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In defense of his Confederate pride


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acen8sOct 7, 2007 6:31am
The Stars and Bars, he explains, looked too much like the Union flag to prevent friendly fire. The Confederacy responded by fashioning the distinctive Southern Cross -- better known as the rebel flag.

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kitakamiOct 14, 2007 12:18pm
The Stainless Banner was no improvement, with it's 1:2 dimensions, it sometimes draped itself in such a way as to appear to be a flag of surrender.

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OgminJan 8, 12:06pm
A note on barefoot soldiers from the book Desertion During the Civil War by Ella Lonn, Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

... But the incessant cry was for shoes. Longstreet reported over 6,000 men in his corps without shoes in November, 1862; the purchase of 5,000 pairs of shoes by private individuals in September of that year was by no means sufficient to supply the need. Possibly there is a modicum of truth in the charge made by an officer in the fall of 1862 that a number in order to be left behind threw away their shoes. But it was not long before the lack of foot-gear was no excuse. One year later Longstreet reported one half of his troops without shoes, while Johnston sent a requisition for 13,000 pairs in February, 1864.

Striking indeed is the following statement: "The Fifth Regiment is unable to drill for want of shoes. The Eighth Regiment will soon be unfit for duty from the same cause; and indeed, when shoes are supplied, the men will be unable to wear them for a long while, such is the horrible condition of their feet from long exposure."

Limping on the hard turnpikes with blistered feet, they literally traced their path with blood. Sometimes they ploughed through mud over their ankles or again they slipped on roads hard and sharp with ice so that they were falling and their guns going off all down the column. It was not unusual to require them to march under such conditions fifty miles a day. As a feeble substitute for shoes, the men flocked to the cattle-pens when cattle were being butchered for food, to cut strips for moccasins before the hides were cold. But the moist, fresh skins without soles slipped about so that the wearers, constantly up and down, would finally kick them off to wrap their feet in rags or in straw or to limp along barefoot. Ragged and shoeless, clothed in a medley of garments which could not be called uniforms, they amply merited the name of "Lee's tatterdemalions."



In defense of his Confederate pride

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