MOSUL, Iraq – A soldier from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), under the operational control of Task Force Olympia, died from a non-combat related shooting here yesterday.The incident is under investigation. The name of the Soldier is withheld pending notification of next of kin.

EXIT STRATEGY/SUICIDE OF AN AMERICAN PFC

Gung ho

Flag and anthem

Through the flames

Army of one

Shoot first

Ask questions later

Then the bayonet

                   he said

Blood the desert takes the sand will not return

No exit from the RPG

No exit from the mortar round

No exit from the roadside bomb

No exit from the helicopter crash

No way home to Eagle Pass

No way home to Santa Fe

No way home to Baton Rouge

No way home to Seven Hills

Blood the desert takes the sand will not replace

No way out of Umm Qasr

No way out of Tall Afar

No way off Haditha Dam

No way out of Balad Ruz

No exit from the sniper scope

No exit from the mosque

No exit from the green canal

No exit from the body bag

Blood the desert takes the sand will not release

And looking down the pistol barrel

Saw St. Barbara

Clothed in swallows and veil

Waiting at the gate across the river with welcoming arms

Kept his eyes on her

And pulled the trigger.

Atlanta GA Nov 13, 2006

BIO

Russell Streur is a born-again dissident residing in Johns Creek, Georgia.  He was hit over the head with a baseball bat swung by an insistent muse from Crete in May of 2004 and has been just fine ever since.  His poetry and photography have been most recently published in Amaranthine Muses, Boyslut, Dead Snakes, Indigo Rising Magazine, The Literary Burlesque, Meat Heads and Muscle Cars, Occupy Poetry Project, Our Day’s Encounter, Project Agent Orange Poetry Blog, The Rainbow Rose, Raven Images and The Sinner’s Almanac.  He operates The Camel Saloon, an on-line speakeasy catering to dromedaries, malcontents and jewels of the world at http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/ where the beer is cold, the whiskey Irish, and the door is always open.

Streur is author of the book The Muse of Many Names.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

by John McCrae (1872-1918), from In Flanders Fields
and Other Poems, 1919

“In Flanders Fields” is one of the most notable poems written during World War I, created in the form of a French rondeau. It has been called “the most popular poem” produced during that period.^[1] Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote it on 3 May 1915 (see 1915 in poetry), after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, 22 years old, the day before. The poem was first published on 8 December of that year in the London-based magazine Punch.

The poppies referred to in the poem grew in profusion in Flanders in the disturbed earth of the battlefields and cemeteries where war casualties were buried^[2] and thus became a symbol of Remembrance Day (see Remembrance poppy). The poem is often part of Remembrance Day solemnities in Allied countries which contributed troops to World War I, particularly in countries of the British Empire that did so.

———————————-

Abraham Lincoln’s election led to secession and secession to war. When the Union soldiers entered the South, thousands of African Americans fled from their owners to Union camps. The Union officers did not immediately receive an official order on how to manage this addition to their numbers. Some sought to return the slaves to their owners, but others kept the blacks within their lines and dubbed them “contraband of war.” Many “contrabands” greatly aided the war effort with their labor.

After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was effective on January 1, 1863, black soldiers were officially allowed to participate in the war. The Library of Congress holds histories and pictures of most of the regiments of the United States Colored Troops as well as manuscript and published accounts by African American soldiers and their white officers, documenting their participation in the successful Union effort. Both blacks and whites were outspoken about questions of race, civil rights, and full equality for the newly-freed population during the Civil War era.

Emancipated blacks were forced to begin their trek to full equality without the aid of “forty acres and a mule,” which many believed had been promised to them. The Library’s collection records the new steps towards freedom on the part of the African American community, especially in the areas of employment, education, and politics. There is also an abundance of books, photographs, diaries, and manuscripts about many aspects of slave life and culture, such as the development of the “Negro Spiritual” and the role played by the United States Colored Troops in the South and the West.

In my humble opinion, the poem must be able to hold its own on that physical level.  Then, if readers care to launch into analytical limbo, all encouragement to do so.  My poems also contain the larger metaphor which can be personalized or globalized.  But if you don’t get the larger meaning, you can still get something out of the poem.  That’s my intent, anyway.

So here’s an early Christmas present for those who have not purchased the book yet: a sample, which I rarely give.  Read it.  Ask yourself what is being said about the happenings of the time.  What story is being told?  Then ask yourself what metaphorical walls you have been asked to build that have crumbled upon the most subtle of breezes.

Stonewall Down

You told me to build a wall from rubble,
fragments of earth and strength and clay;
you told me to stack stones, one on another,
fill cracks in with dust and mud.
I did what I was told.

There was no way it would ever hold.

It came crashing down on an exhale.

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt
Copyright 2009-present
All rights reserved.

