Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

I promise I'm not going to beat this issue to death, but a quick update on Tuesday's post concerning the alleged quote by Leonard L. Haynes regarding Black Confederates. One person responded and said it was not Leonard L. Haynes III who made the statement, but his father Leonard L. Haynes, Jr., a former historian at Southern University and now deceased.

Another effort was made to determine how widespread the use of the quote was on Confederate and Southern heritage sites and after tallying 50 Web sites I stopped counting, thus concluding the quote rivals "The only thing we have to fear is itself" as one of the most popular maxims appearing on the Web.

In response to the response, Leonard L. Haynes, Jr. was not on the faculty or in an administrative capacity at Southern. He was by vocation a pastor and leader of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church in Louisiana, and also served on the Board of Trustees at Tarrant County (Louisiana) Junior College, as a dean at Claflin College, Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the staff of Phillander-Smith College, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and as president of Morristown College, in Morristown, Tennessee. He authored at least one book titled "The Negro Community Within American Protestantism, 1619-1844," which was published in 1953.

I also sent an email to someone who just might be able to shed some light on the quote, but doubt I'll hear back. I can imagine their thoughts after receiving my query. It was probably something along the lines that they weren't going to get involved in a fight between a bunch of white guys arguing over whether African-Americans, of their own free will, fought to maintain a slave holding republic.

Maybe you've seen this particular quote making the rounds on Civil War related Web and blog sites.

"When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South. ..."

"It's been a cold hard lonely winter," so we all deserve this on a Friday, smack in the middle February, as a sign of things yet to come.

A few weeks back I happened to see a dead rat lying on a strip of grass next to my work place in Southwest DC. It wasn't that large of a rat, probably about nine inches in length with its tail outstretched. I wasn't certain how it died, but I knew for certain what was going to happen if no one disposed of it. Sure enough no one disposed of it and little by little, day after day, nature took its course, until, after about ten days, only a skeleton remained. And I was struck by the absolute certainty of this thought as I observed the body decompose: we all go the way of the rat. The only uncertainty is when.

The uncertainty as to if or when certainly played on the minds of soldiers during the Civil War. It would have played in their minds before a battle. It would have played in their minds if they got sick and were sent to the hospital. It would have played in their minds if they were taken prisoner. It would have played in the minds of a nation when it was realized that 20 per cent of the men who marched off to war didn't return home. For those fortunate enough to have escaped death on the battlefield, in the hospital, or a prison camp, life was expected to be more certain after the guns were silenced. That is until circumstances that comprise life's uncertainty intervened.

Okay, I know we're already 35 days into 2010 and this represents my first effort of the new year and decade. I don't know if anybody is still hanging around this site, but if you are I'll forgo a long and potentially boring explanation as to the whys for the absence.