Alternate History: The Chinese-American War of 2023

 

A lecture given to the Institute of Modern History

Seattle, Canadian Union

March 26, 2173

 

Some people question the interest showered on the 150^th anniversary of the Sino-American War of 2023.  Isn’t it wrong to celebrate a war?  Well, we aren’t here today to celebrate war, which is always a terrible thing, but to remember and take stock of those long-ago events that shaped the world we know today.

Tibet

 The fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s supreme spiritual leader, was, at last, dead at the age of 87.  The Chinese Global Times poured scorn on Western claims that he had been murdered. “ The Dalai Lama always wore religious clothes while carrying out anti-Chinese separatist activities, spreading false information and deceiving the public,” thundered the Global Times, “If China had wanted to kill this evil man, it could have done so anytime over the last sixty years without waiting until he was 87.  The Dalai Lama was a wolf in monk's clothes, a devil with a human face.” 

 China’s claim to sovereignty over Tibet went back some six hundred years.  Enforcement of this claim over a people ethnically different from the native Han Chinese was sometimes weak, especially when China itself was submerged in internal turmoil.  From 1912 onward the Tibetans were left to their own devices while the Chinese wrestled with revolutions, competing warlords and invasion by the Japanese.  A succession of Dalai Lamas ruled as both temporal and spiritual leaders of Tibet. This abruptly ended in 1951 when the Chinese army marched in, asserting China’s claim to complete and total sovereignty over Tibet.  The fourteenth Dalai Lama fled into an exile, a hero and saint to his people, a separatist provocateur to the Chinese.

 Tens of thousands of Han Chinese settlers poured into Tibet, modernizing the country in the view of the Chinese, undermining native Tibetan culture and religion in the view of most in the West.  How what the Chinese were doing to the Tibetans differed from what the European and American did to the native populations of the North American continent only a century earlier was one of those inconvenient ironies that no liberal intellectual in the West ever wished to discuss.

 Any talk of Tibetan independence was totally unacceptable to China.  The Dalai Lama’s death would not be permitted to fan the flames of separatism.  Fifty nine arrests were made in Lhasa to combat what the Global Times called, “rumor-mongering,” and five arrests were carried out in connection with the distribution of “cultural products expressing politically separatist reactionary views which mislead the public” A senior security officer explained the official position, “A civilized and healthy environment  must be created by curbing the spread of decayed and backward ideology and culture, and by resolutely resisting ideological and cultural infiltration and sabotage activities by the Dalai clique and hostile Western forces.”

 The Chinese government may have convinced the Han Chinese colonists who were quickly coming to dominate Tibet that the death of the Dalai Lama was due to natural causes, but ethnic Tibetans believed the worst.  Word quickly spread that the saint had been murdered by the Chinese.  According to rumors on the streets, Tibetan women, trained by Chinese agents, wore poison in their hair, which contaminated the Dalai Lama as he touched the women’s hair during blessings. 

 Trouble began when three hundred young monks from Deprung Monastery, near Lhasa started a peaceful protest demanding a full investigation of the Dalai Lama’s death.  A few of the monks were immediately arrested.  The next day, monks from the Sera Monastery began a peaceful march.  Protestors holding images of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan flags marched through the streets.  More monks were arrested, some were manhandled and several were beaten by Public Security Bureau officers.  On the morning of the third day, one hundred monks from the Ramoche Monastery began to protest the arrest of the monks the day before.  Increasingly harsh in their treatment of the monks, security forces began severely beating the young protestors, which enraged Tibetan onlookers.  From then on, the situation spiraled out of control as thousands of Tibetans raged through the streets pillaging and savagely beating ethnic Han Chinese.  The rioting rapidly spread from Beijing Road, the main central thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter.  The throng was packed tightly in a constricted area when Chinese troops appeared and machine guns opened fire.  The Tibetans were packed together so tightly that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies.  The people ran madly this way and that.  When the fire was directed toward the center, they ran to the sides.  The fire was then directed towards the sides.  Many threw themselves upon the ground, and the fire was then directed on the ground.  The firing continued for ten minutes, and stopped only when the ammunition was exhausted.  The Chinese marched away leaving 379 dead and 1,500 wounded.  The crowd was unarmed and included many women and children. 

