Poor. rednecks. Plenty of redheads with red hot tempers who received free boat rides to the America and settled in the Appalachians. The Brits banned the droning bagpipes so we made do with fiddles, banjos, guitars and dulcimers, and continued singing the old ballards of the homeland. Wife’s people were wealthy and can trace her maternal genealogy way back to knights and East Dutch India sea captains. They owned a plantation and had slaves. Lost everything after the War of Northern Aggression; couldn’t pay the taxes on the land during Reconstruction and one was a was a quarter Choctaw and moved to OK. He was a lawyer and a one armed Captain in the CSA. The Feds failed to pay the Choctaws for their lands after the Trail of Tears and removal. He represented them in DC and wrote the Stanley Code ( set of laws used in tribal courts). His daughter established the first Choctaw newspaper in the Indian Territories. Traced my parental side back to grandfather who fought and was wounded 2X in CSA. Was also a POW 2X. As far as we know, he never was “reconstructed”
and took an oath to the Union. The first time he was wounded he was sent to Camp Douglas (Chicago) a hellhole as bad as Andersonville. The ones who win the war; write the history. It was never about slavery but states rights. Lincoln never intended to give the slaves the franchise or right to vote. He did get a CDA pension late in life - $21.00 I believe annually. Hell my mother’s father died when she was two and her mother was forced to sharecrop to feed her 5 kids. Get sick and tired of blacks acting like they were the only ones to sharecrop and suffer poverty.