Nature XXVII, Autumn

~Emily Dickinson

December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.^[1] As a federal and popular holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated to give thanks to God for guiding them safely to the New World.^[2] The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 13 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans.^[3] The feast consisted of fish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild fowl (ducks, geese, swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables (peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly, wild or cultivated onion), harvest grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters: beans, dried Indian maize or corn, and squash.^[2][4][5][6] The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings”—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.^[7]

Thanksgiving In The Civil War

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

        The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

http://poemsfromthebattlefield.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot to think about in 1939. The world had been suffering from the Great Depression for a decade and the Second World War had just erupted in Europe. On top of that, the U.S. economy continued to look bleak. So when U.S. retailers begged him to move Thanksgiving up a week to increase the shopping days before Christmas, he agreed. He probably considered it a small change; however, when FDR issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation with the new date, there was an uproar throughout the country.

The First Thanksgiving

As most schoolchildren know, the history of Thanksgiving began when Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered together to celebrate a successful harvest. The first Thanksgiving was held in the fall of 1621, sometime between September 21 and November 11, and was a three-day feast. The Pilgrims were joined by approximately 90 of the local Wampanoag tribe, including Chief Massasoit, in celebration. They ate fowl and deer for certain and most likely also ate berries, fish, clams, plums, and boiled pumpkin.

Sporadic Thanksgivings

Though the current holiday of Thanksgiving was based on the 1621 feast, it did not immediately become an annual celebration or holiday. Sporadic days of Thanksgiving followed, usually declared locally to give thanks for a specific event such as the end of a drought, victory in a specific battle, or after a harvest.

It wasn’t until October 1777 that all 13 colonies celebrated a day of Thanksgiving. The very first national day of Thanksgiving was held in 1789, when President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26 to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer,” to especially give thanks for the opportunity to form a new nation and the establishment of a new constitution.

Yet even after a national day of Thanksgiving was declared in 1789, Thanksgiving was not an annual celebration.

Mother of Thanksgiving

We owe the modern concept of Thanksgiving to a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and author of the famous “Mary Had a Little Lamb” nursery rhyme, spent 40 years advocating for a national, annual Thanksgiving holiday. In the years leading up to the Civil War, she saw the holiday as a way to infuse hope and belief in the nation and the constitution. So, when the United States was torn in half during the Civil War and Lincoln was searching for a way to bring the nation together, he discussed the matter with Hale.

Lincoln Sets Date

On October 3, 1863, Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation that declared the last Thursday in November (based on Washington’s date) to be a day of “thanksgiving and praise.” For the first time, Thanksgiving became a national, annual holiday with a specific date.

FDR Changes It

For 75 years after Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, succeeding presidents honored the tradition and annually issued their own Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday in November as the day of Thanksgiving. However, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not. In 1939, the last Thursday of November was going to be November 30. Retailers complained to FDR that this only left 24 shopping days to Christmas and begged him to push Thanksgiving just one week earlier. It was determined that most people do their Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving and retailers hoped that with an extra week of shopping, people would buy more.

So when FDR announced his Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1939, he declared the date of Thanksgiving to be Thursday, November 23, the second-to-last Thursday of the month.

Lincoln from the Grave

Oh to be unconditionally loved when dead,

division dissolved by the peaceful inevitable.

Oh to the victory that made us one,

the blood of battle and repair

no longer questioned as worthwhile,

immune to “what if?” in its sad reality,

replaced by “what is” and “what was.”

How, now, am I taught as hero,

recalled as Honest Abe, Father Abraham,

when then, about half a nation hated me?

I, immortalized in paper and stone,

I, honored as a lesson that even

a simple man can become President—

that is how I now know love.

What blew this charge into storm,

made me more than I ever could have been?

What stone face could warrant the illusion

that I was anything but terrified?

Was it my own grand words

or an accident of revisionism

that made me out as martyr?

Does no one suspect I bit my nails and swallowed,

dashed a sallow candle to the floor, kicked the wall,

told Mary she was unruly as my most ill behaved horse,

ordered the oldest stable boy fired, three times placed

a pistol on my desk yet failed to pull the trigger?

I was neither star nor saint, nor did I ever intend

to offer myself as an unblemished lamb, never considered

myself more than ugly me, a twisted twig on a fig sapling

pulled at the roots by torrential war.

Yet, “hero” is how I am mostly remembered,

so great is the need for idols.

So be it.

So be it my icon is revered by millions,

that the awed infer from me

that war within a nation bleeds

a country down to ignorance,

that agape is the only way we

will survive one another,

that injustice can only bring

us together in a grave.

But for me, the marble marks

my most private moments—

the time I laughed at a servant’s joke,

that cloudy day when I told Mary I loved her,

the second I understood I owned possibly

the most comfortable pillow in the Union

yet couldn’t sleep, that Sunday I locked

myself in the pantry and cried for our country—

no one knows about those.

They only know what they are told,

enough to suspect I was human,

but plenty to believe in monuments.

