[Magdalen] Fwd: The Almost Daily eMo From The Geranium Farm

[Louise Laughton]

I was born and grew up in North Carolina as had many generations before me on both sides of my family. My late husband and I came to Syracuse in Central New York state in 1960, and I've been here ever since. Less than a decade ago my daughter, in one of her periodic spurts of ancestor research, discovered that two ancestors are buried in the Confederate section of the veterans' cemetery in Elmira, NY, not all that far from Syracuse. There was a POW camp at the US Army base in Elmira during the Civil War (War Between the States as people in the South once insisted upon calling it). The prison was called "Hellmira, Death Camp of the North," because of the deliberate cruelty there in retaliation for Andersonville. In the family, we grew up hearing that four young men went off to the war, one returned at its end, and three died at Gettysburg where the NC ranks suffered great losses. Only one died at G'burg. The two whose bodies were buried in Elmira lived to fight other battles and were taken prisoners after one of them --I'm not sure which. Anyhow, gloriously dead for Dixie in that Pennsylvania corn field was preferable to dying of starvation and disease as a POW. It was a "with your shield or on it" culture in the South. So, the Elmira dead came as news.

On Sep 12, 2014, at 6:28 PM, Roland Orr wrote:

When I last visited USA I attended a course for a week on the Civil War and visited some  battlefield sites. Many names are still displayed on both sides
Roland


On 12/09/2014 22:48, James Oppenheimer wrote:
> ​​
> ​
> 
> On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> 
>> Was it in the pages of this list some years ago where there was  a
>> discussion about how we should look upon those who fought for  the
>> Confederate cause?  I believe the question was whether these  men
>> should be "remembered", or additionally "honored".
>> 
>> As I recall, there was no clear answer
> 
> I would hope we would leave it up to folks to do what seems best to them.
>  It's not as if anything we do is going to change anything. Everyone fought
> for the cause which they felt was better.
> ​