Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Unlike one blogger who felt it was time to "move on" after Walmart received the green light to locate a store close by the Wilderness battlefield, I'm not ready to "move on" and have just two words to say: Boycott Walmart!!

Urge family members, friends, and co-workers to: Boycott Walmart!

I have another three words to say: Write a letter

Send a letter to Walmart Corporate Headquarters letting them know of your intention to Boycott Walmart. Urge family members, friends, and co-workers to write letters to Walmart.

It's not just an issue of encroachment on the Wilderness Battlefield, it's their entire business model we should be alarmed by. Not only are they ruthless in dealing with their competition and driving local businesses to closure, while engaging in unfair labor practices, they're supremely exploitive on a global basis.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
702 S.W. 8th Street
Bentonville, AR 72716

When the "Wilderness Walmart" opens, this could be some of what Orange County, Virginia tax payers have to look forward to in the future. Click on this link.

Did you ever wonder why only senior citizens were employed as "Greeters" at Walmart stores?

At one time in its history, unbeknownst to virtually everyone but Walmart executives, the company took out a $10,000 life insurance policy on every one its employeees. The beneficiary? Walmart, Inc. This is not some urban myth, but a true fact and, if memory serves me correctly, Walmart was ordered to cease and desist from continuing this practice.

Not only had radical political elements in both the South and North advocated dissolution of the Union prior to 1856, but the rhetoric of the 1856 presidential campaign was like a pot of water on a stove burner; the bubbles of animosity and divide floated to the surface with growing rapidity.

One Virginia editor, in a rant against the candidacy of Republican John Fremont, screamed: “We have to hating everything with the prefix free, from free negroes up and down through the whole catalog – free farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children, and free schools – all belonging to the same brood of damnable isms. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools…We abominate the system because the schools are free.”

He was philosophically joined at the hip by a South Carolina writer: "The great evil of Northern free society is that it is burdened with a servile class of mechanics and laborers, unfit for self- government, and yet clothed with the attributes and powers of citizens."

A New York Tribune writer, had he been face to face with the aforementioned, perhaps would have offered this retort: “It is not alone a fight between the North and South; it is a fight between freedom and slavery; between God and the devil; between heaven and hell.”

Another Northern politician, speaking in July 1856, was quite clearly ready to go beyond mere words. “I hope and pray that Fremont may be elected. I think that with his energy and force of will he would straighten things out at once, and lick the South into good behaviors, if they rebel…Our people are ready for any sort of a fight. There has never before been anything like it. I think we could send an army from New Hampshire that would whip South Carolina and set all her niggers free. New Hampshire will go for Fremont two to one, I should think, by present signs.”

On Tuesday I received an email notifying me of the passing of Brian Bergin of Harrisonburg, Virginia on July 13th. I had never met Brian. Our relationship was based strictly on an exchange of emails that began when Brian contacted me about a two part series I had posted in late February about the 1864 Washington, D.C. Arsenal explosion and a subsequent post on March 2nd about my visit to Mt. Olivet Cemetery in D.C. Brian was putting the finishing touches on his manuscript about the Arsenal fire, which his daughter Erin, I've been told, is now dedicated to finding a publisher for.

I was able to provide Brian with the Mt. Olivet grave locations for four of the victims, something that had previously eluded him thanks to a lack of cooperation by the Catholic Archdiocese which oversees the cemetery. It was a small thing, but I was very glad to have helped out and wrote Brian sometime around my third email that I'd be the first to purchase his book when it hit the stores.

I found this April 23rd Op-Ed piece written by Brian which appeared on the Daily News Record Web site. I can only reflect that life is strange sometimes, particularly when you experience a sense of loss for someone you've never met. I'm posting Brian's words, not only because I share the same sentiments, but it's my tribute to him. Before you read Brian though, I give you these words by W.E.B. DuBois, who penned them shortly after the death of his first born child. They're appropriate here.

"If still he be, and he be There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!"


Remember Civil War, Not Confederates

By Brian Bergin

I WRITE WITH an alternative to the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ proclamation, published in the Daily News-Record on April 17, that April be recognized as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

What is most admirable and enduring about the United States of America is its Constitution, humanized by a stirring Declaration of Independence, enobled with a protective Bill of Rights, enhanced by periodic amendments, and rededicated eloquently by Abraham Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg.

But were it up to Confederate leaders, that Constitution would have been truncated at the 12th amendment, and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence indefinitely denied our people in the grief-laden name of preserving that most peculiar of institutions — human bondage.

The early pages of our history books are filled with the inspiring stories of national leaders, many of them conflicted slave-owners (Washington, Jefferson and Madison for example), who worked against their own class interests in the cause of expanding republican ideals.

In contrast, later pages of those same history books tell of other, seemingly wise and articulate leaders, who dedicated the best of their talents to restricting the spread of those evolving ideals — notables such as John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Stephens.

These men used their remarkable political skills and public personas for a cause that not only would have preserved slavery in the states where it existed, but also would have expanded it into territories where it had not yet taken root. Rather than supporting the gradual demise of slavery over time, secessionist leaders worked vigorously to encourage its growth.

As a result of this addiction to slavery, the nation was pushed into a bloody Civil War that resulted in the deaths of 620,000 men. For their intractability, the record shows that the Confederate States of America was responsible for the deaths of 360,000 Federal soldiers, a casualty list more extensive than that inflicted by either the Germans or Japanese in World War II.

Accordingly, I propose that April be declared, not Confederate History and Heritage Month, but rather a “Civil War Month of Remembrance.” April would be a time for the nation — North and South — to come together and contemplate the cause of the rebellion, the dramatic events of that war and its lingering effects on contemporary America.

The relevant Civil War events supporting an April memorial include:

April 12, 1861 – Fort Sumter fired upon;
April 10, 1862 — Congress declared that the federal government will compensate slave owners who free their slaves;
April 16, 1862 — Slaves in the District of Columbia were freed;
April 9, 1865 — Lee surrendered;
April 15, 1865 — President Lincoln died by the hand of an assassin.

I find it hard to imagine how any right-thinking person who cherishes freedom and appreciates the sacrifices of the events of 1861–1865, could object.