Katherine M. Gotthardt for WMPA 360º (October 16 and 30, 2011), a complement to Copland’s Lincoln Portrait 

Virginia in the American Civil War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Confederate States in the American Civil War
South Carolina Mississippi Florida Alabama Georgia Louisiana Texas Virginia Arkansas North Carolina Tennessee
Dual governments
Kentucky Missouri
Border states
Delaware Maryland West Virginia
Territories
Indian Arizona

The Commonwealth of Virginia was a prominent part of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The convention called to act for the state during the secession crisis opened on February 13, 1861, after seven seceding states had formed the Confederacy on February 4. Unionist delegates dominated the convention and defeated a motion to secede on April 4. The convention deliberated for several months, but on April 15 President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union in response to the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter. On April 17, the Virginia convention voted to secede, pending ratification of the decision by the voters. With the entry of Virginia into the Confederacy, a decision was made in May to move the Confederate capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, in part because the defense of Virginia’s capital was deemed strategically vital to the Confederacy’s survival regardless of its political status. Virginians ratified the articles of secession on May 23. The following day, the Union army moved into northern Virginia and captured Alexandria without a fight.

Most of the battles in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War took place in Virginia because the Confederacy had to defend its national capital at Richmond, and public opinion in the North demanded that the Union move “On to Richmond!” The remarkable success of Robert E. Lee in defending Richmond is a central theme of the military history of the war. The White House of the Confederacy, located a few blocks north of the State Capital, was home to the family of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Contents [hide] 1 Prewar tensions 2 Secession timeline 2.1 Call for secession convention 2.2 Secession convention 2.3 Secession ratification 3 Virginia during the war 4 Industrialization 5 Soldiers 6 West Virginia splits 7 Notable Civil War leaders (Confederate) from Virginia 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Prewar tensions

On October 16, 1859, the radical abolitionist John Brown led a group of 22 men in a raid on the Federal Arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Federal troops, led by Robert E. Lee, responded and quelled the raid. Subsequently, John Brown was tried and executed by hanging in Charles Town on December 2, 1859.

In 1860 the Democratic Party split into northern and southern factions over the issue of slavery in the territories and Stephen Douglas’ support for popular sovereignty: after failing in both Charleston and Baltimore to nominate a single candidate acceptable to the South, Southern Democrats held their convention in Richmond, Virginia on June 26, 1860 and nominated John C. Breckinridge as their party candidate for President.^[1]

When Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected as president, Virginians were concerned about the implications for their state. While a majority of the state would look for compromises to the sectional differences, most people also opposed any restrictions on slaveholders’ rights.^[2] As the state watched to see what South Carolina would do, many Unionists felt that the greatest danger to the state came not from the North but from “rash secession” by the lower South.^[3]

[edit] Secession timeline

[edit] Call for secession convention

On November 15, 1860 Virginia Governor John Letcher called for a special session of the Virginia General Assembly to consider, among other issues, the creation of a secession convention. The legislature convened on January 7 and approved the convention on January 14. On January 19 the General Assembly called for a national Peace Conference, led by Virginia’s former President of the United States, John Tyler, to be held in Washington on February 4, the same date that elections were scheduled for delegates to the secession convention.^[4]

The election of convention delegates drew 145,700 voters who elected, by county, 152 representatives. Thirty of these delegates were secessionists, thirty were unionists, and ninety-two were moderates who were not clearly identified with either of the first two groups. Nevertheless, advocates of immediate secession were clearly outnumbered.^[5] Simultaneous to this election, six Southern states formed the Confederate States of America on February 4.

[edit] Secession convention

The convention met on February 13 at the Richmond Mechanics Institute located at Ninth and Main Street in Richmond. One of the convention’s first actions was to create a 21 member Federal Relations Committee charged with reaching a compromise to the sectional differences as they affected Virginia.^[6] The committee was made up of 4 secessionists, 10 moderates and 7 unionists.^[7] At first there was no urgency to the convention’s deliberations as all sides felt that time only aided their cause. In addition, there were hopes that the Peace Conference of 1861 on January 19, led by Virginia’s former President of the United States, John Tyler, might resolve the crisis by, in historian Edward L. Ayers’s words, “guaranteeing the safety of slavery forever and the right to expand slavery in the territories below the Missouri Compromise line.”^[8] With the failure of the Peace Conference at the end of February,^[9] moderates in the convention began to waver in their support for unionism.^[10] Unionist support by many was further eroded for many Virginians by Lincoln’s March 4 First Inaugural address which they felt was “argumentative, if not defiant.^[11] Throughout the state there was evidence that support for secession was growing.^[12]

The Federal Relations Committee made its report to the convention on March 9. The fourteen proposals defended both slavery and states’ rights while calling for a meeting of the eight slave states still in the Union to present a united front for compromise. From March 15 through April 14 the convention debated these proposals one by one.^[13] During the debate on the resolutions, the sixth resolution calling for a peaceful solution and maintenance of the Union came up for discussion on April 4. Lewis Edwin Harvie of Amelia County offered a substitute resolution calling for immediate secession. This was voted down by 88 to 45 and the next day the convention continued its debate.^[14] Approval of the last proposal came on April 12.^[15] The goal of the unionist faction after this approval was to adjourn the convention until October, allowing time for both the convention of the slave states and Virginia’s congressional elections in May which, they hoped, would produce a stronger mandate for compromise.^[16]

