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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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ALL my moments are senior, these days, helen  I was, of course, being faecetious
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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ALL my moments are senior, these days, helen
Beats the hell out of the alternative Rhuby!
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Joined: Jul 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
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Helen:
During that discussion did we touch upon the irony of the huge deposits of kaolin clay underneath the site of the infamous Andersonville Prison in Tennessee?
For you non-USners:
Andersonville was a POW camp for Union soldiers unlucky enough to have been captured within its catchment area. Most of the inmates died of various diseases, principally diarrhea. And all this while sitting directly on top of a mineral which could have saved most of their lives.
The Confederate officer in charge of the prison was convicted of war crimes after the war and was hanged. So far as I know he was the only Confederate to suffer that fate, though Cantrell and Mosby and pretty much all of the Kansas terrorists and a few others probably deserved it.
The people of Andersonville, anxious to put the Civil War behind them (not!) have a ceremony on the anniversary of the officer's birthday, during which they do their level worst to continue the cultural division between North and South.
TEd
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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no that factoid didn't come up. my children's great great grandfather survived andersonville, (he lost a leg to gangrene, but was luckier than most and did die from it!)
he returned to northern NH-Coos county --about an hours drive north of MT Washington-- North of the city of Berlin (BUR-lin) North enough to be the last incorporated township in NH--where he had a half dozen more kids while eking a living out a a farmer!
his youngest daughter, Bertha, was my kids great grandmother, and she was alive (till 103) but only healthy till 98--but long enough that my kids were becoming teens!
they listened to her talk about her childhood and her father.. and for them the civil war as real.. (even though she never told war stories, she just would remind them that he had only one leg, cause he lost his leg in the war.)
i sometimes resented that all of our family vacations were to see relatives in Northern NH (all the time) but i do admit, coming from a family that is filled with generation after generation of wander lust on my material grandmothers side, it was good for kids to learn about their fathers mothers family..
(a family that shared a name with a regular contributor here.. so my kids and her kids, are at some level, cousins! its likely to be 20th cousins, several times removed.. but still, its a small world!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And did anyone in charge at Hellmira get prosecuted for war crimes?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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faecetious
Is that Brit spelling or felicitous typo, Rhuby? *ahem*
PS My 79-year-old mother likes to refer to senior moments as "intellectual interludes."
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member
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Posts: 133 |
Even though, as a newcomer I've already posted a couple of
typos--Can't help asking if Helen's mama's mama was always a
material girl?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jo, mama!--she must have been! i had to back and look and didn't see it the first time anyway. maternal grandmother..
maternal grandmother.. (now my mother was a material girl.. a seamstress, and a clothes horse in one!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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The Confederate officer in charge of the prison was convicted of war crimes after the war and was hanged. So far as I know he was the only Confederate to suffer that fate, though Cantrell and Mosby and pretty much all of the Kansas terrorists and a few others probably deserved it.
There were a lot - North and South - who committed crimes similar to those which the Americans (sorry, the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremburg) gleefully hanged Germans for between 1946 and 1948.
Wirz was actually Swiss. His sense of duty kept him at Andersonville after the rest of the guards - mostly very young boys and superannuated old soldiers - had fled, knowing perfectly well that they would not be smiled upon by the advancing Unionists. It was, at least in part, a bum rap. Wirz had had nothing to work with. There is a lot of evidence that he pleaded repeatedly with Richmond both for them to stop sending prisoners and to provide more resources for the prisoners who were already there. But Richmond had its own problems and, as we all know, the conditions at Andersonville were probably no worse than conditions for the vast majority of Confederate solders in the field in the latter stages of the war. By 1865 there were absolutely no resources to be had: the Confederacy was plumb tuckered out (see, the original meaning!).
The Unionist officer in charge of the execution said to Wirz on the scaffold: "Sir, this is the worst duty I have ever had to perform". Wirz replied that he didn't think it was all that great, either. As well he might.
Talk about picking up trivia!
[Edit: Memory recovery!] Actually Wirz said something like "I am being killed for doing my duty". Can't remember the exact words, but you can see how he might have been a bit upset by it all ...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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faecetious
Is that Brit spelling or felicitous typo, Rhuby? *ahem*Neither  (and my "interludes" are not prezactly what I'd call "intellectual" !!!)
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