[Neo]

@Doug64

I served with the Georgia 48th Infantry Brigade in Afghanistan, where we saw combat in 2009 through 2010. The Georgia 48th Infantry Brigade also saw extensive combat in the American Civil War as well. You can read about some of my unit's American Civil War history that I served with in both Bosnia and Afghanistan here: https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-bat ... =CGA0048RI. In my opinion, the 48th has produced some great soldiers who fought well in many of our country's past wars. The unit has certainly earned its keep in the eyes of the Pentagon and the U.S. Army today.

[Doug64]

@Politics_Observer, that's interesting. I knew that sometimes a unit might be disbanded then later resurrected with the previous history, but I wasn't aware that any of the US Army's units had adopted the history of Confederate units. Though I should have expected that, considering the rapprochement that resulted in some Army forts being named after Confederate generals.

[Neo]

@Doug64

To my knowledge, my unit was never disbanded after the American Civil War. However, it might have been and then resurrected later on, but not to my knowledge. My unit, if my memory serves me correctly, fought in World War II in the Hurtgen Forest battle, in which the U.S. Army, and I am sure my unit, sustained quite a few casualties. If my memory serves me correctly, my unit also fought in the Korean War, though I don't know much detail about its actions in the Korean War. I don't think it ever fought in Vietnam. It did fight in the most recent Iraq War and Afghanistan War. I never served in Iraq, but I deployed with them to Afghanistan. The 48th also served as NATO peacekeepers in the aftermath of the violent breakup of the Former Yugoslavia, of which I also deployed with the 48th Infantry Brigade to Bosnia at that time.

[Neo]

@Doug64

Interestingly enough, the 48th Infantry Brigade fought in several of the big major battles of the American Civil War such as, if my memory serves me correctly the Second Battle of Bull Run, Cold Harbor, and Gettysburg as several examples out of many of the battles it participated in during the American Civil War according to the government website I listed above.

[Potemkin]

@Politics_Observer, that's interesting. I knew that sometimes a unit might be disbanded then later resurrected with the previous history, but I wasn't aware that any of the US Army's units had adopted the history of Confederate units. Though I should have expected that, considering the rapprochement that resulted in some Army forts being named after Confederate generals.

Something similar happened after the English Civil War in the 17th century. For example, the Coldstream Guards are, I believe, the oldest British Army regiment still in existence, and it was founded by Oliver Cromwell, whose body was dug up, hanged, drawn and quartered, and then what was left dragged publicly through the streets of London by the newly-restored monarchy. Despite their hatred of Cromwell and his republican regime, they kept his New Model Army because they knew that it was better than anything they had or could dream up. Cromwell’s legacy lived on in the British Army, and the Confederate legacy lived on in the US Army, in the names of forts and military bases, and even in statuary in public squares throughout the South. Until very recently, that is.

[Cookie Monster]

Something similar happened after the English Civil War in the 17th century. For example, the Coldstream Guards are, I believe, the oldest British Army regiment still in existence, and it was founded by Oliver Cromwell, whose body was dug up, hanged, drawn and quartered, and then what was left dragged publicly through the streets of London by the newly-restored monarchy. Despite their hatred of Cromwell and his republican regime, they kept his New Model Army because they knew that it was better than anything they had or could dream up. Cromwell’s legacy lived on in the British Army, and the Confederate legacy lived on in the US Army, in the names of forts and military bases, and even in statuary in public squares throughout the South. Until very recently, that is.

Two aspects at play here:
1. Armies are all about what works. Authorities will decide to keep a unit of a former/rebel regime if that unit functioned/performed well.
2. Esprit de corps is important, that is the fighting morale of a unit. If will boost morale if that unit has a historical legacy.

So it's not uncommon that enemy units in civil wars or of the old regime are incorporated into the army of the victor (sometimes even foreign enemy units would be incorporated, such as the Gurkhas).

[Neo]

@Cookie Monster

I can honestly say the 48th during my time serving in the unit fought very well in Afghanistan. We had some tough guys in my unit who performed very well under fire. I am not saying that because I am biased. I am saying it because it s true. I am actually proud to have served in the unit even if it did fight on the wrong side of history during the American Civil War.