Proposals Adopted by the Virginia Convention of 1861

The first resolution asserted states’ rights per se; the second was for retention of slavery; the third opposed sectional parties; the fourth called for equal recognition of slavery in both territories and non-slave states; the fifth demanded the removal of federal forts and troops from seceded states; the sixth hoped for a peaceable adjustment of grievances and maintaining the Union; the seventh called for Constitutional amendments to remedy federal and state disputes; the eighth recognized the right of secession; the ninth said the federal government had no authority over seceded states since it refused to recognize their withdrawal; the tenth said the federal government was empowered to recognize the Confederate States; the eleventh was an appeal to Virginia’s sister states; the twelfth asserted Virginia’s willingness to wait a reasonable period of time for an answer to its propositions, providing no one resorted to force against the seceded states; the thirteenth asked United States and Confederate States governments to remain peaceful; and the fourteenth asked the border slave states to meet in conference to consider Virginia’s resolutions and to join in Virginia’s appeal to the North.^[17]

At the same time, unionists were concerned about the continued presence of federal forces at Fort Sumter despite assurances communicated informally to them by Secretary of State William Seward that it would be abandoned.^[18] Lincoln and Seward were also concerned that the Virginia convention was still in session as of the first of April while secession sentiment was growing. At Lincoln’s invitation, unionist John B. Baldwin of Augusta County, met with Lincoln on April 4. Baldwin explained that the unionists needed the evacuation of Fort Sumter, a national convention to debate the sectional differences, and a commitment by Lincoln to support constitutional protections for southern rights.^[19] Over Lincoln’s skepticism, Baldwin argued that Virginia would be out of the Union within forty-eight hours if either side fired a shot at the fort. By some accounts, Lincoln offered to evacuate Fort Sumter if the Virginia convention would adjourn.^[20]

On April 6, amid rumors that the North was preparing for war, the convention voted by a narrow 63-57 to send a three man delegation to Washington to determine from Lincoln what his intentions were. However due to bad weather the delegation did not arrive in Washington until April 12. They learned of the attack on Fort Sumter from Lincoln, and the President advised them of his intent to hold the fort and respond to force with force. Reading from a prepared text to prevent any misinterpretations of his intent, Lincoln told them that he had made it clear in his inaugural address that the forts and arsenals in the South were government property and “if … an unprovoked assault has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to re-possess, if I can, like places which have been seized before the Government was devolved upon me.”^[21]

The pro-Union sentiment in Virginia was further weakened after the April 12 Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter. Richmond reacted with large public demonstrations in support of the Confederacy on April 13 when it first received the news of the attack.^[22] The convention reconvened on April 13 to reconsider Virginia’s position, given the outbreak of hostilities.^[23] With Virginia still in a delicate balance, with no firm determination yet to secede,^{[citation needed]} sentiment turned more strongly toward secession on April 15, following President Abraham Lincoln‘s call to all states that had not declared a secession, including Virginia, for troops to assist in halting the insurrection and recovering the captured forts.^[24]

War Department, Washington, April 15, 1861. To His Excellency the Governor of Virginia: Sir: Under the act of Congress for calling forth “militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, repel invasions, etc.,” approved February 28, 1795, I have the honor to request your Excellency to cause to be immediately detached from the militia of your State the quota designated in the table below, to serve as infantry or rifleman for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged. Your Excellency will please communicate to me the time, at or about, which your quota will be expected at its rendezvous, as it will be met as soon as practicable by an officer to muster it into the service and pay of the United States.

— Simon Cameron, Secretary of War.

The quota for Virginia attached called for three regiments of 2,340 men to rendezvous at Staunton, Wheeling and Gordonsville. Governor Letcher and the recently reconvened Virginia Secession Convention considered this request from Lincoln “for troops to invade and coerce”^[25] lacking in constitutional authority, and out of scope of the Act of 1795. Governor Letcher’s “reply to that call wrought an immediate change in the current of public opinion in Virginia”.,^[25] whereupon he issued the following reply:

Executive Department, Richmond, Va., April 15, 1861. Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War: Sir: I have received your telegram of the 15th, the genuineness of which I doubted. Since that time I have received your communications mailed the same day, in which I am requested to detach from the militia of the State of Virginia “the quota assigned in a table,” which you append, “to serve as infantry or rifleman for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged.” In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object – an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 – will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and, having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the administration has exhibited toward the South.

— Respectfully, John Letcher

Thereafter, the secession convention voted on April 17, provisionally, to secede, on the condition of ratification by a statewide referendum. Ayers, who felt that “even Fort Sumter might have passed, however, had Lincoln not called for the arming of volunteers”,^[26] wrote of the convention’s final decision:

The decision came from what seemed to many white Virginians the unavoidable logic of the situation: Virginia was a slave state; the Republicans had announced their intention of limiting slavery; slavery was protected by the sovereignty of the state; an attack on that sovereignty by military force was an assault on the freedom of property and political representation that sovereignty embodied. When the federal government protected the freedom and future of slavery by recognizing the sovereignty of the states, Virginia’s Unionists could tolerate the insult the Republicans represented; when the federal government rejected that sovereignty, the threat could no longer be denied even by those who loved the Union.^[27]

The Governor of Virginia immediately began mobilizing the Virginia State Militia to strategic points around the state. Former Governor Henry Wise had arranged with militia officers on April 16, before the final vote, to seize the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry and the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk. On April 17 in the debate over secession Wise announced to the convention that these events were already in motion. On April 18 the arsenal was captured and most of the machinery was moved to Richmond. At Gosport, the Union Navy, believing that several thousand militia were headed their way, evacuated and abandoned Norfolk, Virginia and the navy yard, burning and torching as many of the ships and facilities as possible.^[28]

Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned his U.S. Army commission, turning down an offer of command for the U.S. Army.

