ON THIS DAY IN 1862 . . .

. . . J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry sacks Chambersburg, Pennsylvania . . .





. . . just up the road a piece from where I'm currently located . . . S.L.


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THE MOST SPECIAL FOURTH OF JULY

The din of muskets and cannon had faded but the stench and pall of battle still hung in the air; two American armies stared at one another in a heavy rain across bloody fields on the Fourth of July in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863.

Both armies began to collect their remaining wounded and bury some of the dead. Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties of the three-day battle. Union casualties list 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), while Confederate casualties are estimated 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).

Bear in mind this was an era when anything more than a simple flesh wound meant certain slow death by infection, and prisoner-of-war captivity was almost a death sentence.



Gettysburg Day 1: Union dead along McPherson Ridge.


Nearly 8,000 Americans were killed outright; the bodies lying in the hot summer sun needed to be buried quickly. A proposal by Lee for a prisoner exchange was rejected by Meade. Nearly a third of Lee’s general officers were killed, wounded, or captured in the Gettysburg campaign. Total casualties for both sides during the entire campaign were 57,225.



Gettysburg Day 2: Union and Confederate dead near the Emmittsburg Road.



Gettysburg Day 3: "Harvest of Death" - aftermath of Pickett's Charge.



Lee started moving the Army of Northern Virginia late in the evening of July 4 towards Fairfield and Chambersburg. Meade’s army followed, although his pursuit was half-spirited. The recently rain-swollen Potomac trapped Lee’s army on the north bank of the river for a time, but when the Federals finally caught up, the Confederates had forded the river.

Also on July 4, 1863 the Vicksburg garrison surrendered to Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant; another significant turning point of the war when the Federals regained control of the Mississippi, an important supply route.


GETTYSBURG IS SPECIAL

On July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, more Americans fought and died here than any other battle in American history. Although the Battle of Gettysburg did not end the war, it was the turning point when the ultimate victory of the North over the South – and the preservation of the Union – was determined.

As brilliant as the Founding Fathers were in establishing the Republic, they knew their work was not complete as long as the question of States Rights could not be resolved, in the areas of commerce but most visibly with slavery. This struggle was addressed and postponed for almost seventy years until things finally came to flash point at Ft. Sumter.

The Civil War was not only the most important war America ever fought, it was also the most stupid; because it was Americans killing Americans. What occurred at Gettysburg was not simply a key battlefield victory of a single war but THE pivotal battle that preserved our Republic from a tragic war that had to be fought, and just as importantly had to be won. Without a Union victory at Gettysburg, the Confederacy may possibly have prevailed; had such a circumstance come about, America as we know it would not exist.

This point was driven home by Lincoln’s brilliant Gettysburg Address, given five months later on the same battlefield:






Despite my sympathies for the Southern Cause - particularly regarding States Rights – I am aware that the Union had to ultimately prevail. This is the sad irony of this terrible war. This Fourth of July I will travel with my family to pay my respects at Gettysburg. - Sean Linnane

REBEL SOULS II

Backdrop


The Missouri-Kansas border conflict during the American Civil War was a continuation of the pre-war Bleeding Kansas violence. Known as “Bushwhacking,” the guerilla conflict in Missouri was, in many respects, a civil war within a civil war.



Original 1857 Map of the United States Showing the Free and Slave States.


Called “bushwhackers,” the perpetrators of the attacks were generally not part of the military command and control of either side. While bushwhackers conducted a few well-organized raids in which they burned cities, most of the attacks involved ambushes of opponent individuals or families in rural areas. Particularly insidious since it amounted to a fight of neighbor against neighbor, the attacks were non-uniformed, and the government response was complicated by trying to decide whether they were legitimate military attacks or criminal actions.


In most areas, irregular warfare operated as an adjunct to conventional military operations. In Missouri, however, secessionist bushwhackers operated outside of the Confederate chain of command. On occasion, a prominent bushwhacker chieftain might receive formal Confederate rank (notably William Clarke Quantrill), or receive written orders from a Confederate general (as "Bloody Bill" Anderson did in October 1864 during a large-scale Confederate incursion into Missouri).



