Uncle Daniel's Story Of "Tom" Anderson, and Twenty Great BattlesMcElroy, John
History
Uncle Daniel's Story Of "Tom" Anderson, and Twenty Great Battles
McElroy, John
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
“But to return to what I was saying in connection with the young men.
Tom Anderson was in a state of great excitement. He said he had almost
been mobbed before leaving home for entertaining Union sentiments, and
feared that he could not safely return with his family. My son Peter
suggested that, perhaps, they (being young) owed a duty to their country
and could not perform it in a more satisfactory manner than to enter the
service and do battle for the old flag. To this suggestion no reply was
made at the time. I said to them:
“'This seems to me a very strange condition of things, to see a
Government like this threatened in its permanency by the very people
that have controlled and profited most by it.' Tom replied:
“'Uncle, I have given a great deal of thought to this subject. You know
I was born in Ohio. My father was an Episcopal minister, and settled in
Mississippi while I was but a boy. My father and mother are both buried
there, leaving me an only child. I grew up and there married my good
wife, Mary Whitthorne. We have lived happily together. I have had a good
practice at the law; have tried to reconcile myself to their theories of
human rights and 'rope-of-sand' government, but cannot. They are very
_different_ from our Northern people--have _different_ theories of
government and morals, with _different_ habits of thought and action.
The Pilgrim Fathers of the North who landed at Plymouth Rock were men of
independence of thought; believed in Christianity, in education and
universal liberty. They and their progeny have moved almost on a line
due west, to the Pacific Ocean, infusing their energy, their ideas of
government, of civil liberty, of an advanced Christian civilization,
with a belief in man's equality before the law. These ideas and thoughts
have become imbedded in the minds of the Northern people so firmly that
they will fight to maintain them; will make them temporarily a success,
and would make them permanent but for their habit of moving so rapidly
in the direction of business and the accumulation of wealth, which
prepares the mind to surrender everything to the accomplishment of this
single object. The Southern inhabitants are almost entirely descended
from impetuous, hot-blooded people. Their ancestors that landed at
Jamestown, and later along the Southern Atlantic coast within our
borders, were of an adventurous and warlike people. Their descendants
have driven westward almost on a parallel line with the Northern people
to the borders of Mexico, occasionally lapping over the Northern line.
Their thoughts, ideas, manners and customs have been impressed upon the
people wherever they have gone, by the pretense, always foremost and
uppermost, as if a verity, that they were the most hospitable and
chivalric of any people in America. Their civilization was different.
Their arguments were enforced by the pistol and bowie-knife upon their
equals, and slaves subjected to their will by the lash and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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