[edit] Secession ratification

By popular vote, Virginians ratified the articles of secession on May 23, 1861,^[29] with a vote of 132,201 to 37,451 in favor of, and ratifying the secession proposal. The results were initially held in secret for a couple of days, giving Virginia military forces time to officially respond in the defenses of Virginia, by making final preparation for the defense of Virginia. After notification of the election results by telegram, Colonel Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson moved to shut down the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the Great Train Raid of 1861. The following day, the Union army moved into northern Virginia and captured Alexandria without a fight.

Pending the outcome of the ratification election, on May 6 provisional plans were made to move the Confederate capital from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond. Once the ratification was made official, the move of the capital to Virginia was enacted on May 29.

[edit] Virginia during the war

The First of May 1865 or Genl. Moving Day in Richmond Va, political cartoon, Kimmel & Forster, New York, 1865

The ensuing conflict was generally referred to by notable Virginians as “The War Between the States”, as in the title of the 1907 book The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States, published by Dr. Hunter McGuire and George L. Christian. The first major battle of the Civil War occurred on July 21, 1861. Union forces attempted to take control of the railroad junction at Manassas for use as a supply line, but the Confederate Army had moved its forces by train to meet the Union. The Confederates won the First Battle of Manassas (known as “Bull Run”in Northern naming convention) and the year went on without a major fight.

The first and last significant battles were held in Virginia, the first being the Battle of Manassas and the last being Battle of Appomattox Courthouse. During the American Civil War, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America. The White House of the Confederacy, located a few blocks north of the State Capital, was home to the family of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Union general George B. McClellan was forced to retreat from Richmond by Robert E. Lee‘s army. Union general Pope was defeated at the Second Battle of Manassas. Following the one-sided Confederate victory Battle of Fredericksburg, Union general Hooker was defeated at Chancellorsville by Lee’s army. Ulysses Grant‘s Overland Campaign was fought in Virginia. The campaign included battles of attrition at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor and ended with the Siege of Petersburg and Confederate defeat.

In April 1865, fires set in Richmond by a retreating Confederate Army led to a widespread conflagration as the flames were soon out of control. Shortly afterwards the city was occupied and returned to United States control. Virginia was administered as the “First Military District” during the Reconstruction period (1865–1870) under General John Schofield. Local rule was reestablished on October 5, 1869. On January 26, 1870, when the U.S. Congress approved a new Virginia constitution, Virginia’s representatives membership to the Congress was restored. This has been traditionally known as the “readmittance” of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the United States.

[edit] Industrialization

The Virginia Governor’s mansion in 1865.

Various textile production was present prior to 1861 but nothing of great significance. A center of iron production during the civil war was located in Richmond at Tredegar Iron Works. Tredegar was run partially by slave labor, and it produced most of the artillery for the war, making Richmond an important point to defend.

[edit] Soldiers

Men from all economic and social levels, both slaveholders and nonslaveholders, as well as former Unionists, enlisted in the Confederate military in great numbers. The only areas that sent few or no men to fight for the Confederacy had few slaves, a high percentage of poor families, and a history of opposition to secession, were located on the border with the North, and were sometimes under Union control.^[30] 40% of Virginian officers in the United States military stayed with the Union, however.^[31]

[edit] West Virginia splits

See also: Restored government of Virginia and West Virginia in the American Civil War

The western counties could not tolerate the Confederacy; acting without any permission from Richmond they broke away and formed first the Union state of Virginia (recognized by Washington), then with its permission formed the new state of West Virginia in 1862.^[32]

At the Richmond secession convention on April 17, 1861, the delegates from western counties were 17 in favor and 30 against secession.^[33]

From May to August 1861, a series of Unionist conventions met in Wheeling; the Second Wheeling Convention constituted itself as a legislative body called the Restored Government of Virginia. It declared Virginia was still in the Union but that the state offices were vacant and elected a new governor, Francis H. Pierpont, this body gained formal recognition by the Lincoln administration on July 4, but Congress did not seat its elected representatives.^[34] On August 20 the Wheeling body passed an ordinance for the creation; it was put to public vote on Oct. 24. The vote was in favor of a new state—West Virginia—which was distinct from the Pierpont government, which persisted until the end of the war.^[35]

Statehood referendum Oct. 24, 1861

Congress and Lincoln approved, and, after providing for gradual emancipation of slaves in the new state constitution, West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863.^[36]

