Confederate Memorial Day in Los Angeles

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Last Saturday was Confederate Memorial Day. Now when talking about Rebel graves, most people associate Hollywood with the cemetery in Richmond. But here in Hollywood California we have our very own Confederate monument - at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Blvd. - a mere few blocks from Cosmic America HQ.

As I have mentioned, a good many Civil War veterans moved west after the war to seek their fortunes or otherwise benefit from the perfect...yes perfect climate we enjoy here in Southern California. They did a lot of the same things their comrades did in the East - they formed organizations and participated in Civil War commemorative activities. When they died, many were buried in plots throughout the area maintained by their organizations. In the case of the Confederate plot and monument in Hollywood Forever, we can thank the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Saturday's turnout was pretty light. In the Daughters' defense, there was a big reenactment going on at Pierce College, which more than likely lured the main Confederate contingent to the Valley. And there was little else alerting the general pubic to the event. As you may remember, the Daughters' have had some trouble in the past with issues concerning placement of Confederate flags at the cemetery - they fought and won a case to allow for such activities.

But from what I understand, the Daughters want the event to fly under the radar anyway. On the Thursday prior to the event, I briefly discussed Saturday's ceremony with UDC representative Margaret Alley. She was hesitant to publicize the event for fear of vandalism. In her words..."The neighborhood has gotten...well...shall we say..."dark" over the years - if you know what I mean." She feared that these "dark" (again...her word, not mine) people would take offense to Confederate activity and damage their monument. I'll let you make what you will of Ms. Alley's comments. But I think you can get the drift.

Below are a number of pictures from Saturday's memorial festivities. I'll place some video on my Youtube channel in short order - so you can get the full experience.



Deo Vindice (maybe)

Keith

Rivers in the Confederacy

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Last time I spoke of an established United States Navy as an advantage for the Union in the Civil War. Keeping with the water theme, I thought I would turn analysis south and talk about rivers.

Rivers during the Civil War era worked effectively in two significant ways. One, as formidable barriers to attacking armies and two, as avenues of advance for attacking armies and navies. Whether or not rivers helped or hindered the Confederate cause depended on which way the attacks were being launched and which way the rivers flowed.

Not generally one for counterfactuals, it is interesting to speculate nevertheless what might have happened had Kentucky voted to secede from the Union. For one thing, the Ohio River would have been the Confederacy's northern frontier and a really neat way to keep United States forces busy figuring out how to move armies across it. But since this didn't happen, we can move on to how rivers, especially in the western theater  worked against the Rebels.

United States forces had three perfectly suited avenues of advance right in to the heart of the Confederacy. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers more than once provided the means by which Union forces made their way south. And of course the Mississippi River (despite the Confederate defense network that lasted until 1863) worked both to bisect the Confederate states and serve as a grand highway for Union vessels. So ultimately, we will have to count the primary western river system as a disadvantage to the Confederates.

The rivers in the eastern theater had the potential to serve the Rebels well, unless of course Union forces moved inland from the coast. And this is precisely what George McClellan did in 1862. While the Potomac served as a barrier at the northern Virginia border, McClellan bypassed this and steamed inland using Virginia's eastward flowing river system. But we know what happened to him....opportunities lost, as they say. But in the event of an overland attack, eastern rivers would prove helpful for the Confederates. The Rappahannock, York, and James rivers in Virginia worked as a series of defensive lines and a real challenge for any army moving south from the Virginia northern frontier. Just ask anyone...like Union generals Burnside or Grant, for example.

Peace,
Keith

A Decisive Union Advantage?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

A troubling, but common way to look at Union victory in the Civil War is to reflect from the vantage point of 1865. From there you can easily trace Union advantages and illustrate how victory seemed inevitable from the start. One of these great advantages: the United States had a navy ready to attack when the war broke out.

Or did they? In the film Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler forecasts doom early on stating, "The Yankees are better equipped than we...they have a navy to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death." Well...eventually, the navy played an important part in Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan." It blockaded seacoast harbors and menaced cities and installations on Confederate rivers. But in the spring of 1861, the Unites States Navy was only a shadow of what it would become. Their upwards of 70 ships were either not serviceable or scattered around the world. In fact, when shots were finally fired in April 1861, only a handful of U.S. ships could be brought to bear on Confederate forces. What's more? in 1861, the U.S. Navy was a deep water fleet - and could not navigate along the rivers that were vital to the Confederacy.

So yes, having a navy was an advantage from the start. The Confederacy had none, and had to build one from scratch. But simply having a few ships ready for duty could hardly be called a decisive advantage. And so without the benefit of reflection, one might think of the U.S. Navy as enlisting only a slight advantage. Northern manufacturing capacity was the real clincher - the ability to build rapidly and commission a vast navy ultimately meant that the United States could put to sea a formidable fighting force in relatively short order...far more destructive than anything the Confederates could muster.