William Clarke Quantrill (July 31, 1837 – June 6, 1865) - Confederate Guerrilla Leader.



William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson (circa 1839 – October 26, 1864) - Confederate Guerrilla Leader.


Missouri guerrillas also frequently assisted Confederate recruiters in Union held territory. For the most part, however, Missouri's bushwhacker squads were self-organized groups of young men, predominantly from the slave holding counties along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, who took it upon themselves to attack Federal forces and their Unionist neighbors, both in Kansas and Missouri, the latter in response to what they considered a Federal invasion of their home state.

One of the most famous men who fought as a bushwhacker was Jesse James. During months of often intense combat, he only battled fellow Missourians, ranging from Missouri regiments of U.S. Volunteer troops to state militia or unarmed Unionist civilians. The single confirmed instance of his exchanging fire with Federal troops from another state occurred a month after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, during a near-fatal encounter with Wisconsin cavalry. In the course of the war, his mother and sister were arrested, his stepfather tortured, and his family banished temporarily from Missouri by state militiamen — all Unionist Missourians.

The conflict with Confederate bushwhackers everywhere rapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities committed by both sides. Union troops often executed or tortured suspects without trial and burned the homes of suspected guerrillas and those suspected of aiding or harboring them. Where credentials were suspect, the accused bushwhacker was often executed, as in the case of Lt. Col. Frisby McCullough after the Battle of Kirksville. Bushwhackers frequently went house to house, executing Unionist farmers.


1st National Flag of the Confederacy - The "Stars and Bars"


William Quantrill led a raid in August 1863 on Lawrence, Kansas, burning the town and murdering some 200 men and boys in the Lawrence Massacre.






The raiders justified the raid in retaliation for the Sacking of Osceola, Missouri two years earlier (in which the town was set aflame and at least nine men killed) and for the deaths of five female relatives of bushwhackers killed in the collapse of a Kansas City, Missouri jail. Following the Lawrence raid, the Union district commander ordered the total depopulation of all men, women, and children (both Unionists and Southern sympathizers) of three and a half Missouri counties along the Kansas border under his infamous General Order No. 11. In other areas, individual families (including the James and the grandparents and mother of future President Harry Truman) were banished from Missouri.


George Caleb Bingham painting of General Order No. 11. In this famous work General Thomas Ewing is seated on a horse watching the Red Legs.


Next to the attack on Lawrence, the most notorious atrocity by Confederate bushwhackers was the murder of 22 unarmed Union soldiers pulled from a train in the Centralia Massacre. The action was led by William T. Anderson, one of Quantrill’s lieutenants, in retaliation for the earlier execution of a number of Anderson's own men. In an ambush of pursuing Union forces shortly thereafter, the bushwhackers killed well over 100 Federal troops.

Frank James rode with Quantrill’s Raiders, and Jesse James began his guerrilla career in 1864 (at the age of 16) fighting alongside Frank under the leadership of Archie Clement and "Bloody Bill" Anderson. In October 1864, “Bloody Bill” Anderson was tricked into an ambush and killed by state militiamen under the command of Col. Samuel P. Cox. Anderson's body was displayed and his head was severed.



The Battle Flag of the Confederacy


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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

I love the American Revolution; the only successful revolution in the history of the world. Of the many amazing aspects of the American Revolution is the fact that it was not contained to a time and place in the late eighteenth century, but that it has continued throughout our nation's history - from the War of 1812 (the second American Revolution), through the convoluted legislative struggles that led to the War Between the States (known in the South as the War of Northern Aggression), through to the California Taxpayers Revolt of the Seventies that led in turn to the incredible Reagan Revolution of the eighties.


I have often stated on this blog that generally, I avoid politics; on account that it generates Dark Energy within me. But now we are witnessing a remarkable phenomena. What is playing out before us deserves comment.