[Neo]

@Doug64 @Potemkin

Yeah, you know, I sure do not wish that anybody though, especially what some of the soldiers endured during the American Civil War having limbs amputated without modern medicine. Terrible. Do you know? I wish humanity would learn something positive from such things and learn the importance of peace, kindness, respect for each other, and understanding.

[Doug64]

June 30, Friday

After a lengthy trial the military commission sitting in Washington finds all eight alleged Lincoln assassination conspirators guilty. Four are soon on their way to the Dry Tortugas, three with life sentences, including Samuel Mudd, a Virginia doctor who had set Booth’s broken leg, and Edward Spangler, a stagehand at Ford’s, with a six-year term for having allegedly helped the actor leave the theater. There, in 1867, Michael O’Laughlin will die in a yellow fever epidemic. Because of his role as a doctor in the epidemic, Samuel Mudd will be pardoned in 1868, and in 1869 Edward Spangler and Samuel Arnold will also be pardoned. The other four get death.

President Johnson names Benjamin F. Perry provisional governor of South Carolina.

[Doug64]

I loaded the wrong date last Friday, oops!

June 9, Friday

Another serious explosion of ammunition occurs. At Chattanooga, Tennessee, an ordnance building blows up when set afire by a locomotive on a siding nearby. Casualties are put at about ten.

[Doug64]

June 13, Tuesday

President Johnson appoints William L. Sharkey provisional governor of the state of Mississippi. His duties are to include the early convening of a convention of loyal citizens to alter or amend the state constitution and set up a new regular state government.

In another proclamation the President declares trade open east of the Mississippi except for contraband of war. He also declares Tennessee, which has adopted a constitution and reorganized its government after suppressing the rebellion, restored and the inhabitants free of all disabilities and disqualifications.

[Doug64]

June 17, Saturday

President Johnson names James Johnson provisional governor of Georgia and Andrew J. Hamilton provisional governor of Texas, continuing his policy of attempting to restore representative pro-Union government to the states as soon as possible.

[Potemkin]

June 17, Saturday

President Johnson names James Johnson provisional governor of Georgia and Andrew J. Hamilton provisional governor of Texas, continuing his policy of attempting to restore representative pro-Union government to the states as soon as possible.

‘Representative’ of whom? That was the real issue here. Representative of the entire population, black as well as white? This prospect would terrify those Southerners who had until recently owned and oppressed slaves who could now vote and even be elected to high office. And those same Southern supporters of the Rebellion would inevitably feel disenfranchised and threatened if anyone other than their own favoured candidates were elected. The proper functioning of democracy requires that all major factions in society accept the validity of all other major factions, and will accept the results of free and fair elections. Those conditions did not exist in the South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This attempt to ‘restore’ pro-Union ‘representative’ government to the states was almost certainly doomed from the outset. But the Federal government was on the horns of a dilemma - how to reconcile the Southern rebels to the reality of their defeat while at the same time dismantling the system of slavery and oppression which formed the economic and social basis of their status and their entire way of life? Short of rounding them all up and executing them, there was really no way of resolving that dilemma.

[Doug64]

June 18, Sunday

Edmund Ruffin—the fire-eater who fired one of the first shots on Fort Sumter in 1861 and was the first to enter the fort after its surrender—has not had a good war: his grandson Julian Beckwith was one of the first Confederate soldiers to fall during the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, and several of his plantations have been occupied and plundered. He has already suffered the loss of his wife and eight of his eleven children, and now is crushed by the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, along with the other surrenders that have followed. Today, while staying with his son and daughter-in-law at Redmoor in Amelia County, Virginia, Ruffin goes up to his room with a rifle and a forked stick. He is called away to greet visitors at the front door. After they leave, Ruffin returns to write a final diary entry:

“And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.” 

Ruffin wraps himself in a Confederate flag, puts the rifle muzzle in his mouth, and uses the forked stick to manipulate the trigger. The percussion cap goes off without firing the rifle, and the noise alerts Ruffin's daughter-in-law. However, by the time she and his son reach his room, Ruffin has reloaded the rifle and fired a fatal shot.  Edmund Jr. and neighbor William H. Harrison transport his body to Marlbourne, his plantation in Hanover County, Virginia, for burial.

