guest have expressed a desire to join our Camp. Compatriot Garrett Glover from the Captain Ike Turner Camp #1275, Livingston, Texas presented a program on Percussion Altered American Shoulder arms. The PowerPoint presentation and the large display of Civil War era guns were well received by everyone. I was raised by one of the greatest men in the world. There was never one born of a woman greater than Gen. Robert E. Lee, according to my judgment. All of his servants were set free ten years before the war, but all remained on the plantation until after the surrender. William Mack Lee (Robert E. Lee s black servant) Matthew 5: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" Compatriot John Michael Farley receives his Charter Member Certificate Camp Commander Joe Reynolds present guest speaker Compatriot Garrett Glover a Certificate of Appreciation For his Program. One of our beloved heroes, Robert E. Lee was noted for never referring to Union troops as "Yankees," or even, "the enemy." Instead, he called them " those people." General Lee's attitude toward his military opponents gave him a reputation for being a humble, gracious gentleman, even among the Union Army. He, and countless others among our Southern ancestors proved themselves as courageous and determined warriors on the battlefield, yet courteous and kind when the guns were silent. We, as Christian people, attempting to live Godly lives according to the Bible and the sacred traditions that have been passed down to us, have an ever increasing number of enemies. Though not engaged in an armed conflict, the struggle is serious and crucial. Just like soldiers in a military struggle, we have a duty to oppose the enemy to the best of our ability. But, whatever our differences are, we must always remember in times of conflict, that our

6 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 6 enemies are people, too. Perhaps that's why General Lee called the Federal troops, "those people," in order to remind himself and others that human lives were at stake. So, even if they're acting wrongly, the Savior has instructed us to love our enemies. When we can't compromise on principle, we can pray that the Almighty will resolve the conflict or change the minds of our enemies. When ungodly things are spoken about us or done to us, we can respond in a Christ-like way. The Apostle Paul wrote that we are free to repay evil by doing good. We often can't be silent, but when we have to speak up, we can do it in an honorable way. Let us not only be remembered for the things we stood for, but also for how we stood! cemeteries. Some have only one or two Confederate Graves that are marked. Gentlemen they are out there waiting to have a Guardian watching over them. Think about it, we are the only ones that care about the cause for which they fought and died. I believe with all my being in the Guardian Program and I hope that in some small way I can convince you of its importance in fulfilling The Charge. We must, now more than ever, show the world that we care about our Southern Heritage and the Valiant Heroes that fought to preserve it. For those of us that are Guardians, don t forget to place Confederate Flags on our Heroes graves by January 19 or if not, then April 26. Michael Mars SICKNESS & DISTRESS GUARDIAN PROGRAM January 21, Keesie Reynolds, wife of Commander Larry Joe Reynolds, underwent Back Surgery on January 19 th and is recuperating at home. One of my Goals for 2016 is to have a Guardian for as many Confederate graves as possible in Titus County. We have so many Confederate Heroes buried here, at least 394 that I have documented and I m sure many more are out there that we re not aware of. I know that it is unrealistic for a camp of our size to adopt all of them, what I would suggest is that we start by adopting at least one and possible more Larry Joe Reynolds, Camp Commander of the 1 st Lt. David Richard Reynolds Camp presents on of the first CSA Army Service Medals to Compatriot Kim Duffey at the January Meeting of the Upshur County Patriots.