 So much for peaceful protest, the Tibetan mob, now armed with knives, stones, swords and an occasional gun rampaged through the narrow alleys of the Tibetan quarter. The rioters battered the shutters of shops, broke in and seized whatever they could find.  Some goods were carried away, but others were piled in the street and burned. Almost every Han business in the city was burned, looted, destroyed, or smashed into.  When protesters burned a police station, soldiers with machine guns once again fired into the crowds. Thousands of Tibetans were slaughtered in a week of bloody insurrection.  Hundreds of Han Chinese died as well, as the Tibetans sought vengeance. The next week, Lhasa was green with soldiers. Helicopter gun ships hovered over the city.  But by then, violence had spread to Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces, all with Tibetan populations.  Fearful Han settlers, who had been in Tibet for years, left the country. Chinese businessmen, who would normally come in and out of Lhasa by train, now feared that Tibetans would blow up the railway line and began to fly.

 The Chinese leadership announced new Tibet-specific policies called “the Four Stabilities” to be carried out in the name of the slogan “stability overrides all” (wending yadao yiqie) in order to “keep a tight hand on the struggle against separatism.” In Lhasa itself, two armored personnel carriers were permanently stationed in front of the Jokhang temple, Tibet’s holiest shrine.  On the front of one of the vehicles big red Chinese characters proclaimed, “Stability is Happiness”. On the other a sign read, “Separatism is Disastrous.” 

Washington

 There were smiles all around at the China desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.  Inspired, positively inspired, the idea of planting a story that the Dalai Lama had been murdered by Tibetan women wearing poison in their hair. The idea was so incredible that it had become credible…well, at least in Tibet.  The Tibetans would rather believe that their 87 year old living God had been murdered than that he had died of natural causes. 

 “Operation Blue Mountain”, the Tibet operation, was the first fruit of the Agency’s new program of asymmetrical warfare.  “When you cannot confront a powerful enemy directly,” Isaac Brown, the Director of the CIA said, “worry him where he is weak, wear him down, and sap his strength”. 

 Frankly, many at the Agency and America in general felt that it was about time for some payback.  The Agency had long suspected that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and most of those in the subsequent two decades had originated not in Afghanistan, Baghdad, or Tehran, but in Beijing. China had been arming America’s global adversaries and undermining the American economy for years.  North Korea was overflowing with Chinese arms.  Somehow, Chinese-made armor-piercing missiles fell into the hands of anti-American militants in Iraq. The Iranians purchased sophisticated Chinese cruise anti-ship missiles to be used to impede the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. China provided Iran diplomatic cover for its nuclear ambitions in exchange for oil and gas deals. China developed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ports in Mexico. Using the economic shield of the NAFTA agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, China avoided U.S. tariffs by shipping Chinese manufactured goods through Mexico into the United States. This reduced Chinese transportation costs to the United States by fifty percent and flooded the U.S. market with more cheap Chinese goods, further weakening the struggling U.S. dollar. American stores were stuffed with shoddy Chinese products while American manufacturing companies, once the envy of the world, lay in ruins and hundreds of thousands of American workers pounded the cold grey streets looking for jobs that would never return.

 China was too powerful and too intertwined in the American economy to attack directly, but China had internal weaknesses that the Agency could exploit.  If only the Agency could exploit China’s internal weaknesses before America’s own weaknesses brought it down.  Every year, America came closer to dissolution.  The nation had been polarized between rabid liberals and rabid conservatives in equal measure for over two decades, with only the tiniest of tiny minorities still claiming the name moderate or independent.  Americans were no longer one people.  They no longer shared a common culture, common values, or even a common language.  Americans were now just an odd conglomeration of people occupying a common geographic space fractiously squabbling over economic crumbs, contesting every piece of history, every educational curriculum, every code, tradition and belief.  Americans aligned themselves in what were called “red” and “blue” states, which in many ways still reflected the unresolved tensions of America’s civil war of the 19^th century between the “blue” states and the “grey” states.  A few bold thinkers could already see the forces building for the mass re-location of populations along ideological and religious lines, the dissolution of old political bonds and the emergence of new value driven nations on the ruins of the failed Republic.  In short a new civil war.

