Rae Doole (Christina Ricci) considers the lingering effects of the American Civil War on the collective American psyche -- Black Snake Moan (2007).
[Picking up my sister Linda's notes, Chattanooga, Tennessee, September 1982:]
78 degrees heading out of the city to Lookout Mountain. "Let None Live in Fear" -- cop motto in Chattanooga. St. Elmo Ave. -- train. Up the piece of Scata[?] road. Craven House tour -- nice. "Sleep tight." Neat view, aids one in visualizing battle.
[Lookout Mountain at lower left. Missionary Ridge featured. Braxton Bragg's army routed from their positions, November 25, 1863.]
Chickamauga Battlefield tour -- great bookstore. 31st Indiana! Between tour stop 1 and 2! (A surprise) on right (beginningish Union lines, 2nd day of battle). 83 casualties [our great great grandfather Samuel France fought with Company E here.]
[Battle of Chickamauga, September 18 to September 20, 1863 -- over 35,000 casualties, about the same number as the entire US military suffered in Iraq during the Iraq War/Occupation's first five years, 2003-2008. It is now year six.]
[My friend Kenny Randall had an ancestor (William Link?) who fought in a US Regular Infantry unit at Chickamauga. He was captured and sent on to Andersonville Prison. I'm pretty sure his outfit was the first battalion of the 16th U.S. Infantry. In the words of James B. Ronan II (1999), at Chickamauga "the battalion was confronted by five regiments of screaming Mississippians who burst from the trees like wildfire . . . met the onslaught and was overwhelmed. Nearly 200 Regulars were captured."
Treatment of POWs on both sides during the American Civil War was horrendous (as it seems to be in most wars).]
. . . Left Fort Oglethorpe GA2 (83 degrees). Heading for the Big Peach . . . . .
Today's Rune: Warrior.
3 comments:
Amazing how horrible brother can treat brother. Humans aren't a very nice species.
It is telling about tactics and assault in war when the end count is 500,000 from both sides dead.
I doubt that attacking Missionary Ridge in a direct frontal assault was the smartest move for Grants armies. Even the flanking move depicted was an uphill move. Better to have spent the week necessary to move a major force behind them and use a frontal assault as a distraction.
I still get a cosmic shudder when Andersonville is mentioned.
"...the war of rebellion." Yeah it is easy to see what position John Thomas Smith took.
Something that I really like to do, and rarely get to, is visiting civil war battlefields.
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