Our 43nd Year 
FOR THE MEETING TUESDAY,  April 24, 2007
Meets Fourth Tuesday, January-November
Founded March 1964 

Little Rock 
Program at 7 p.m. 
Online:  www.civilwarbuff.org
VOL. XLIII, No. 4,

Ron Kelly, President  /  Charles O. Durnett, Editor, 
rkelley225@aol.com /  milhistory@aristotle.net  

Dues $15 Per Year
VISITORS WELCOME! 
VISIT THE BATTLEFIELDS WHEN YOU CAN...
WHILE YOU CAN

As a part of your trivia for this meeting, members can identify the terms Vivandier/Cantineer.

THE DEATH OF A

CONFEDERATE COLONEL

They tell of a Confederate woman’s care of and growing affection for a wounded Union soldier, a plantation mistress’s singular love for a sick slave child, and an eight-year-old girl’s fight for survival

against frigid cold, injury, starvation, heartbreak, and lawlessness.

Here are women holding down the home front with heroism and loyalty, or, sometimes, with weakness and duplicity. Will a young belle remain loyal to her wounded fiance? How long can a caring nurse hold her finger on a severed artery? And how does anyone comprehend the legacy of slavery and the brutality of war?
 
The Death of a Confederate Colonel triumphs in its portrayal of desperate circumstances coated in the patina of the Civil War era, the complexity of ordinary people confronting situations that change them forever.
 

“Intensely imagined, elegantly and efficiently told, the eight short stories and the powerful novella comprising Pat Carr’s The Death of a Confederate Colonel gracefully summon up for us our past. . . . Pat Carr is an admirably gifted writer, counted among our best and brightest; and this book is a memorable achievement” —George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox and Empty Bed Blues 
 
“Pat Carr’s voice is distinctive, clear, and sharp. If her startling imagination reminds one of Ambrose Bierce’s, its range is much wider than his. The Death of a Confederate Colonel belongs high on the reading list of Civil War fiction.” —David Madden, founding director of the U.S. Civil War Center and author of Sharpshooter



Pat Carr, whose stories Leonard Michaels has described as “finely controlled and significantly moving,” has written twelve books of fiction, including If We Must Die, a finalist in the PEN book awards. Her more than one hundred short stories have been published in the Southern Review, Yale Review, and Best American Short Stories, among many other publications. She lives in Elkins, Arkansas.

March 2007 $14.95 paper

 

Usually horseracing and especially the Arkansas Derby have very little to do with the historic studies of the civil war. However, this year’s the winner of the Derby makes the exception to the usual.
 
The winning horse “Curlin” was named for Charlie Curlin, the great grandfather of retired Kentucky attorney Shirley Cunningham, who is among the colt’s four ownership groups. Charlie Curlin was a slave who fought in the Civil War as a confederate.
 
Charlie Curlin received a pension for his service. The monthly stipend was for having served his country. That was his income. It provided him a little bit more income than his friends did and he felt very proud of that.
 
Curlin raised his family in Bumpus Mills, Tenn., which straddles the Kentucky border about 60 miles northwest of Nashville. He may be the same E. C. Curlin that fought in the 4th Tennessee. Which was organized May 15, 1861 in Provisional Army of Tennessee: transferred to Confederate service August 1861; reorganized April 25, 1862; consolidated with the 5th Tennessee Infantry Regiment in December 1862; formed part of Company D, 3rd Consolidated Tennessee Infantry Regiment April 9, 1865.

As the Arkansas Derby winner, "Curlin" now is on the road for the Triple Crown of horseracing.

This website is a dedication to the Australian Union and Confederate Veterans of the American Civil War of 1861 – 1865. It has been created from numerous sources, government documents, research libraries and hundreds of pieces of information emailed in and donated by individuals from all over Australia and the United States; and includes work by individuals in both the “Sons of Confederate Veterans”, the “Sons of Union Veterans”, the “American Civil War Round Table of Queensland” the “American Civil of Round Table of Australia”, the late Roy Parker and others.
 
Hundred of thousands of individuals from all over the world participated in the American “War Between the States”; many in the north forcibly and against their will, inducted into Union service right off ships as they immigrated to America seeking a better life. Many others volunteered for what they thought would be a very short conflict, in a war that was deemed by the U.S. Constitution to be both illegal and without merit. Men of the southern states, however, white and black, all served voluntarily in defence of their “states rights”, brought on by aggressive northern governmental taxation, and in the protection of their homes and property from total destruction.
 
What ever the reason for their participation, no matter what their nationality, no matter what their race and no matter for which side they fought; all served gallantly as honourable soldiers in a war that took thousands of lives needlessly. As such, all American Civil War Veterans, Union and Confederate, should always be remembered and honoured for their bravery and gallantry in that disastrous conflict.
 
Many veterans after the war was over left America for other parts of the world, seeking peace and solitude, hoping to forget the tragedies of war and begin life anew somewhere else. Many returned to their native lands of Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Russia and other countries. Many others followed Australians who fought in the war back to

Australia, where they built new lives, married, raised families and left many descendants who remain even today. It is for those veterans, now buried in Australia, and for their descendants, that this perpetual memorial website has been made. To insure that their war veteran ancestors, like the Australian war veterans of modern wars, will never again be forgotten.
 
