Saturday

Can someone explain this to me?

So I'm doing a little family tree work right?  And I find an ancestor who died at Camp Morton, a  Union Prison Camp in Indianapolis, Indiana.  During the War of Yankee Aggression there were over 1,700 Confederate POWs that died at Camp Morton.  These men are buried at Crown Hill Cemetery.

A Wikipedia article tells us that this is "a number considerably lower than most Union Camps".  Yet, between 1863 and June 1865, the camp's population saw an average of 50 deaths a month from disease, hunger, and exposure.  Clearly Camp Morton was a horror.

Private James H. Eidson died there shortly after Christmas in 1864.  He left behind a wife and as many as eight children who never learned of their father's specific fate.  All they knew for sure was that he was sick when captured at Kennesaw Mountain.  Beyond that he was simply never heard from again - as testified in the widow's pension application of 1891.

So you can imagine dear reader how pleased I was to find this man's final resting place.


What a nice place to wait for Judgment Day eh?  But wait…

Look a little closer.  What's that?



An American Flag?  At the grave of 1700 Confederates?

There's another one!


Really? Is this appropriate?  In what universe does this make sense?

I realize that everything Southern is now being castigated and denigrated, and the Confederate Flag is routinely attacked and vilified. Crapping on the South is the "in thing" these days.  But placing the flag that these men FOUGHT AGAINST on their graves!  Really?

Somehow if it were possible to talk to this particular ancestor of mine, I'll bet you anything that he'd take a dim view of his resting place being decorated with the US flag.

I have another ancestor who survived the Yankee invasion, but lost an eye at the Battle of Atlanta.  But that still didn't remove him from the fight.  However his leg was badly crushed a couple months before the surrender while riding a troop-train that derailed in eastern Alabama.  Something tells me he wouldn't appreciate his grave being festooned with a US flag.

Lastly I have an ancestor killed at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.  That man left behind a wife and nine children.  That woman and her kids lived in a pine bark hut the winter of 1865.  You put a Yankee flag on his grave and his corpse might just jump up and punch you right in the mouth!

These men fought for their country - Georgia.  Their country was raped, pillaged and burned by the likes of this war criminal, and their descendants have all been programmed to love the Tyrant.  I suppose the final insult of having a US flag waving over their grave was to be expected.

Here's my last word on the subject.




4 comments:

Son of Liberty said...

True.... But being a lemonade from lemons type of guy, at least somebody took time to pay homage to those fallen patriots. Though they who placed the American flag there may be misinformed, and incorrect, and seemingly ignorant that those patriots died for the CS of America as opposed to the US of America. Perhaps it can be seen as "they are just as equally part of our nation's (for better or worse, this side of history) war dead.....and not something to be blotted out, marginalized, and forgotten"

Though while we're on technicality, the rectangular "Confederate Flag" was really only used as a navy jack. the flag placed should, technically be square, or more appropriately a square on a white field with a red bar at the side...

eg....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America_(Third,_variant).svg

;)

i'll crawl back under my rock now, T

-SoL

Brock Townsend said...

I buy the square grave flags by the gross and keep in my trunk for such purposes.

Confederate Cemetery Named For Colonel Turley, GMS Instructor below.
http://tinyurl.com/2dcxur
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=85&highlight=turley


The third and 4th pictures.
(The picture underneath the stone shows the actual grave which is laid out in the shape of a cross and visible if you look carefully. For some ridiculous reason, there were American flags all over the place, but we replaced them with appropriate ones. Colonel Turley, our Bible teacher and football coach, was instrumental in preserving this graveyard. BT)
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=2147&highlight=turley

Lantry said...

My brother and I found the same thing in two cemeteries we visited a couple of weeks ago. We were not in his car and didn't have his box of flags. His theory was that you can't just go into a store and buy a Confederate Flag anymore so people may have just put the US Flag on them for lack of anything else. We will rectify that later this month.

Deborah Wilson said...

I see the sort of thing happening a lot around Dallas [Paulding Co]Georgia. There's a little cemetery close to my apartment, the name of it is Lewis Graveyard. It is at the very end of Coach Bobby Dodd Rd. - a very loooonnng Rd - on the left, on a hill. There's not many people buried there, some are apparently civilians and there are 9 Confederate Soldiers also buried there. The small graveyard is kept up by SCV Camp#1397.

Recently, I stopped by to check on things and someone had put US flags on all of the graves.

I also think that one of the tombstones of one of the Confederate Soldiers has been tampered with - a slight name change. To be sure, I'm going to have to check my photos from a few years back. If I can verify, I'll notify Camp#1397.

Confederate Flags can be bought in many places - it really depends on what area that you are in. They are especially plentiful around Kennesaw, Ga.

I felt like pulling those flags up that were on the Confederate's grave - but I didn't. I thought better of it and figured that Camp#1397 would do it. Someone did it, they are now gone.

But I keep several small flags in my vehicle now - if I ever see that again, I'll just place the correct flag on the grave.

Northern women and southern women made a pact after the un-Civil war. Northern women would look after Confederate graves and southern women would look after northern graves. We do our best by both. Many Union soldiers are buried in private cemeteries - no one damages their headstones or puts Confederate flags on their graves.

The south expects the same respect for our Confederate soldiers.

Didn't catch exactly who writes this blog, but so far it's a good one...:)