 Isaac Brown, the Director of the CIA, was not one of those who intended to allow the Republic to fail.  Brown knew America thrived when it had an enemy to defeat.  America needed strong enemies, real or imagined.  Such had always been the case, whether it was the British, the Germans and Japanese, or the Russians.  Without a powerful external enemy that threatened their existence Americans turned on each other.  Within the Agency the belief was, “We must destroy China in order to save America…from itself.”

 Creating hostility towards China was not difficult.  America, like an aging rock star jealous of a younger and more vibrant challenger, rested on its past reputation, sneering at the latest “flavor of the month”, even while stung in its pride.  Certainly nothing had been more humiliating than the Chinese manned moon landing in 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing successfully accomplished by America.  How humiliating to be reminded that America had abandoned space and no longer had the will to reach for the stars. 

Wars and Invasions

Sneak Attack!

Custer’s Last Flag

     In 1895, the Detroit Institute of Arts paid $54 for a U.S. 7^th Cavalry guidon.  Of the five guidons carried by Custer's troops at the “Last Stand” only one was immediately recovered, concealed under the body of a dead trooper.  That trooper was Corporal John Foley, who was trying to escape on horseback.  Foley was pursued by Indians and shot himself in the head before he was overtaken. The recovered flag later became known as the Culbertson Guidon, after the member of the burial party who recovered it, Sergeant Ferdinand Culbertson.

     A second 7th Cavalry guidon was recovered in September 1876, at the Battle of Slim Buttes near present-day Reva, South Dakota.  This flag is now displayed at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  The Culbertson Guidon was sold by Sotheby’s auction house to a private collector in 2010 for $2.2 million.

Custer's Last Stand Re-examined

 

The First Soldier Buried at Arlington National Cemetery

 

Private William Henry Christman from Pennsylvania was the first soldier to be officially buried at Arlington.  A laborer, Christman enlisted in the United States Army on March 25, 1864.  He was hospitalized for measles five weeks later, and died on May 11.  He was buried on May 13, 1864.  

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

The Grave of Fighting Joe Wheeler (Arlington National Cemetery)

 

Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler (1836-1906) served as general in the Confederate Army in the 1860s, and later as a general in the United States Army during the Spanish American War in 1898.  In 1898, Wheeler commanded the cavalry division that included Teddy Roosevelt’s famous “Rough Riders”.  

The bearded Wheeler is seen here with Roosevelt and others.

The grave of Joseph Wheeler (Obelisk)

 One of Wheeler’s former Confederate comrades in arms, James Longstreet, said upon seeing Wheeler in a U.S. Army uniform, “Joe, I hope that Almighty God takes me before he does you, for I want to be within the gates of hell to hear Jubal Early cuss you in the blue uniform.”

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

General Phil Sheridan Honored at Arlington National Cemetery

 

One of the notables buried at Arlington National Cemetery is Philip H. Sheridan (1831 - 1888) who lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.  In 1865, his cavalry was instrumental in forcing the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  Sheridan later fought Indians during the Plains Wars.

Sheridan was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1884, and took command of the United States Army. In 1888, he was promoted to Full General. He finished writing his memoirs, "Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan," just before he died on August 5, 1888.

One of the earliest memorials to be built in the cemetery was the Sheridan Gate.  The gate was built in 1879 as one of the entrances to the then walled cemetery and dedicated to Sheridan after his death.  By the mid-1900s, the gate was no longer able to accommodate the trucks and construction equipment that were vital to the cemetery’s expansion.  In 1971, the cemetery expanded and the Sheridan Gate was dismantled.

The Civil War Wedding

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

The McClellan Gate at Arlington National Cemetery

 

Major General George B. McClellan, seen here with his wife, was a controversial military officer during the early part of the American Civil War.  Accused of “having the slows” by President Lincoln, McClellan was a brilliant administrative officer but timid on the battlefield.  McClellan ran against Lincoln in the presidential election of 1864.

In 1867, Congress required that all military cemeteries be fenced. A red Seneca sandstone wall was built around the entire cemetery. The original main gate of the Arlington Cemetery was dedicated to Major General George B. McClellan and is seen here (the McClellan Gate).  The gate was completed in 1879.

Women Doctors in the Civil War

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

“Mosby’s Rangers had for us all the glamour of Robin Hood ...."

