Fort McHenry

Via Billy
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And on September 13, 1861...... 47 years to the day, a worst tyranny had come to our shores.
The Grandson Of Francis Scott Key Arrested By Lincoln

"At The Beginning Of The 20th Century, A British Citizen Could Carry Arms........

........and ordnance for personal protection. A century later, they are prohibited any means of self-defense at all. Current laws treat Englishmen as colonial subjects were once treated, without rights. What a pity! Even Russian subjects are permitted some, admittedly poor, means of self-protections...never thought I'd see what was once a relatively free country fall so low. Yet, reading Orwell's Coming Up for Air, we can spot the beginning of the decline even prior to 1914.

Unfortunately, some parts of the US (Washington DC, Hawaii, New Jersey, Chicago, Puerto Rico and a few others) are scarcely better. At least, in the US we have the option of avoiding such locations in favor of Montana, Tennessee and other places more respectful of personal rights.

I read several London and Kipling stories over the last week. That had the effect of highlighting the improvements and the declines in the various facets of the human condition in the last century. Overall, I'd take 2006 over 1906, but certain developments haven't been to our credit.

My buddy Montieth is keeping some of the British artifacts alive, but his Bren is only a ghost of a machine gun. As we speak, thousands of Stg44s, PPSH41s and other historic artifacts are being scrapped by the US Army in Iraq. We look down on book-burners and iconoclasts of the past centuries, but the irrational fetishism and the fear of the inanimate symbols is alive and well with many people and the proxy governments they vote in."

Oleg Volk
March 17, 2006

“Try To Find A North Carolina Gentleman Without A Yankee Mark On Him"

British traveler and Scottish missionary David MacRae (1837-1907) toured the American South in 1867-68 to survey the postwar desolation and poverty. His most noteworthy meetings were with General Robert E. Lee and Admiral Raphael Semmes, and being struck by the former’s “Christian character revealing itself almost unconsciously in his manners and conversation.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net
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Two of Seven Wounds:

“I was struck with the remark made by a Southern gentleman in answer to the assertion that Jefferson Davis had culpably continued the war for six months after all hope had been abandoned. “Sir,” he said, “Mr. Davis knew the temper of the South as well as any man in it. He knew if there was to be anything worth calling peace, the South must win; or, if she couldn’t win, she wanted to be whipped – well whipped – thoroughly whipped.”

The further South I went, the oftener these remarks came back upon me. Evidence was everywhere that the South had maintained the desperate conflict until she was utterly exhausted. At its outbreak she had poured her best men into the field. Almost every man I met at the South, and especially in North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, seemed to have been in the army; and it was painful to find how many even of those who had returned were mutilated, maimed or broken in health by exposure.

When I remarked this to a young Confederate officer in North Carolina, and said that I was glad to see that he had escaped unhurt, he said, “Wait ‘til we get to the office, sir, and I will tell you more about that.” When we got there, he pulled up one leg of his trousers, and showed me that he had an iron rod there to strengthen his limb, and enable him to walk without limping, half of his foot being off. He showed me on the other leg a deep scar made by the fragment of a shell; and these were but two of seven wounds which had left their marks upon his body. When he heard me speak of relics, he said, “Try to find a North Carolina gentleman without a Yankee mark on him”

In Mobile I met a brave little Southern girl who had gone barefooted the last year of the war, that the money intended for her shoes might go to the poor soldier. When medicines could no longer be sucked into the South through the rigorous blockade, the Confederate Government called upon the women and children, who went into the woods and swamps and gathered horehound, boneset, wild cherry bark, dogwood, and everything that could help supply the want. When there was a danger of any place falling into the hands of the enemy, the people with unflinching hand, dragged out their last stores of cotton, tobacco, and turpentine, and consigned them to the flames. The people said, “we did it all, thinking the South would win…”

(Exhaustion of the South, David MacRae, America Through British Eyes, Allan Nevins, editor, Oxford University Press, pp. 345-346)

Southerners Point To Rhode Island’s Record

"The British Royal African Company was the chief culprit in populating North America and the West Indies with African slaves. Despite being near bankrupt from high expenses, it was considered too big to fail and received government subsidy. The Southern States inherited this British colonial labor system which after the Revolution was set on a potential track to abolition, but the advent of Massachusetts tinkerer Eli Whitney’s invention in the mid 1790’s and the rise of New England cotton mills perpetuated slavery."