Thinking Ahead…2014 A Year of Many Historical Events

“Bringing Up the Guns” 1917

Well the 2012-2013 school year has come and gone and like so many others it is hard to believe it is over. I have had to say goodbye to some very memorable students in the graduating class of 2013…some will never know how much I will miss seeing them on a daily basis.

However, that will allow more time for blogging…I hope.  Now that I have more time on my hands, at least until I start summer school, I have been thinking about next school year and that brings me to the big year of 2014.  Numerous events will “celebrate” anniversaries in 2014 not just the 150th of the Civil War’s 1864 but 1914 will be remembered for the beginning of the Great War on June 28th.  1964 should also be remembered as the year in which the Vietnam Conflict began to escalate with two attacks by the Vietcong on U. S. airbases involved in Operation Rolling Thunder and the bombing of communist North Vietnam.  2014 will also mark the 70th Anniversary of the landings of D-Day…a day that celebrates its 69th anniversary today as I type this.

With all of these different events being remembered, it should provide more blogging opportunities in the future making this blog a bit more respectable in the blogosphere.  I look forward to working up some posts worthy of my readers and hopefully to gain some new readers as well.  So here is to 2014…its only 6 months away.

Here Is An Idea…

Photo by Judy Smith Photography

The other day Kevin over at Civil War Memory posted some comments on his visit to the Confederate Memorial Chapel at the VMFA in Richmond Virginia.  In the comments section, Grayson Jennings, a flagger, made this comment…

Kevin is spot on as to why no one takes the flagger seriously.  The flaggers have been out front of the VMFA for nearly 76 weeks to no avail despite numerous new members joining the ranks.  The other day the flaggers were witnesses to a tour group going through the chapel…as you can see from the photo at the top of this post.  The picture got me to thinking that if the flaggers are really serious about the history of the chapel and care for the history of the men who lived there they would do something more constructive than just stand on the street with their flags.  But that is not what they are about…I know it and so do they.

What would be nice to see is the flaggers taking a more proactive stance towards the history of the chapel and the men who lived there.  I have heard that the chapel is not open as much as some would like (Hours: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday) and the flaggers have a perfect opportunity to volunteer their time to open up the chapel and allow more people to learn its history.  Obviously there would need to be historical supervision by the VMFA or a local University or historical society since it is plainly obvious the flaggers are not history oriented, but what better way to not only keep the history of the chapel and the old veterans alive as well as work with the VMFA instead of working against them.

Seems like a win, win situation…what say you Virginia Flaggers?

No Lack of Confederate Flags Inside…

David Tatum Is Making A List…And Checking It Twice

David Tatum has gotten his feathers all ruffled over the perceived notion that Confederate Heritage is being wiped of the face of the Earth and he is currently in the process of developing a list of “threatened” Confederate statues/plaques/flags/names, etc.  He posted a few on his site the other day so I thought I would look into how “threatened” they really are.

Here is a list of what he has so far with links to the stories and my commentary.

Dixie State College of Utah

Strategic Name Change…

Latest News…

It appears that David is not happy that a public institution might not want to associate with things Confederate.  Ironically, the school has not always been associated with “Dixie” and has had a total of six names up to this point.  So changing the name appears to happen every so often.  However, David has not done his homework as usual, because the Board of Trustees voted on January 18, 2013 to rename the institution…wait for it…Dixie State University.  Oh, the vote to do so was unanimous

Well, David is O-1

Lets see how David does with the Confederate Monument in Jefferson, Georgia.  Apparently it was damanged…must have been a bunch of damn Yankees right?  Well not so fast…it appears that the damage occurred while it was being moved in order to ease traffic problems.  However the move put it in a more visible and accessible area.  Here are some links…

Monument Damaged…

They Are Getting a New One…

And There It Is…

Damn…David is 0-2…more to come later.  Maybe in the meantime, David could check his list that second time.  Looks like he needs to!

Southern Nationalist Let Their Colors Shine

As you can see from the three tweets above, Southern Nationalists like “Dr.” Michael Hill of the League of the South and Michael Cushman of Southern Nationalist Network are not as concerned about Southern Heritage as they are Southern “White” Supremacy.  Southern Heritage is purely a front for their disdain of everything American today and a wish to return to the days of the antebellum south.  I personally find their views of history quite disturbing.  What do you think?

What I Am Reading Now…

I have been wanting to read this book for some time and since I just finished several books that were partially read in the past I thought it would be good to start a book and read it through.  I tend to have the bad habit of starting a book and then finding something else to read before that one is finished, so I end up with up with several books in the process of being read.

I have also noted that for the last year or so most of my reading has been on Sherman’s fighting in Georgia.  Maybe it is due to the fact that my ancestor on my mother’s side fought with Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas.  It could also be because I believe that the Western Theater of the war was just as important as the Eastern Theater in the winning of the war.

All of this is also taking place while my U. S. Hisotry Students are working on a research paper on a soldier from the area in which I teach and most of those men were in the Western armies.  However during my search of the local cemeteries I was surprised to find numerous soldiers from out East who must have migrated out West after the war and are buried here.

With that in mind what I found interesting about the first couple of pages of War Like the Thunderbolt by Russell S. Bond was a discription of those Midwestern soldiers.

“In all, Sherman’s veteran soldiers, most of them rough-edged Midwestern farmers back home, made up what one prominent military historian would call with breathless overstatement ” quite literally the most impressive and deadly body in the history of armed conflict”.  Firsthand witnesses applied different and more realistic superlatives.  A surgeon in Mississippi the year before, for example, had described Sherman’s army as “the noisiest crowd of profane-swearing, dram-drinking, card-playing, song-singing, reckless, impudent daredevils in the world”". (p. 6)

Yep…sounds like us Midwesterners.  I am looking forward to the rest of this book.