 

The Confederate monument at the Fairfax City, Virginia cemetery notes residence of Fairfax County who served with Mosby’s cavalry.  A few of Mosby’s men were in their 40's, but most were in their late teens or early 20's; two young troopers paroled near the end of the war were only 14 years old.

Sam Moore of Berryville (Loudon County) wrote, “(Mosby’s Rangers) had for us all the glamour of Robin Hood and his merry men, all the courage and bravery of the ancient crusaders, the unexpectedness of benevolent pirates and the stealth of Indians.”

Virginia Legends and Lore

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

Col. John S. Mosby on "Knight Errantry"

 

The grave of Col. John S Mosby grave at the Warrenton Cemetery in Warrenton, Virginia.  As a child, Mosby was small, sickly and was often the target of bullying. He would respond by fighting back. During the course of the Civil War Mosby was wounded seven times. For someone who had been a sickly youth, he proved quite resilient, dying at the age of 82 on May 30, 1916.

Sixty-six of Mosby’s Rangers are buried in the same cemetery. After the war, the thirty-one-year-old Mosby went on to become a distinguished railway lawyer.  He also served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong and in several other Federal government posts. 

Although Mosby’s war time exploits have been romanticized, he himself once said that there was, “no man in the Confederate Army who had less of the spirit of knight-errantry in him or took a more practical view of war than I did.”

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

Treasure Caves in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona

 

In 1934, Charley Williams stumbled out of the Superstition Mountains with handfuls of gold nuggets and a spectacular story.  Williams claimed the nuggets came from a huge pile of nuggets he found just inside a cave’s entrance.   Of course, he couldn’t remember where the cave was located because in his excitement, he had hit his head and become totally disoriented.  He must have been very, very disoriented since the gold was later proven to be dental gold.

Another story tells of gold bars in a cave near the Massacre Grounds (where the Peraltas were massacred by the Apache). Prospector James Baxter claimed he was guided to the cave by a blue light coming from the cave.  This cave is supposedly within a two-mile radius of the First Water Trailhead.

A treasure hunter named John Hallenberg talked about a cave filled with gold bars located on Bluff Springs Mountain.  Hallenberg supposedly found a cave where he discovered all kinds of old writing.  These marks did not resemble Native American petroglyphs but were something entirely different.  Hallenberg thought the writing was Hebrew, but probably could have been anything.  In any event, this adventure somehow convinced Hallenberg that there was indeed a cave in the Superstitions filled with gold bars.  He even had a map showing the direction to this “Cave of Gold.”

In the early 1980s, another tale of a cave filled with gold emerged.  Supposedly, a man named Harry France (or LaFrance) discovered a cave filled with gold bars near Black Top Mesa (or it might have been Weaver’s Needle).  This was probably Jesuit treasure (unless it wasn’t).  With clues like this, it should be easy to find.

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

Paperback:

Dining With George Washington

 

Each morning Martha Washington met with the cooks to plan the menu for dinner, the main meal of the day served between 2:00 and 4:00.  Mount Vernon dinners required two cooks aided by several assistants who performed tedious tasks like peeling vegetables and plucking turkeys.  Martha Washington briefly hired German cooks but most of Mount Vernon’s cooks were slaves.  A great bell was rung fifteen minutes before dinner at Mount Vernon.  Guests changed into dressier clothes for dinner.  George and Martha Washington welcomed thousands of guests to Mount Vernon in the more than forty years they lived there.  A slave butler and waiters, in livery, were responsible for bringing food to the table quickly and efficiently.  Dinner consisted of two courses. 

The first course featured meat and vegetable dishes.  Ham was almost always featured.  A ham was boiled daily and Martha took great pride in her hams.  Martha sent hams as gifts.  In 1796 George Washington informed the Marquis de Lafayette that Mrs. Washington, “…had packed and sent…a barrel of Virginia hams.”  He reminded his friend, “…you know the Virginia ladies value themselves on the goodness of their bacon.”  In addition to ham, foods likely to be found on Martha Washington’s table included carrot puffs, chicken fricassee, pickled red cabbage, fish, and onion soup. Even though these foods appear familiar, the seasonings were very different from those used in modern cooking. Colonial cooks liked nutmeg and especially enjoyed a sweet taste. Salt and pepper were not heavily used. Some foods would make the modern diner blanche, rabbits and poultry, for example, were not only prepared with their heads and feet still attached, they were served at dinner that way as well.

