Wednesday, July 03, 2013
Sesqecentennial
150 years ago today, near Gettysburg, PA, my double great uncle, Martin P. Fraley (born 7/19/1827), 50th Virginia Infantry, was killed in action in a failed assault on Culp's Hill, on the northern flank of the Union line. His brother Harvey D. Fraley (born 10/29/1837), 51st Virginia Infantry, survived the war and lived to July 11, 1933. My father talked to him. He was a little bitter about his months as a POW in 1865 in Maryland before he took the oath of allegiance to the United States and was paroled. That blows my mind-- just three overlapping generations back and we're fighting the Civil War.
I'm a southerner. We southerners were fighting the wrong fight, to preserve slavery for the racist, Democrat slave owners, but we fought well for a long time against very long odds. And that battle prowess and enduring courage are a source of provincial pride to me.
It just hit me that one of the biggest changes in the past 500 years is that pride is now considered a good thing when, in 1513, to the whole of the civilized, Christian World, it was the worst sin you could commit.
I'm not sure I can even fully imagine the breadth of that change.
I'm a southerner. We southerners were fighting the wrong fight, to preserve slavery for the racist, Democrat slave owners, but we fought well for a long time against very long odds. And that battle prowess and enduring courage are a source of provincial pride to me.
It just hit me that one of the biggest changes in the past 500 years is that pride is now considered a good thing when, in 1513, to the whole of the civilized, Christian World, it was the worst sin you could commit.
I'm not sure I can even fully imagine the breadth of that change.
Labels: American Civil War; Battle of Gettysburg, Martin P. Fraley; Culp's Hill; Pride
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
This Day in the History of Good Beginnings
On this day in 1863, the first elements of the Army of Northern Virginia, coming from the north, met the first elements of the Army of Potomac, coming from the south, as both entered the hamlet of Gettysburg, PA. Although Lee's troop drove the Yankees out of Gettysburg, on the next day Lee failed to turn the Union Army's flanks at Culp's Hill or at Little Round Top, and on the third day should have stopped a doomed frontal assault and retreated to more defensible areas in Maryland. He didn't, and the war took a big turn for the worse for the South.
Labels: American Civil War; Battle of Gettysburg