[Potemkin]

…fortunately, some of them would do it themselves….

[Doug64]

@Potemkin, today's post was rather nicely timed, wasn't it? Still, your point stands, the Civil War (and slavery before it) had an impact on race relations that took over a century to work through. And thanks to the bigots (which was most all Whites at the time) grabbing onto Racial Darwinism, was a bleeding self-inflicted wound on our democratic institutions all that time.

[Doug64]

June 21, Wednesday

Lewis E. Parsons is named provisional governor of Alabama by President Johnson.

[Doug64]

June 22, Thursday

Off Cape Navarin the CSS Shenandoah comes upon two whalers, one of which—a fast bark out of New Bedford, aptly named the Jerah Swift—tries to make a run for it. Shenandoah gives chase, dodging ice floes as she goes, and after a hard three-hour pursuit draws close enough to put a round from a 32-pounder Whitworth rifle across her bow; whereupon her captain “saw the folly of exposing the crew to a destructive fire and yielded to his misfortunes with a manly and becoming dignity.” So Lieutenant Commander James Waddell will write, unaware—as, indeed, he will remain for weeks to come—that he has just fired the last shot of the American Civil War. He burns the two ships, then starts after more.

[Doug64]

June 23, Friday

Lieutenant Commander Waddell takes the Susan & Abigail, a trading vessel only two months out of San Francisco, and finds aboard her a newspaper dated April 17th, containing the latest dispatches from the eastern theater. Lee has surrendered: Richmond has fallen: the Government has fled. Shaken though he is by this spate of disasters, he also reads that Johnston has won a victory over Sherman in North Carolina, back in March, and that the President, resettled with his cabinet in Danville, had issues a proclamation announcing “a new phase of the struggle,” which he urges all Confederates to wage with “fresh defiance” and “unconquered and unconquerable hearts.” Waddell takes his cue from that.

President Johnson declares the Federal blockade of the Southern states, in existence since April 1861, at an end.

At Doaksville, near Fort Towson in the Indian Territory, Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief who has held out with a third of his people since the other two thirds renewed their allegiance to the Union, surrenders to Lieutenant Colonel Asa Mathews and disbands his battalion of Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, and Osages, all proscribed as tribal outlaws for refusing to repudiate the treaty made with Richmond in the early days of the war. Close to sixty, a veteran of Wilson’s Creek, Elkhorn Tavern, Prairie Grove, and a hundred lesser fights—not to mention the long march out on the “trail of tears” from Georgia, nearly thirty years ago—Watie, his gray-shot hair spread fanwise on his shoulders, is the last Confederate general to surrender any sizable body of Confederate troops.

Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont dies suddenly at Philadelphia.

[Doug64]

June 24, Saturday

Clearing Eagle Pass by this last week in June, Jo Shelby pauses to weight his tattered battle flag with stones and sink it in the Rio Grande before crossing into Mexico. At Monterrey the column loses most of its distinguished civilian hangers-on, who scatter variously for Cuba, Brazil, and other regions where ex-Confederates are reported to be welcome. But Shelby and his body of troopers, grown by now to the size of a small brigade, keep on for Mexico City, having decided—such is their proclivity for lost causes—to throw in with Maximilian, rather than Juárez. The emperor, whose subjects already are showing how much they resent his foreign support, will know better than to enlist the help of gringo mercenaries. Still, he will be friendly enough to offer them a plot of land near Vera Cruz for colonization. Most will decline and go their several ways, being far from ready to settle down to the farming life they left four years ago, but Shelby and a few others will accept and even send for their families to join them; which they will, though not for long. The settlement—dubbed Carlota, in honor of the empress—will scarcely outlast Maximilian, who will fall in front of a firing squad two Junes from now, after the troops supporting Juárez rush into the vacuum left by the departing French. Grant had been right about Napoleon’s reaction, once Sheridan reaches the Texas border and bristles along it, much as he had done in the old days up and down the Shenandoah Valley.

Commercial restrictions are removed from states and territories are of the Mississippi River by President Johnson.