The second course featured sweet dishes and frequently featured fruit, including exotic fruits such as pineapples.  Locally grown fruits including apricots, strawberries, gooseberries and cherries might be made into jams or preserved whole.  Ice Cream was a favorite dessert at Mount Vernon.  Slaves cut chunks of ice from the Potomac River during the winter, which were covered with straw in the Mount Vernon ice house for future use during the summer months.  A recipe of the time, used by Martha Washington, advised on the making of ice cream: “Take two pewter-basins, one larger than the other; the inward one must have a close cover, into which you are to put your cream, and mix it with raspberries, or whatever you like best, to give it a flavour and a colour. Sweeten it to your palate; then cover it close, and set it into the larger basin. Fill it with ice, and a handful of salt: let it stand in this ice three quarters of an hour, then uncover it, and stir the cream well together; cover it close again, and let it stand half an hour longer, after that turn it into your plate.” The Washingtons flavored ice cream with berries, as chocolate and vanilla were not added to ice cream in the eighteenth century.

In contrast to their homegrown fruits, grains, vegetables, meats and dairy products, the Washingtons imported most of their beverages, spices, and condiments.  In a typical year Martha Washington ordered 126 gallons of wine, twenty five pounds of tea and fifty pounds of almonds.  The Washingtons typically offered several hot beverages to their guests including coffee from the Middle East, tea from Asia, and chocolate from South America.  All had been introduced to England and the American colonies late in the seventeenth century and quickly became popular, despite their expense. Tea was brought to Europe in 1610 by the Dutch and arrived in England in 1644.  Tea merchants claimed that the drink was a cure for migraine, drowsiness, apoplexy, lethargy, paralysis, vertigo, epilepsy, colic, gallstones and consumption. Most tea came from China until the 19^th century.

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Martha Washington and Fun

 

Martha Washington

Martha Washington, like other members of her set, spent considerable time directing a large staff of slaves and servants and ensuring the happiness of her husband and children.  Nonetheless, there was time for fun.

People of means were expected to be able to play an instrument or sing.  Ladies did not generally play wind instruments, their garments being too restrictive.  They could sing or play keyboards.  Dancing was an established social grace.  Balls began with court dances like the minuet.  These dances were performed in strict order of precedence, the ranking couple in the room dancing first, and then down the social ladder.  These were solo performances, watched carefully by the other guests.  Pronounced stumbles and fumbles could cause a dancer to be banished for the social season.  After the formalities the floor was opened for general and less formal dancing.

Martha Washington: The First Lady of Fashion (Virginia Time Travel) - YouTube

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs

Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Colonel John S. Mosby and the Silver Screen

Col. John S. Mosby

The Gray Ghost was a syndicated television show that aired thirty nine episodes from October 10, 1957 to July 3, 1958.  Tod Andrews (1914-1972) portrayed Colonel John Singleton Mosby.  Virgil Carrington Jones, an expert on Mosby, was historical consultant for some episodes.

Virgil Carrington Jones (1906-1999) worked as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Washington Evening Star, and the Wall Street Journal.  He was the author of Ranger Mosby.

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

The Civil War Wedding

 

A Death-Sonnet for Custer

 

"From Far Dakota's Cañons" was first published as "A Death Sonnet for Custer" in the New York Tribune, 10 July 1876, two weeks after General George Armstrong Custer's death. Walt Whitman received ten dollars for the poem.

 The sonnet later appeared as “From Far Dakota's Cañons” in Whitman’s monumental work, Leaves of Grass.

I.

From far Montana's cañons,

Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lone-

some stretch, the silence,

Haply, to-day, a mournful wail—haply, a trumpet

note for heroes.

 

II.

The battle-bulletin,

The Indian ambuscade—the slaughter and environ-

ment

The cavalry companies fighting to the last—in stern-

est, coolest, heroism.

The fall of Custer, and all his officers and men.

 

III.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race!

The loftiest of life upheld by death!

The ancient banner perfectly maintained!

(O lesson opportune—O how I welcome thee!)