7 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 7 MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF ALL TIME!!!! Abraham Lincoln once asked General (Winfield) Scott this question: "Why is it that you were once able to take Mexico City in three months with five thousand men, and we have been unable to take Richmond with one hundred thousand men?" "I will tell you," said General Scott. "The men who took us into Mexico City are the same men who are keeping us out of Richmond." Confederate Veteran Magazine, September 1913, page 471. Company I NINETH Texas Cavalry Col. W. B. Sims, mustered the Ninth Texas Cavalry Regiment into Confederate service at Camp Reeves, Grayson County, Texas on October 14, The original unit consisted of about 1000 officers and men recruited principally from eight counties of North Texas: Cass, Fannin, Grayson, Hopkins, Lamar, Red River, Tarrant, and Titus. With William Quayle as Lt. Col., N. W. Townes as Major and J. H. Bell as Adjutant, Sims quickly organized the men and led them North into the Indian Territories to assist Col. Cooper. Adjutant Bell having given dissatisfaction, was accused of Abolitionism and of Bigamy, was found guilty and the boys en masse took him out and hung him. By November 12, 1861 a detachment under the command of Lt. Col. Quayle went forward to Col. Cooper's camp to assist in fighting Indians. On November 19, 1861 they fought at Round Mountain and on December 9, 1861 they fought at Chusto-Talash, AKA Bird Creek, Indian Territories. They then moved on to Ft. Gibson and joined other detachments and fought at Chustenahlah, Indian Territories on December 26, After this they rejoined their wagon train and resumed journey to Arkansas to join Gen. McCulloch's command in winter camp. On March 6-7, 1862, the Ninth were at Elkhorn Tavern, also called Pea Ridge by Union Historians. The 9th moved to the attack at 11 A.M. Quickly they captured an artillery battery that had fired on them and captured 6 enemy while killing 50 to 75, but Col. Sims was severely wounded when his arm was shattered by a cannon ball. He was later dropped from the rolls in May The next day started with the deaths of Gen. McCulloch and McIntosh and the capture of Col. Hebert, which caused a lack of communication and leadership in these units, and Gen. Van Dorn's subsequent decision to retreat from the battle field. In May all the units reorganized and were dismounted as Infantry. N. W. Townes was elected Colonel and Dudley W. Jones was elected Lt. Col. Soon after this Company H of the 9th was designated a sharpshooter and skirmisher company and on August 1, 1862 was attached along with Company I of the 6th to Col. Ras Stirman's Arkansas Sharpshooter Regiment. These regiments all part of Colonel Phiffer's Brigade began to march toward Corinth, to fight the General Rosecran's Army. On October the 3-4, 1862, the 9th fighting alongside the 6th attacked an Ohio Brigade and received heavy casualties from cannon and rifle fire. Many of the wounded were left to be captured. This was true for the 9th and 6th. In the late afternoon of October 4th, These two units had had some success, but were running low on ammunition and men. Without reinforcement they were forced to retreat. Gen Van Dorn realized he was fighting a much larger force and decided to retreat his whole Corps. On the next day the 9th marched in column behind the 6th, and were able to stop and assume shooting positions before they were shot down. Ross had a hundred men captured and many more dead and wounded. But soon the 6th, Ras Stirman's Sharpshooters, the 9th and artillery battery commanded the bluff on the south side of the river and proceeded to blast away at

8 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 8 the Union forces, thus allowing Gen. Van Dorn's Army to retreat past the Union blocking force. Col. Townes resigned due to an eye injured at Corinth and Dudley W. Jones was elected Colonel, a position he would keep till the end of the war. In November the 9th was remounted and prepared for a raid to Holly Springs, Mississippi Union Supply Depot. This time they operated in a brigade that they would remain with throughout the war. The brigade's initial commander was Col. John Wilkins Whitfield who had commanded the 1st Texas Legion. Gen. Van Dorn led the raid, but Lt. Col. Griffith of the 6th who designed the raid was its honorary commander. This was the first time the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 27th Texas Cavalry Regiments worked together. They were called Whitfield's Brigade but in less than a year they would be Ross' Texas Cavalry Brigade. The 9th was a great part of the success of this raid and the subsequent disruption of rail roads in western Tennessee. The Ninth fought in Tennessee until it was then brought back with its brigade to help break the siege of Vicksburg. They skirmished outside the siege, but Vicksburg surrendered before they could help. Then began the most heroic part of the Ninth and Ross's Brigade histories, for over one hundred days, they fought Gen. Sherman's Army, delaying its march toward Atlanta. The battles of Rome, New Hope Church, Lovejoy's Station and Jonesborough were names in this campaign. They stopped two of Sherman's raids, even though the union had superior forces, but with great loss of men and horses. When Atlanta fell and Gen. Hood took Ross' Brigade back to Tennessee, the 9th had only 140 men and most of the companies ceased to exist. The regiment operated as one large company. About 900 were dead, wounded, sick or left behind in various duties. Serving as part of Gen. Nathan B. Forest rear guard of Hoods Army of Tennessee, they helped prevent the loss of that force. Starting out the Brigade had only a strength of 686 men. Following these battles Ross' Brigade was no longer a viable force. The units bivouacked in Mississippi during the remaining few months of the war. Many of the men were furloughed and many just went home. The Brigade was officially captured and paroled at Citronelle, Alabama in May Of the Ninth, under Col. Dudley W. Jones' command only 100 remained to surrender. NOTABLE MEMBERS OF SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS HAVE INCLUDED: Trace Adkins (born 1962), American country singer-songwriter Ellis Arnall ( ), Georgia governor Gresham Barrett (born 1961), U.S. representative from South Carolina Omar Bradley ( ), 1st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Bear Bryant ( ), an American college football coach Phil Bryant (born 1954), Mississippi governor Pat Buchanan (born 1938), American journalist, writer, media consultant, and U.S. presidential candidate R. Gregg Cherry ( ), North Carolina governor John E. Courson (born 1944), South Carolina state senator Charlie Daniels (born 1936), American country singer-songwriter Hugh M. Dorsey ( ), Georgia governor Clint Eastwood (born 1930), American film actor, director, producer, composer, pianist, and politician Charles R. Farnsley ( ), U.S. representative from Kentucky Orval Faubus ( ), Arkansas governor Murphy J. Foster, Jr. (born 1930), Louisiana governor Tyler Noel (2000 Present), Boyd Student MacDonald Gallion ( ), Alabama attorney general Virgil Goode (born 1946), Representative from Virginia and U.S. presidential candidate Marvin Griffin ( ), Georgia governor Dorsey B. Hardeman ( ), Texas state senator Oliver Hardy ( ), actor

