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Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves
Civil War Memories

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves

07/13/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Gragston remembers: “Mr Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us—we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—how to read and write and figger. Mr Tabb liked us to know how to figger. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.” […]

Lyndon Johnson, Enacting the Great Society and Vietnam, Review of an Unfinished Love Story
Current Events and History

Lyndon Johnson, Enacting the Great Society and Vietnam, Review of an Unfinished Love Story

06/28/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Five days after JFK’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress and the nation, speaking of Kennedy’s domestic dreams, “the dream of education for all our children, the dream of jobs for all who seek them and need them, the dream of care for elderly, the dream of an all-out attack on mental illness, and above all the dream of equal rights for all Americans, whatever their race or color.”
Johnson emphasized, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory that the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.”
Dick reminisced, “Impressive, a huge risk at the time. LBJ knew the path he was taking would cut him off from the southern bloc that was his heritage, isolate him from his oldest friends, and might well not succeed. But he was willing to take the path.” […]

John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Review of an Unfinished Love Story
Current Events and History

John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story

06/26/2024 Bruce Strom 6

JFK had gone over the cruel math over and over again, the math was clear, he could only win the Presidency with the electoral votes of Texas, Johnson’s home state, but without them, he would lose. Besides, he respected LBJ’s effectiveness as Senate majority leader, and his work ethic, as his office lights shone like a lonely beacon deep into the nights. Many historians rank LBJ as one of the most effective legislative leaders of the century.
But there was hesitancy within the liberal Kennedy circle of Massachusetts, there was exploratory probing by Robert Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother, who was serving as Attorney General. Would the Deep South LBJ consider instead becoming the chairman of the Democratic Party? LBJ was firm, he had been offered the Vice-Presidency, and he would not quietly back down. As our authors recall: “Mistrust, suspicion, and a scarcely concealed hatred continued between these two men from that day forward.” […]

General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo
Civil War Memories

General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo

06/21/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Grant assures us: “The cause of the Great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began, it was a trite saying among some politicians,” including Lincoln in his House Divided Speech, “that a state half slave and half free cannot exist. All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down.” “Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed.” Grant then criticizes the Fugitive Slave Law, in force before the Civil War, that compelled Northerners to help apprehend and return runaway slaves. […]

Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ending the American Civil War
Civil War Memories

Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ending the American Civil War

06/19/2024 Bruce Strom 3

Robert E Lee ceremoniously offered his sword, but Grant refused it. Grant wrote out the terms, which paroled the Confederates on the condition that they “would not take arms against the Government of the United States.” “The arms, artillery and public property are to be parked and stacked.” “This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority as long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”
Grant recalls that when General Lee “read over that part of the terms about side arms, horses, and private property of the officers, he remarked, with some feeling, I thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his army.” […]

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Charges
Civil War Memories

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Sacrifices

06/12/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Confederate General George Pickett wrote a doleful letter to his fiancée on July 4th, 1863, the day after his disastrous Pickett’s Charge. Pickett remembered: “A little before three o’clock I rode up to Old Peter,” the nickname for General James Longstreet, “for orders. I found him like a great lion at bay. I have never seen him so grave and troubled. For several minutes after I had saluted him, he looked at me without speaking. Then, in an agonized voice, the reserve all gone, he said:
‘Pickett, I am being crucified at the thought of the sacrifice of life which this attack will make. I have instructed Alexander to watch the effect of our fire upon the enemy, and when it begins to tell he must take the responsibility and give you your orders, for I cannot.’” […]

Fleeing Female Slave Impersonates Planter, Husband Posing As Trusty Servant: William & Ellen Craft
Civil War Memories

Fleeing Female Slave Impersonates Planter, Husband Posing As Trusty Servant: William & Ellen Craft

05/08/2024 Bruce Strom 1

In the 1850s, “William and Ellen Craft were slaves in the State of Georgia.” Their “desire to be free was very strong.” It was rare for slaves that deep in the Confederacy to successfully flee, but it “occurred to William and Ellen, that she might act the part of master and her husband the part of servant.”
“Ellen was fair enough to pass for white,” but how to transform her into a young planter? She needed to “dress elegantly in a fashionable suit of male attire, and have her hair cut in the style usually worn by young planters.” But she was beardless. So, they muffled up the face of the young planter as if he were “suffering badly with a toothache.” […]

Margaret Garner, Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child to Avoid Slavery, Inspiration for Beloved
Civil War Memories

Margaret Garner, Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child to Avoid Slavery, Inspiration for Beloved

04/24/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Our author Levi Coffin remembers, “Perhaps no case” regarding “fugitive slaves attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother, who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.” This is a troubling story. I do not wish […]

Siege of Vicksburg: Ordinary Union Soldiers and Generals Grant and Sherman Recount the Struggle
Civil War Memories

Siege of Vicksburg: Ordinary Union Soldiers and Generals Grant and Sherman Recount the Struggle

04/20/2024 Bruce Strom 5

General Grant remembers: “The North had become very much discouraged. Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure. The elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the last dollar. Voluntary enlistments had ceased through the greater part of the North, and the draft had been adopted to fill up the ranks. It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for preservation of the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue, and the power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.” […]

Underground Railroad: Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped From Slavery Via Mail Express
Civil War Memories

Underground Railroad: Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped From Slavery Via Mail Express

04/19/2024 Bruce Strom 2

How did Henry Box Brown escape from slavery? Simple, in 1849 he “had himself boxed up and forwarded to Philadelphia direct by express.” The box was “made to fit him most comfortably,” it was “two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide, and three feet long.” With him were “one bladder of water and a few small biscuits,” with but one hole for breathing.
After he “entered his box, it was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops and was addressed” by a friend to William Johnson in Philadelphia marked, “This side up with care.” The box was transported right side up, but for many miles it was transported upside down, which “had him on his head for miles.” This box went from steamboat to wagon to railroad, the delivery time was a little more than a day. […]