As, sitting in dark days,

Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking

in vain for light, for hope,

From unsuspected parts, a fierce and momentary

proof,

(The sun there at the center, though concealed,

Electric life forever at the center,)

Breaks forth, a lightning flash.

 

IV.

Thou of sunny, flowing hair, in battle,

I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in

front, bearing a bright sword in thy hand,

Now ending well the splendid fever of thy deeds,

(I bring no dirge for it or thee—I bring a glad, tri-

umphal sonnet;)

There in the far northwest, in struggle, charge, and

saber-smite,

Desperate and glorious—aye, in defeat most desper-

ate, most glorious,

After thy many battles, in which, never yielding up

a gun or a color,

Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,

Thou yieldest up thyself.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer and Rain in the Face

One of the many tributes written to honor George Armstrong Custer after the Battle of the Little Bighorn was a poem entitled. “The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

The poem definitely took “poetic license” with the facts.  Neither Custer nor his men carried sabers of June 25, 1876.  More importantly George Armstrong Custer did not have his heart cut out (although Tom Custer may have, this is matter of dispute.)

Longfellow

Rain-In-The-Face

“The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face”
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing of the stream
And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the clefts and caves,
Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare
The White Chief with yellow hair
And his three hundred men
Dashed headlong, sword in hand;
But of that gallant band
Not one returned again.

The sudden darkness of death
Overwhelmed them like the breath
And smoke of a furnace fire:
By the river's bank, and between
The rocks of the ravine,
They lay in their bloody attire.

But the foemen fled in the night,
And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight
Uplifted high in air
As a ghastly trophy, bore
The brave heart, that beat no more,
Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and the wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,
With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
In the Year of a Hundred Years.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

“Shorty” meets President Jefferson Davis

 

President Davis

Capt. David Van Buskirk of the 27th Indiana Regiment stood 6 feet 11 inches and weighed 380 pounds. He was captured in 1862 and sent to a Richmond Prison. Confederate President Jeff Davis came to see him and was astounded when the Van Buskirk claimed that back home in Bloomington, Indiana, “when I was at the train station with my company, my six sisters came to say goodbye. As I was standing there, with my company, they all came up to me, leaned down and kissed me on top of the head.”

War and Reconstruction in Mississippi 1861-1875: A Portrait

A Dear John Letter in the Civil War

A young soldier left home to join the army. He told his girlfriend that he would write every day. After about six months, he received a letter from his girlfriend that she was marrying someone else. He wrote home to his family to find out who she married. The family wrote back and told him. It was the ....mailman. 

 

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

Union Troops “Not at Liberty”

 

Ambrose Burnside

Troops on both sides enjoyed a joke at the expense of officers.  One anecdote that made the rounds involved General Ambrose Burnside.  General Grant and his staff in Virginia stopped to rest at a plantation. Grant fell into conversation with the two women of the house, when the portly Ambrose Burnside rode up, made an exaggerated bow, and conversationally inquired as to whether the ladies had ever seen so many Yankee soldiers before.

“Not at liberty, sir,” one of the women snapped back.

 General Grant joined heartily in the laughter.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Slavery in Massachusetts

 

James Somersett was a slave taken to England by his master Charles Steuart of Boston, Massachusetts.  In 1771, while in England, Somersett escaped from his master.  He was recaptured and put in chains aboard the ship Ann and Mary which was preparing to sail for Jamaica.  Before the ship sailed Somersett’s godparents, supported by British abolitionists, applied to the Court of King’s Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.  The Captain of the ship was required to produce Somersett so the Court could decide if his imprisonment was legal.  Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge ordered Somersett to be released, finding that neither English common law nor any law made by Parliament recognized the existence of slavery in England.  The Somersett case was a boon to the growing abolitionist movement in Great Britain and ended the holding of slaves in England.  It did not end Britain’s participation in the slave trade or end slavery in other parts of the British Empire, such as the American colonies, all of which had positive laws allowing slavery.

In 1773, as the people of Massachusetts railed against the Crown over matters of taxes, the General Court in Boston received the first of three petitions in which advocates for slaves argued that Lord Mansfield’s decision should apply to the colonies since people were being, “held in a state of Slavery within a free and Christian country.”  The issue of slavery was never to be decided in the colonial courts.  Relations with the Crown continued to deteriorate leading to armed rebellion. 

Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Secrets of Early America 1607-1816