9 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 9 Harry B. Hawes ( ), U.S. senator from Missouri Johnson Hagood ( ), American general Jesse Helms ( ), Senator from North Carolina and U.S. presidential candidate James Hylton (born 1934), American race car driver John A. Lejeune ( ), 13th Commandant of the Marine Corps Trent Lott (born 1941), U.S. senator from Mississippi Lester Maddox ( ), Georgia governor William David McCain ( ), American archivist and college president Charley Reese ( ), American newspaper columnist Absalom Willis Robertson ( ), U.S. senator from Virginia Richard Russell, Jr. ( ), Governor and U.S. senator from Georgia John M. Slaton ( ), Georgia governor Floyd Spence ( ), U.S. representative from South Carolina Herman Talmadge ( ), Governor and U.S. senator from Georgia Strom Thurmond ( ), Governor, U.S. senator from South Carolina, and U.S. presidential candidate Harry S. Truman ( ), 33rd President of the United States William M. Tuck ( ), Governor and U.S. representative from Virginia Ernest Vandiver ( ), Georgia governor Danny Verdin (born 1964), South Carolina state senator Alexander W. Weddell ( ), American diplomat William Childs Westmoreland (March 26, 1914 July 18, 2005), Army General who Commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam. Guinn Williams ( ), U.S. representative from Texas Hank Williams, Jr. (born 1949), American country singer-songwriter Joe Wilson (born 1947), U.S. representative from South Carolina Woodrow Wilson ( ), 28th President of the United States Nelson W. Winbush, African-American educator All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth. Robert E. Lee BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES & OTHER IMPORTANT DATES Robert Eugene Jones September 26 th They (the South) know that it is their import trade that draws from the peoples pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the union. New Orleans Daily Crescent-1861

10 Vol. 2 No. 2 Copyright 2106 Page 10 Camp Leadership Lt. David R. Reynolds Camp Mount Pleasant, Texas Commander Larry Joe Reynolds (903) Joe.Reynolds@DavidRReynolds.org 1Lt. Commander Alvin Rex McGee (903) AlvinRexMcGee@hotmail.com 2Lt. Commander Robert Eugene Jones (903) rj416b@gmail.com Sergeant-at-Arms Kenneth Roy Phillips, Jr. (903) confederateglory@yahoo.com Definition of a Gentleman The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. Robert E. Lee Chaplain John Michael Mars (903) jmmars74@gmail.com Web Master / Newsletter Editor Joe Reynolds (903) Joe.Reynolds@DavidRReynolds.org NEWSLETTER EDITOR Larry Joe Reynolds 1007 Stone Shore Street Mount Pleasant, TX (903) Joe.Reynolds@DavidRReynolds.org