A New National Monument And Little Known Civil War Facts…

Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia

The bravery of individual slaves during the Civil War is finally being told and being honored.  On November 1, 2011 President Obama signed an executive order designating Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia a National Monument.

One night 150 years ago, in May 1861, three Virginia slaves crept away from their master under cover of darkness, stole a boat and escaped across the James River to a Union-held fortress. By the laws of both the United States and the new Confederacy, these men were not people but property: without rights, without citizenship, without even legal names.

…Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend — had just completed a journey that carried them across a far greater distance than those few miles across a river…Paving the way for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mission to Mason Neck NYT by Susan Schulten

Though there was little organized fighting along the Union defenses around Washington, they were continuously harassed by Southern skirmishers through the latter half of 1861 and into 1862. The situation was particularly troublesome in southern Fairfax County, Va., not far from Mount Vernon and Alexandria.

The capital’s vulnerability to the south was worsened by the scarcity of reliable maps, prompting Gen. Winfield Scott to begin a comprehensive mapping effort in the summer of 1861.

Then, on Jan. 24, a slave named Harry escaped to the Union picket line. Rather than return him to his owner, as other officers might have, Captain Heine took him on as a guide and servant. He gave him a uniform, a pistol, a sabre and “a good horse.” A full year before the Emancipation Proclamation or the enlistment of black soldiers, Harry became the first black cavalryman of the war. He knew every road and path in the area, and, according to Sneden, “would fight to the death before allowing himself to be captured.”

Limits of Lincoln’s Mercy NYT Rod Soodalter

On a frosty day in late February 1862, at a little past noon, 400 people stood solemnly within the stone-walled courtyard of the Tombs, New York City’s jail.  …the rest of the crowd consisted of reporters, politicians and observers who had cadged invitations to an unusual execution.

The condemned, flanked by government officials, was a small, dark-haired man in a black frock coat. He had been convicted of having “piratically, feloniously, and forcibly” captured “800 negroes, with intent to make them slaves.” His name was Nathaniel Gordon, and he was about to become the only man in American history to be executed for the crime of slave trading.

…Bates recalled, that “he was unfit to be entrusted with the pardoning power. Why, if a man comes to him with a touching story his judgment is almost certain to be affected by it. Should the applicant be a woman — a wife, a mother or a sister — in 9 cases out of 10 her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail.”

Lincoln once told a friend,

I reckon there never was a man raised in the country on a farm, where they are always butchering cattle and hogs and think nothing of it, that ever grew up with such an aversion to bloodshed as I have and yet I’ve had more questions of life and death to settle in four years than all the men who ever sat in this chair put together. But, I’ve managed to get along and do my duty, as I believe, and still save most of them.

Nevertheless, he added, “there are some cases where the law must be executed.”

On one of the numerous occasions when Lincoln was asked to consider mercy for Gordon, he stated,

I believe I am kindly enough in nature, and can be moved to pity and to pardon the perpetrator of almost the worst crime that the mind of man can conceive or the arm of man can execute; but any man, who, for paltry gain and stimulated only by avarice, can rob Africa of her children to sell into interminable bondage, I never will pardon.

Nathaniel Gordon was executed on Feb. 21, 1862.

HEY! Republican Candidates Shut Up Already!

Pious Bigots

My eldest daughter, 37, mother of three, a doula and aspiring midwife told me today that she is literally sick to her stomach over the attack on women’s health issues by the Republicans.  To hear them attack Planned Parenthood as if it were the destruction of the world as we know it, is mind-boggling and to single out women’s health for attack is, yes, sickening.  Any woman who supports these bigots is doing a disservice to all women.

But, we know what they are really up to—use women’s rights as a social wedge so they can continue the policies that will make them and their “money men” richer and more powerful.

I hope and pray that they can’t pull this off again!!  This political strategy  gave up a second Bush term and the crazies that were elected in the 2010 midterms.

Come on middle class conservative voters, you are being used by your political party to vote against your own economic interests. Morality is personal and each person is responsible for their own—don’t let republican politicians fool you—for them it’s about power for the wealthy and the corporations.  And that’s all.