During the War, West Virginia contributed about 32,000 soldiers to the Union Army and about 10,000 to the Confederate cause. Richmond of course did not recognize the new state, and Confederates did not vote there. Everyone realized the decision would be made on the battlefield, and Richmond sent in Robert E. Lee. But Lee found little local support and was defeated by Union forces from Ohio. Union victories in 1861 drove the Confederate forces out of the Monongahela and Kanawha valleys, and throughout the remainder of the war the Union held the region west of the Alleghenies and controlled the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the north.^[37]

[edit] Notable Civil War leaders (Confederate) from Virginia

• 

  Gen.
  Robert E. Lee
• 

  Lt. Gen.
  Thomas J. Jackson
• 

  Maj. Gen.
  J.E.B. Stuart
• 

  Gen.
  Joseph E. Johnston
• 

  Lt. Gen.
  A. P. Hill
• 

  Lt. Gen.
  Richard S. Ewell
• 

  Lt. Gen.
  Jubal A. Early
• 

  Maj. Gen.
  George Pickett
• 

  Maj. Gen.
  Fitzhugh Lee
• 

  Brig. Gen.
  Lewis A. Armistead
• 

  Gov.
  John Letcher

[edit] See also

• Richmond in the Civil War
• Winchester in the Civil War
• Virginia Units in the Civil War
• Stonewall Jackson’s Headquarters Museum
• Army of Northern Virginia

[edit] Notes

1. ^ McPherson pp. 213-216
2. ^ Link p. 217. Link wrote, “Although a majority probably favored compromise, most opposed any weakening of slaveholders’ protections. Even so-called moderates — mostly Whigs and Douglas Democrats — opposed the sacrifice of these rights and they rejected ant acquiescence or ‘submission’ to federal coercion. … To a growing body of Virginians, Lincoln’s election meant the onset of an active war against southern institutions. These men shared a common fear of northern Republicans and a common suspicion of a northern conspiracy against the South.”
3. ^ Ayers p. 86
4. ^ Link p. 224
5. ^ Robertson p. 3-4. Robertson, clarifying the position of the moderates, wrote, “However, the term ‘unionist’ had an altogether different meaning in Virginia at the time. Richmond delegates Marmaduke Johnson and William McFarland were both outspoken conservatives. Yet in their respective campaigns, each declared that he was in favor of separation from the Union if the federal government did not guarantee protection of slavery everywhere. Moreover, the threat of the federal government’s using coercion became an overriding factor in the debates that followed.”
6. ^ Link p. 227
7. ^ Robertson p. 5
8. ^ Ayers pp. 120-123
9. ^ Potter pp. 545-546. Nevins pp. 411-412. The conferences recommendations, which differed little from the Crittenden Compromise, were defeated in the Senate by a 28 to 7 vote and were never voted on by the House.
10. ^ Robertson p. 8. Robert E. Scott of Faquier County noted that this failure and the North’s apparent indifference to southern concerns “extinguished all hope of a settlement by the direct action of those States, and I at once accepted the dissolution of the existing Union … as a necessity.”
11. ^ Robertson p. 8. Robertson quotes an observer of the speech saying, ”Mr. Lincoln raised his voice and distinctly emphasized the declaration that he must take, hold, possess, and occupy the property and places [in the South] belonging to the United States. This was unmistakable, and he paused for a moment after closing the sentence as if to allow it to be fully taken in and comprehended by his audience.”
12. ^ Robertson p. 9. Robertson writes, “Although some leaders such as Governor Letcher still believed that ‘patience and prudence’ would ‘work out the results,’ a growing, uncontrollable attitude for war was sweeping through the state. Militia units were organizing from the mountains to the Tidewater. Newspapers in Richmond and elsewhere maintained a steady heat, noisy partisans filled the convention galleries, and at night large crowds surged through the capital streets ‘with bands of music and called out their favorite orators at the different hotels.’”
13. ^ Robertson p. 13. The committee report represented the moderate/unionist position; the vote in committee was 12 in favor, 2 against, with 7 abstaining.
14. ^ Riggs p. 268
15. ^ Robertson p. 15
16. ^ Link p. 235
17. ^ Riggs p. 264. Riggs made his summary based on Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, Volume 1, pp. 701-716
18. ^ Potter p. 355
19. ^ Klein p. 381-382. Ayers (p. 125) notes that Baldwin had said that “there is but one single subject of complaint which Virginia has to make against the government under which we live; a complaint made by the whole South, and that is the subject of African slavery.
20. ^ Klein p. 381-382. Baldwin denied receiving the offer to evacuate Fort Sumter, but the next day Lincoln told another Virginia unionist, John Minor Botts, that the offer had been made. In any event, the offer was never presented to the convention.
21. ^ Robertson p. 14-15. Furgurson p. 29-30.
22. ^McPherson p. 278. Furgurson p. 32. A Richmond newspaper described the scene in Richmond on the 13th:

    “Saturday night the offices of the Dispatch, Enquirer and Examiner, the banking house of Enders, Sutton & Co., the Edgemont House, and sundry other public and private places, testified to the general joy by brilliant illuminations.

