Misplaced Loyalty of a Father

They were not the traitors, but you who spit upon your Revolutionary father's graves.
======================================================

British journalist William H. Russell toured both North and South in early 1861 and saw firsthand the cultural differences between the two countries. In March he wrote that he was “convinced that the South can only be forced back by such a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet of Russia [but] success must destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past.” He also learned that Southerners considered their State their country and recipient of true loyalty, as they could not war against their own family.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
=========

Misplaced Loyalty of a Father:

“Major Vogdes, an engineer officer from the fort [Pickens], who happened to be on board [the USS Powhatan], volunteered to take a letter from me to Colonel Harvey Browne, requesting permission to visit it; and I finally arranged with Captain Adams that the Diana was to be permitted to pass the blockade into Pensacola Harbour, and thence return to Mobile, my visit to Pickens depending on the pleasure of the Commandant of the place.

“I fear, Mr. Russell,” said Captain Adams, “in giving you this permission, I expose myself to misrepresentation and unfounded attacks. Gentlemen of the press in our country care little about private character, and are, I fear, rather unscrupulous in what they say; but I rely upon your character that no improper use shall be made of this permission. You must hoist a flag of truce, as General Bragg, who commands over there, has sent me word he considers our blockade a declaration of war, and will fire upon any vessel which approaches him from our fleet.”

In the course of conversation, whilst treating me to such man-of-war luxuries as the friendly officer had at his disposal, he gave [me] an illustration of the miseries this cruel conflict – of the unspeakable desolation of homes, of the bitterness of feeling engendered in families.

A Pennsylvanian by birth, he married long ago a lady of Louisiana, where he resided on his plantation till his ship was commissioned. He was absent of foreign service when the feud first began, and received orders at sea, on the South American station, to repair direct to blockade Pensacola. He had just heard that one of his sons is enlisted in the Confederate Army, and that two others have joined the forces in Virginia; and as he said sadly, “God knows, when I open my broadside, but that I may be killing my own children.”

But that was not all. One of the Mobile gentlemen brought him a letter from his daughter, in which she informs him that she has been elected vivandiere’ to a New Orleans regiment, with which she intends to push on to Washington, and get a lock of old Abe Lincoln’s hair; and the letter concluded with the charitable wish that her father might starve to death if he persisted in his wicked blockade.”

( My Diary North & South, William Howard Russell, Fletcher Pratt, editor, Harper & Brothers, 1954, pp. 116-117)