Peace,

Keith

Smart Phones and the Civil War - The Possibilities are Endless

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I am so very pleased to be able to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities. It truly is a great time to be a scholar - so much technology at my disposal, which makes my job as a historian infinitely more interesting and easy. And, I am thrilled to be able to use technology to make my work readily available to you - in real time, whether it be a curiosity discovered here or there or the serious business of scholarly analysis.

As you all know by now, I have a number of grand endeavors in the pipeline - members of the Cosmic America Inner Circle will have a few more details, but for now I will just say I have many multi-media projects coming up - all geared toward teaching history in a virtual format - with many innovations.

You all probably also know that I am an iPhone historian, which means much of my web-based work is done from remote locations - all on my phone using any number of applications. As a compliment some of my bigger projects, I am always trying to figure out ways to use little innovations such as virtual how-to guide applications and QR code readers to help extend the Cosmic America Civil War network. What do you think? What would be a good thing to which I could affix a QR code? I mean, it seems like everybody has a smart phone - why not use this to my advantage and make Cosmic America a simple scan away?

A Civil War related how-to guide might be interesting as well. But the question remains...how to do what? An application called Snapguide currently allows experts (or anybody, really) to put together a how-to guide for anything - building birdhouses or cooking shrimp. It is up to the creator. If I were to put together a Civil War how-to, what would you want to know how to do?

I listen to Cosmic America readers - tell me what you would like to know, and I will see what I can come up with.

peace,

Keith

Sam Houston and Secession

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

We all know the story - the election of Abraham Lincoln precipitated the secession of seven lower South states. By December 1860, lower South secessionists were set to move pretty quickly. South Carolina was out of the Union on December 20. Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama left on January 9, 10, and 11 respectively. Georgia seceded on January 19 and Louisiana on the 26th. On the 1st of February, the last of the seven lower South states, Texas, left the Union.

But even in the lower South, where the movement for secession was most vocal, the voice of caution sounded from some of the higher echelons of state government (except maybe in South Carolina, but we can talk about that another day). I am speaking today of Sam Houston - hero in the movement for Texas independence, advocate of annexation, and governor of Texas during the secession winter of 1860-61.

Houston fought the secessionists as hard as he could. He claimed that if Texas left the Union that the move would weaken their society and threaten the very things that secessionists were claiming to safeguard. He refused to recognize the secession convention that met in Austin in January, 1861. But Houston's days as governor were numbered. Once the state voted to leave the Union he was simply replaced by lieutenant governor Edward Clark. The eviction, as it were, happened on March 16, when Houston refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. He wrote:

"Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas....I protest....against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void."

Houston might have been in the minority in the lower South, but his actions during the secession crisis show that not everyone was on board with the movement to establish a new slave-holding republic. Houston exemplifies not the voice of moderation - not the wait and see attitude of some of those less vehement on the secession movement - but the voice of opposition. To no avail. Once he was ousted, he retired to his home in Galveston. But he had this to say to his fellow Texans before he bid farewell to public life.

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

Don't mess with Texas? Forget about it...don't mess with Sam Houston.

Peace,

Keith

Reading, Writing, and (Confederate) Arithmetic

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I had a little time on my hands yesterday so I wandered over to the Gettysburg Museum of History's Facebook page to have a look at a few historical artifacts.The museum has a little game where they ask followers to name whatever artifact is being displayed by "Vanessa the Intern" (this woman's name and position are always set off by quotation marks so I thought I would follow the tradition).

Yesterday I saw this image - "Vanessa the Intern" holding an 1864 math book printed in the Confederacy. There are few words to describe what is printed inside - maybe "damn" or "really?" would suffice. I'll let you add your own. And, if you want to brush up on your Confederate math skills, here are a few word problems from the book to get you started

1. If one Confederate soldier can kill 90 Yankees, how many Yankees can 10 Confederate soldiers kill?

2. If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 Yankees, how many soldiers can whip 49 Yankees?

3. 7 Confederate soldiers captured 21 Yankees and divided them equally between them. How many did each one have?

There will be a test later.

Peace,

Keith

A Gruesome Relic

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

In an effort to keep up to date with all the Civil War related news, I keep an "American Civil War" Google News search bookmarked - and check it frequently. Events from reenactments to anniversaries to hot-topic debates come up. From time to time, the strange, and yes, gruesome story makes its appearance. This recent article, reporting on a severed arm found in the Sharpsburg area, dominated the other images in a rather macabre fashion.

People come across relics all the time - both by legal means and otherwise - shell fragments, bullets, buttons, buckles, even trash. From time to time, one might stumble upon a bone fragment (as I did once in Shiloh). But according to the article, it is extremely rare to find human remains with the skin intact. This limb in particular had been buried in a field...then stored in a barrel of brine. Specialists are now working to see if this limb is indeed a Civil War relic - perhaps once attached to a soldier who suffered his horrible dismemberment at the Battle of Antietam - one of the over 22,000 killed and wounded on September 17, 1862. Should any more news surface, I will keep you posted.

Peace,

Keith