    Hardly less than ten thousand persons were on Main street, between 8th and 14th, at one time. Speeches were delivered at the Spottswood House, at the Dispatch corner, in front of the Enquirer office, at the Exchange Hotel, and other places. Bonfires were lighted at nearly every corner of every principal street in the city, and the light of beacon fires could be seen burning on Union and Church Hills. The effect of the illumination was grand and imposing. The triumph of truth and justice over wrong and attempted insult was never more heartily appreciated by a spontaneous uprising of the people. Soon the Southern wind will sweep away with the resistless force of a tornado, all vestige of sympathy or desire of co-operation with a tyrant who, under false pretences, in the name of a once glorious, but now broken and destroyed Union, attempts to rivet on us the chains of a despicable and ignoble vassalage. Virginia is moving.” (Richmond Daily Dispatch April 15, 1861 http://dlxs.richmond.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ddr;cc=ddr;view=text;idno=ddr0141.0019.087;rgn=div3;node=ddr0141.0019.087%3A3.2.1)

23. ^ “On This Day: Legislative Moments in Virginia History”. Virginia Historical Society.
24. ^ “Lincoln Call for Troops”.(page includes TWO documents)
25. ^ ^{a b} Clement A. Evans, Confederate Military History- Volume III – Virginia, pt. 1, p. 38
26. ^ Ayers p. 140
27. ^ Ayers p. 141
28. ^ McPherson p. 279-280
29. ^ Virginia Historical Society
30. ^ Aaron Sheehan-Dean, “Everyman’s War: Confederate Enlistment in Civil War Virginia,” Civil War History, March 2004, Vol. 50 Issue 1, pp 5-26
31. ^ Pryor, Elizabeth Brown (2011-04-19). “The General in His Study”. Disunion. The New York Times. Retrieved April 19, 2011.
32. ^ The U.S> Constitution requires permission of the old state for a new state to form. David R. Zimring, “‘Secession in Favor of the Constitution’: How West Virginia Justified Separate Statehood during the Civil War,” West Virginia History, Fall 2009, Vol. 3 Issue 2, pp 23-51
33. ^ In the statewide vote on May 23, 1861 on secession, the 50 counties of the future West Virginia voted 34,677 to 19,121 to remain in the Union. Richard O. Curry, A House Divided, Statehood Politics & the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia, (1964), pp. 141-147.
34. ^ Curry, A House Divided, pg. 73.
35. ^ Curry, A House Divided, pgs. 141-152.
36. ^ After statehood was achieved the counties of Jefferson and Berkeley were annexed to the new state late in 1863. Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers, West Virginia: The Mountain State ch 15-20.
37. ^ Otis K. Rice, West Virginia: A History (1985) ch 12-14

[edit] References

• Ambler, Charles, A History of West Virginia, Prentice-Hall, 1933.
• Ayers, Edward L. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America 1859-1863. (2003) ISBN 0-393-32601-2.
• Blair, William. Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 (1998) online edition
• Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (1989)
• Curry, Richard Orr, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (1964).
• Furgurson, Ernest B. Ashes of Glory: Richmond at War. (1996) ISBN 0-678-42232-3.
• Hodges, Vivienne, PhD, Virginia SOL Coach: Virginia Studies, Educational Design, 1999. ISBN 087694764X
• Kerr-Ritchie, Jeffrey R. Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860-1900 (1999)
• Klein, Maury. Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War. (1997) ISBN 0-679-44747-4.
• Lebsock, Suzanne D. “A Share of Honor”: Virginia Women, 1600-1945 (1984)
• Lewis, Virgil A. and Comstock, Jim, History and Government of West Virginia, 1973.
• Link, William A. Roots of Secession: Slavey and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. (2003) ISBN 0-8078-2771-1.
• McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom. (1988) ISBN 0-345-35942-9.
• Noe, Kenneth W. Southwest Virginia’s Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (1994)
• Potter, David M. Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis. (1942) ISBN 0-8071-2027-8.
• Randall, J. G. and David Donald, Civil War and Reconstruction, (1966).
• Riggs, David F. “Robert Young Conrad and the Ordeal of Secession.”The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 86, No. 3 (July 1978), pp. 259–274.
• Robertson, James I. Jr. “The Virginia State Convention” in Virginia at War 1861. editors Davis, William C. and Robertson, James I. Jr. (2005) ISBN 0-8131-2372-0.
• Robertson, James I. Civil War Virginia: Battleground for a Nation, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, Virginia 1993 ISBN 0-8139-1457-4; 197 pages excerpt and text search
• Shanks, Henry T. The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847-1861 (1934) online edition
• Sheehan-Dean, Aaron Charles. Why Confederates fought: family and nation in Civil War Virginia? (2007) 291 pages excerpt and text search
• Simpson, Craig M. A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (1985), wide-ranging political history
• Wills, Brian Steel. The war hits home: the Civil War in southeastern Virginia? (2001) 345 pages; excerpt and text search

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Virginia in the American Civil War

• Union or Secession: Virginians Decide at the Library of Virginia
• Virginia Convention of 1861 in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Guerilla Warfare in Virginia During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Free Blacks During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Refugees During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Poverty and Poor Relief During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Speculation During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Weather During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Confederate Impressment During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Religion During the Civil War in Encyclopedia Virginia
• Twenty-Slave Law in Encyclopedia Virginia
• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Virginia: 1861-62
• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Virginia: 1863
• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Virginia: 1864
• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Virginia: 1865