The American Revolution continues to this day. Perhaps you didn't see it, perhaps you were not aware that it is playing out right now, before our very eyes. Bear witness:







The powers-that-be and their willing minions in the press may be dismissive of what took place this month in Massachusetts; of course they are - this a sign of desperation, a measure of defense against a remarkable groundswell, a popular uprising against the status quo. All of it; the tea parties, the populist sentiment prevailing time after time in Virginia, in New Jersey and now in Massachusetts - remarkably all scenes of significant events in the FIRST American Revolution - the rise of populist, charismatic leaders like Palin the MooseSlayer, and now truck-driving Scott Brown - represent a political vector that is impossible to ignore.





"Take Due Notice Thereof, and Conduct Yourself Accordingly."



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THE GRAY GHOST

On 13 October 1864, Confederate partisan cavalry leader John Mosby raided Harpers Ferry. This action was a part of the 1864 Shenandoah campaign; a series of brutal clashes between Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and Confederate Partisan Ranger John Singleton Mosby. This second Shenandoah Campaign featured numerous incidents that can only be described as atrocities and war crimes, even by Civil War standards.

Colonel Mosby and his Confederate Rangers adopted an irregular form of warfare; after a skirmish, Mosby’s men returned to their own homes rather than to camp, agreeing to meet again at a future date and place. Each man acquired his own horse, arms and uniforms, but was entitled to share in whatever public or personal property was captured. Mosby was soon the only organized military force in northern Virginia, and so firmly ruled the area that it became known as ‘Mosby’s Confederacy.’




Mosby's Rangers are considered a part of the shared lineage of modern U.S. Army Rangers and U.S. Army Special Forces.




Mosby initially spoke out against secession, but joined the Confederate army nonetheless. Many years after the war, Mosby explained why, although he disapproved of slavery, he fought on the Confederate side. While he believed the South had seceded to protect slavery, he said, in a 1907 letter, that he had felt it was his patriotic duty to Virginia. "I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery —a soldier fights for his country — right or wrong — he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in . . . The South was my country."

After impressing J.E.B. Stuart with his ability to gather intelligence, Mosby was promoted to First Lieutenant and assigned to Stuart's cavalry scouts. He helped the general develop attack strategies. He was responsible for Stuart's "Ride around McClellan" during the Peninsula Campaign.

Captured by Union cavalry, Mosby was imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., for ten days before being exchanged. Even as a prisoner, Mosby spied on his enemy. During a brief stopover at Fort Monroe, he detected an unusual buildup of shipping in Hampton Roads. He found they were carrying thousands of troops under Ambrose Burnside from North Carolina on their way to reinforce John Pope in the Northern Virginia Campaign. When he was released, Mosby walked to army headquarters outside Richmond and personally related his findings to Robert E. Lee.

In January 1863, Stuart, with Lee's concurrence, authorized Mosby to form and take command of the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, Partisan Rangers. This was later expanded into Mosby's Command, a regimental-sized unit of partisan rangers operating in Northern Virginia. The Confederate government certified special rules to govern the conduct of partisan rangers. These included sharing in the disposition of spoils of war. Mosby was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on January 21, 1864 and to Colonel, December 7, 1864.

Mosby's Rangers


Mosby is famous for carrying out a daring raid far inside Union lines at the Fairfax County courthouse in March 1863, where his men captured three high-ranking Union officers, including Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton. The story is told that Mosby found Stoughton in bed and roused him with a slap to his rear. Upon being so rudely awakened, the general shouted, "Do you know who I am?" Mosby quickly replied, "Do you know Mosby, general?" "Yes! Have you got the rascal?" "No, but he has got you!" His group also captured 30 or more sentries without firing a shot.

Several weeks after General Robert E. Lee's surrender in April 1865, Mosby simply disbanded his Rangers, as he refused to surrender formally. Mosbys' Rangers however were the carriers of the surrender orders and documents to Appomattox Court House.


The Gray Ghost never surrendered his colors.


After the war, Mosby served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong (1878–1885), served as a lawyer in San Francisco, worked for the Department of the Interior, and as assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice (1904–10). He knew a young George S. Patton III and enjoyed making "Battle plans" with Patton in the sand.

Mosby died in Washington, D.C. May 30, 1916

“War loses a great deal of it’s romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country: but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it." - John Singleton Mosby, Colonel, CSA