Download October - 4th Texas

MARCH 4th
The official newsletter of
Multi Lakes Association for Civil War Studies
October 2012
President – Larry O’Donnell - [email protected]
Vice-President – Jim Celmer - [email protected]
Treasurer – Judie Gondek - [email protected]
Secretary – Becky Efird - [email protected]
Newsletter Editors – Judie and Richard Gondek
[email protected]
[email protected]
Web Designer/Technical Advisor – Rick Higgins [email protected]
Website – www.fouthtexas.org
or
Congratulations to members Betsy Kemler & Daniel Watkins who became a married
couple in September! Best Wishes for a happy life together.
2012 Events
October 6 - 7: 150th Perryville, Perryville KY.
To those going to Perryville; have a safe trip and come back with good reports. Say hi
to Alan Rothenberg from everyone, and give his friend Mike a warm Texas welcome.
Mike will be falling in with the group. He is a member of the 4th Texas Co F out in
Vegas. Richard and I met him last year when were out that way. He seemed very
interested in what we are doing with the hobby.
October 20 - 21: Wolcott Mill, Ray Township Michigan (max)
It’s that time again for our winter meetings to start up. Meeting dates are as follows:
Oct 12 (due to the Perryville event on the 6&7)
Nov 2
Dec TBD (Holiday Party)
2013
Jan 4
Feb 1
March 1
April 5
May 3 (if needed)
All meetings will begin promptly at 7:30 pm. Location is still at Holy Cross Lutheran
Church 30003 Ryan Road Warren MI. The church is located between 12 and 13 Mile
Roads on the West side of Ryan.
Executive Reports:
President’s Report: Larry O’Donnell – None
Vice President’s Report: Jim Celmer - None
Treasurer’s Report: Judie Gondek – There are still a couple of people who have not
reimbursed the group for the Shiloh event. Please get that to me ASAP. Make a check
out payable to Multi Lakes Association for Civil War Studies and mail it to me at my
address: 15625 S Huron River Dr. Romulus, MI 48174
TREASURER'S REPORT
Oct 2012
PREVIOUS BALANCE
4TH TEXAS*
CFI
MLACWS
TOTAL
12-Sep
797.44
1930.42
2869.66
5597.52
DEPOSITS/CREDITS
4TH TEXAS
CFI
MLACWS
Interest
DEBITS
MLACWS
#1023 Becky Efird - Gettysburg Reimbursment
#1024 Judie Gondek - Gettysburg Reimbursment
#1025 Brian Coleman-Gettysburg Reimbursment
#1051 Charlotte Bauer-Fort Wayne Eagle Project
State of Michigan E-Filing
CFI
# 1022 Larry O'Donnell - Shiloh Registration
CURRENT BALANCE
4TH TEXAS
CFI
MLACWS
TOTAL
0.09
150.00
150.00
150.00
131.31
20.00
60.00
12-Oct
797.44
1,870.42
2,268.44
4,936.30
*4th Texas/ Multi Lakes Balances adjusted to reflect $100
switch from Domke tent sale as shown on last month's
report.
Secretary’s Report: Becky Efird – None
4th Texas, Co E Staff Reports: Steve Domke; Captain – None
1st Sergeants’ Report: None
CFI Report:
The main topic was the upcoming Wolcott Mill event. We will need to finalize details at
the October meeting, but here is what we have so far –
Kimberly Lynch has expressed an interest in attending the event as a vendor, for those
of you who don’t know, she has The Dressmakers Shop which is at many events and
carries just about everything you need to make your impression complete. She has yet
to make a definite decision, but I told her she was more than welcome. We also had
interest from another new vendor, but I have only had one message from her, and have
not heard anything back as yet.
We decided not to have a pie auction this year. The last 2 years have seen a decrease
in the amount raised through the auction. Instead we will sell pie slices at the Farmer’s
Market, so we need everyone to make and bring at least 1 pie. Here is a list we have
so far for the Farmer’s Market:
Becky Efird – Pickles
Connie Difatta – 2 Gallons Apple Cider
Judie Gondek – Cheese
Mary Pizarek – 1 Dozen Hard Boiled Eggs
Heidi – Hunter’s Sausage
Denise – 2 Gallons Apple Cider
Charlotte Bauer – 1 Dozen Hard Boiled Eggs
We still need: Paper Plates, Plastic Forks, Paper Cups, Apples, Cookies, Pickled Eggs
as well as more Cheese, Cider and Hard Boiled Eggs. Let me know what you would
like to bring. We also will be selling to the public and will start selling as the battle is
ending. We will not wait until the soldiers get to “town” to sell to the public. What is not
sold on Saturday, we will sell on Sunday. Reminder that the money we make goes
back into our account as we already sent a donation earlier in the year to the Civil War
Trust.
A good number of us will be setting up on Thursday. We need volunteers to man the
registration table Friday and Saturday, and also volunteers to guide lantern tours. The
guys have been busy cutting and hauling wood, so hopefully we won’t have to buy any.
Tom and Andrea will be cooking on Saturday, so if you would like to skip cooking your
dinner that night, they will be charging $3.00 for beef stew, bread, fruit salad, and a
surprise.
You can let Andrea know by sending her a message at
[email protected]. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen Tom and Andrea so can’t
wait to see them!