Major Arthur John Australia’s last “Real Son” of a Civil War Veteran Australian Army Education Service Corp Senior Australian Education Officer, British Commonwealth Occupation Forces, Japan  

Major Arthur W. John, who today lives in Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia, is the 99 year old son of Confederate veteran Joseph John, 54^th Virginia Infantry, Company  K, who is buried in Fulham, London, England.

Everyone attending the Roundtable meeting this month will receive a booklet from the University of Arkansas. It highlights the new publications and gives a short review of all of the new civil war books available from the University. A note from the University Press staff says:

Every page of this catalogue showcases new and recent books, along with classics, that will fascinate anyone interested in the Civil War.

From collections of essays to regimental histories to comprehensive histories to nineteenth-century memoirs, there’s something for everybody here for the Civil War Buff, the academic, the reenactor, or anyone with a love for history. Many of these books are from the Press’s distinguished Civil War in the West series, edited by Daniel E. Sutherland and T. Michael Parrish.


These titles are marked with a   

Be sure to look for our sale books, as much as 80 percent off until July 31, 2007 – as you discover titles that cover everything from secession to reconstruction, in Union and Confederate voices that range from preachers and doctors to guerrillas and bushwhackers.

  Wild Rose

A unique observation of an all too familiar war from the seldom-viewed perspective of a spy behind the Yankee lines. It is interesting that, in the early days, everyone seem to accept what Rose Greenhow was doing, perhaps because they considered the rebellion in the south as a mere annoyance. Ann Blackman has provided an interesting biography of a person and an era. ... Charles Olin Durnette, CWRT Associates

 For sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or South rivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O’Neale Greenhow. Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographer Ann Blackman tells the surprising true story of a unique woman in history.

“I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins,” Rose once declared–and that fiery spirit would plunge her into the center of power and the thick of adventure. Born into a slave-holding family, Rose moved to Washington, D.C., as a young woman and soon established herself as one of the capital’s most charming and influential socialites, an intimate of John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, and Dolley Madison.

She married well, bore eight children and buried five, and, at the height of the Gold Rush, accompanied her husband Robert Greenhow to San Francisco. Widowed after Robert died in a tragic accident, Rose became notorious in Washington for her daring–and numerous–love affairs.

But with the outbreak of the Civil War, everything changed. Overnight, Rose Greenhow, fashionable hostess, become Rose Greenhow, intrepid spy. As Blackman reveals, deadly accurate intelligence that Rose supplied to General Pierre G. T. Beauregard written in a fascinating code (the code duplicated in the background on the jacket of this book). Her message to Beauregard turned the tide in the first Battle of Bull Run, and was a brilliant piece of spycraft that eventually led to her arrest by Allan Pinkerton and imprisonment with her young daughter.

Indomitable, Rose regained her freedom and, as the war reached a crisis, journeyed to Europe to plead the Confederate cause at the royal courts of England and France. Drawing on newly discovered diaries and a rich trove of contemporary accounts, Blackman has fashioned a thrilling, intimate narrative that reads like a novel. Wild Rose is an unforgettable rendering of an astonishing woman, a book that will stand with the finest Civil War biographies.
 
Ann Blackman is the author of Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright and co-author of The Spy Next Door, about the traitorous FBI agent Robert Hanssen. In her long career as a news reporter with Time magazine and the Associated Press, Blackman covered American politics, social policy, and the powerful personalities that make up Washington society. She is married to Michael Putzel. They have two grown children and live in the nation’s capital.

 “This is a fascinating tale of intrigue and suspense. Blackman has discovered some truly remarkable, never-before-published papers that reveal how deeply involved Rose Greenhow was in the Confederate cause.” 
–Cokie Roberts, National Public Radio commentator, author of Founding Mothers

POEM FOR CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY

by Oliver Reeves

How many springs have gone since they
Who wore the uniform of gray
Last looked upon summer snow of dogwood, blooming below
Their southern skies and friendly sun,
Or watched the winding rivers run
Or knew when spring wind's gentle hand
Stretched forth to heal their wounded land.
They sleep where the azaleas spread
Their glorious colors, where the red old hills
And mountain peaks
Stand listening while nature speaks.
And from the woodlands sound the strains
Of memories; where coastal plains
Run down to join the ceaseless tide
Ebbing and flowing as they died.
Let us remember them as time
And tide move on in endless rhyme.
When spring is wearing her bouquet
For the lost legions of the gray.
While bud and blossom, hill and tree
Remember them, so shall we.

Author Unknown

Along our Southern plains,
Are sleeping now in quiet rest
Beneath the Southern rains.
 
The bugle call is now in vain
To rouse them from their bed;
To arms they'll never march again--
They are sleeping with the dead.
 
No more will Shiloh's plains be stained
With blood our heroes shed,
Nor Chancellorsville resound again
To our noble warriors' tread.
 
For them no more shall reveille
Sound at the break of dawn,
But may their sleep peaceful be
Till God's great judgment morn.
 
We bow our heads in solemn prayer
For those who wore the gray,
And clasp again their unseen hands
On our Memorial Day.

We Who Study Must Also Strive To Save!

SEE YOU TUESDAY NIGHT

for Miss Elle

GOD BLESS AMERICA