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A SPIRITED DASH INTO
THE ENEMY ’S LINES

Sergeant Mickler, of the Beaufort Troop,
South Carolina cavalry, Company B, was sent
by Colonel Butler, with General Hampton’s
permission, out of our lines, to act as scouts,
and do whatever damage they could to the
Yankees. He had command of a squad of picked
men from the regiment, and some few from the
First North Carolina cavalry. He has been all
along very successful in keeping the authorities
well apprized of the movements of the Yankees
in the section of country to which he was sent,
and varying the monotony by capturing, from
time to time, squads of Yankee cavalry, helping
thereby to arm, mount, and equip our hard-riding
regiment.

But the handsomest affair that they have
yet been engaged in, occurred in the little town
of Brentsville, Prince William County. Two of
the squad were sitting in a house, near a high
road, unsuspicious of danger, when, on looking
out of the window, one of them observed a squad
of seven Yankee cavalry coming up to the house.

They managed to slip out o f the house
unobserved, mounted their horses bare-back,
hunted up Sergeant Mickler, and reported the
fact to him. He immediately took five others,
all of the same regiment, and went in pursuit,
and came suddenly in sight of the Yankees as
he turned a street in the village of Brentsville.
He charged the seven with his squad of six, but
being obliged to get through a brush fence the
best way they could, only three, who were well
mounted, succeeded in getting through in time
to take part in what followed. These three were
Sergeant Mickler and Private Schoolbred, of the
Beaufort Troop, Company B, and Color Sergeant
Sparks, of the Brooks Troop, Company K.

The Yankees tried their best to get away,
keeping up a determined running fight at the
same time. Only one of them succeeded in
making his escape; our gallant little party of
three succeeding in tumbling five of them from
their horses in the streets of Brentsville, three
of them dead, an d two wounded. They
captured, moreover, one of them unhurt.

The Yankees fought with pluck to the
last, but the vigor and vim of the attack was
too much for them. They were Michigan men,
and were quit e ind ignant at being called
“Yankees.”

Private Schoolbred particularly
distinguished himself, killing, according to a
confession of his comrades, two, and wounding
and taking prisoner a third, a Yankee lieutenant,
lately promoted for gallantry. He saved his own
life, and took the lieutenant by his admirable
self-possession. He was riding almost side by
side with the lieutenant, and had shot every
barrel of his pistol, when the latter, observing
this, turned on him with a fresh pistol, and,
putting the muzzle close to him, exclaimed:
“Now, I hav e yo u , you d _ _d r ebe l. ”

Schoolbred, with great coolness, threw his
empty pistol at him, and, with great good
fortune, struck the pistol pointed at him, and
knocked it out of the hand of the Yankee. He
then drew another pistol and shot the Yankee,
who, rolling off his horse, cried out: “I am
wounded; I give up.”

Source:MARGINALIA;or,GLEANINGSFromAn
ARMYNOTE-BOOK. By“Personne,”Army
Correspondent. Columbia, S. C. 1864, Pages 41 &42

Whitman:

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

WHEN lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

Here’s a very brief biography of Lincoln that I put together for my adult students studying English.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky.  His family was very poor.

In 1816, when Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, he and his family moved to Indiana.

In 1830, the Lincolns left Indiana for Illinois.  Abraham Lincoln started to study law.

Lincoln became a lawyer in 1836.  He became interested in government and was famous for his honesty.  People called him “Honest Abe.”

Lincoln met Mary Todd, whom he fell in love with.  Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married on Nov. 4, 1842.

Abraham Lincoln started to run for political office.  He got popular and finally became the 16^th President of the United States in March of 1861.  But he had a difficult job because the northern and the southern states (called the Union and Confederacy) had split.

The reasons the north and south split included violent disagreements about slavery, the economy and the rights of states to govern themselves.  Northern and southern armies started to have battles.   In July of 1861, the first major battle of the Civil War took place in Manassas.

On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves were free.

In 1864, Lincoln was elected to serve as President again.  He worked hard to bring peace and reunite the country.

The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865.  Five days later, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theater in Washington, D.C.  Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street from Ford’s Theater, where he eventually died at 7:22 a.m. April 15, 1865.

Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the greatest Presidents of the United States.

Reenactors to be at Sesquicentennial

Historic Dumfries Virginia, Inc. will host a Confederate Campsite reenactment to com­memorate the 150th (Sesquicentennial) An­niversary of the Blockade of the Potomac River on Sept. 24-25.

The Emerald Guard-Virginia 33rd Company E, Stonewall Jackson Brigade will have an encampment in Merchant Park offering demonstrations of how a soldier spent his time in camp.

Activities will take place at the Weems-Botts Mu­seum and at Leesylvania State Park. A free shuttle bus will offer transporta­tion between the two sites.

Two authors will be present to discuss their newest books on the Civil Wa r.

Guided boat tours on the Potomac River, showing the Civil War fortification, will be of­fered for $20 per person at Leesylvania on Friday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Call 703-792-4754 to make a reservation.

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