Gettysburg – It was briefly mentioned that next year the military will be attending an
alternate event for the 150th Gettysburg. That event will take place the last week of
June, a week before the “official” 150th Gettysburg. I would like for us to make an effort
to all get together at some point at Wolcott to discuss this. Since we all don’t make the
meetings, this is our second most attended event where we should have more people to
make a decision about which event we would like to attend. I have spoken directly with
the woman in charge of civilians and will share what she has told me at that time. I will
also bring as much information as I can find out about both events.
See you at the October meeting,
Judie
Richard’s Finds
5 Things You May Not Know About Lincoln, Slavery and Emancipation
By Sarah Pruitt
September 22 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation, in which he declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in states in rebellion
against the Union "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." To commemorate the
occasion, we invite you to consider some surprising facts about Lincoln's views on slavery, and
the complex process that led him to issue the document he later called "the central act of my
administration, and the greatest event of the 19th century."
Depiction by Francis Bicknell Carpenter of Abraham Lincoln’s first reading of the
Emancipation Proclamation, in July 1862. It hangs in the U.S. Capitol.
1. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist.
Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It
was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution. The nation’s founding
fathers, who also struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word
“slavery” in the Constitution, but they did include key clauses protecting the institution,
including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern
states to count slaves for the purposes of representation in the federal government. In a
three-hour speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more clearly
than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and then admitted he
didn’t know exactly what should be done about it within the current political system.
Abolitionists, by contrast, knew exactly what should be done about it: Slavery should be
immediately abolished, and freed slaves should be incorporated as equal members of
society. They didn’t care about working within the existing political system, or under the
Constitution, which they saw as unjustly protecting slavery and slave owners. Leading
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death and an
agreement with Hell,” and went so far as to burn a copy at a Massachusetts rally in
1854. Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a
common anti-slavery cause, he did not count himself among them. Only with
emancipation, and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment, would Lincoln
finally win over the most committed abolitionists.
2. Lincoln didn’t believe blacks should have the same rights as whites.
Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal”
applied to blacks and whites alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the
same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of
debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who
had accused him of supporting “negro equality.” In their fourth debate, at Charleston,
Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I
am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed
blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with
whites. What he did believe was that, like all men, blacks had the right to improve their
condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In this way they were equal to
white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust.
Like his views on emancipation, Lincoln’s position on social and political equality for
African-Americans would evolve over the course of his presidency. In the last speech of
his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited black suffrage, saying that any
black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.
3. Lincoln thought colonization could resolve the issue of slavery.
For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of
the African-American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or
Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two great
political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, had both favored colonization; both
were slave owners who took issue with aspects of slavery but saw no way that blacks
and whites could live together peaceably. Lincoln first publicly advocated for
colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his first instinct would be “to free all the
slaves, and send them to Liberia” (the African state founded by the American
Colonization Society in 1821).
Nearly a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed slaves at the
White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central
America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of
whites towards blacks, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be
separated.” Lincoln’s support of colonization provoked great anger among black leaders
and abolitionists, who argued that African-Americans were as much natives of the
country as whites, and thus deserved the same rights. After he issued the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln never again publicly mentioned colonization, and a
mention of it in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was
issued in January 1863.
4. Emancipation was a military policy.
As much as he hated the institution of slavery, Lincoln didn’t see the Civil War as a
struggle to free the nation’s 4 million slaves from bondage. Emancipation, when it came,
would have to be gradual, and the important thing to do was to prevent the Southern
rebellion from severing the Union permanently in two. But as the Civil War entered its
second summer in 1862, thousands of slaves had fled Southern plantations to Union
lines, and the federal government didn’t have a clear policy on how to deal with them.
Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing
the Union with a new source of manpower to crush the rebellion.
In July 1862 the president presented his draft of the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward urged him to wait until
things were going better for the Union on the field of battle, or emancipation might look
like the last gasp of a nation on the brink of defeat. Lincoln agreed and returned to edit
the draft over the summer. On September 17 the bloody Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln
the opportunity he needed. He issued the preliminary proclamation to his cabinet on
September 22, and it was published the following day. As a cheering crowd gathered at
the White House, Lincoln addressed them from a balcony: “I can only trust in God I
have made no mistake … It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it.”
5. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all of the slaves.
Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t
apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of
which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the
Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty
of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t
immediately free a single slave, as the only places it applied were places where the
federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the
Union.
Despite its limitations, Lincoln’s proclamation marked a crucial turning point in the
evolution of Lincoln’s views of slavery, as well as a turning point in the Civil War itself.
By war’s end, some 200,000 black men would serve in the Union Army and Navy,
striking a mortal blow against the institution of slavery and paving the way for its
eventual abolition by the 13th Amendment.
Have you ever heard the real rebel yell? Hear is another link that demonstrates the yell.
If nothing else its real hoot.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/videos/What-Did-the-Rebel-Yell-SoundLike.html#ooid=J5N254Mjp5ceyLVVSLoQ5y02g2F1x2yx
Reminder-Richard will be attending the Fall National N-SSA shoot in
Virginia the same weekend as the rest of you will be in Perrysville. If you
have not already put in your order for powder or caps you must do so
ASAP!