Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire OMG Another Civil War Thread!

So you're planning on taking up arms?

Who is the "we" you mention?

No, they want to get control of the apparatus made possible by your team in the late war of which you are so proud, and use it to hammer your pecker in the dirt for eternity.

Karl Marx knew what a great man Lincoln was and exchanged kind letters with him telling him so.

Wrong again. I find no pride in Americans killing Americans.

I do find admiration for men like Sherman who knew how to end it. If he would have been from the South I would have felt the same.

Would have made little difference, in that eventually we would have joined together again for our mutual benefit.

I will say this about Sherman. When Louisiana seceded, and he left the superintendent job at the school that was later to become LSU, he told Lincoln look! These people are forming state guards and militias! They are prepping for a war! He was pretty much laughed at.

“At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.”

…The prophetic words of William Tecumseh Sherman on December 24, 1860, after he learned of South Carolina’s secession.

Unfortunately for you, you are not very good at stand up comedy.

And you're not good at critical thinking.

Ha,

You still pulled the short stick.
Anyway, run up to Portland, I’m sure antifa will welcome you. Maybe you can even make a buck off them as a motivational speaker. You know, a rally around the flag type gig.

You're totally lost. Unfortunately, you're far from being unique.

I think he'd be pretty good at that. Maybe not with a snowflake crowd, but the only things they find funny, aren't.

You really should put more thought in getting your tit out of the ringer. Give your Portland buds a call if necessary. They probably have your back.

Typical campfire CW thread;

Poster #1; "Hey! I picked up an awesome original Springfield Model 1861 Rifle Musket with bayonet!"

Poster #2; "Wow! That’s cool! Post up some pics!”

Poster #3; "Damn yankee musket!!!"

Poster #1; “But it has confederate provenance!"

Poster #4; "Some Inbred redneck took it off dead union soldier!”

Ad nauseam

The conclusion of the Battle of Gettysburg saw the Confederate Army in full retreat, forced to abandon all of its dead and most of its wounded. This left the Union Army and the local citizens with the job of cleanup. It was when the weapons were being gathered and added to a master list of enemy possessions found that people started to notice something strange.

The numbers we have today state that at least 27,574 rifles were recovered, although some sources claim the number to be as high as 37,000. Of the weapons that were salvaged, an incredible 24,000 rifles were still loaded (that’s either 87% or 63%, depending on which estimate you accept.) Of the total number, half had been loaded more than once, and a quarter had been reloaded multiple times. Apparently, one poor soldier had reloaded his weapon twenty-three times, but the weird thing is that he never fired a single shot.
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/30/guns-gettysburg-found-loaded/

After the Battle of Gettysburg, the discarded rifles were collected and sent to Washington to be inspected and reissued. Of the 37,574 rifles recovered, approximately 24,000 were still loaded; 6,000 had one round in the barrel; 12,000 had two rounds in the barrel; 6,000 had three to ten rounds in the barrel. One rifle, the most remarkable of all, had been stuffed to the top with twenty-three rounds in the barrel.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/discarded-rifles-at-gettysburg.81870/

Naturally the Gettysburg NPS museum has a really nice selection of weapons on display. Amazing the non standardization of weapons and ammo. A logistic nightmare.

I found this an interesting bit of research. N B Tanner’s factory was here in Bastrop Tx. A very small building. Perhapes 12 x 12. Still stands in town not far off SH 71.

http://americansocietyofarmscollect...ract-Rifles-of-the-Texas-State-Milit.pdf

For the most part during WW2 in Germany, the U.S. chose military or industrial targets, and used Daylight raids to avoid excessive civilian casualties. Britain, OTOH, were using nighttime raids on civilian neighborhoods. They were taking a beating early in the war trying to hit well protected military targets in daytime, but after Germans started bombing London the gloves came off. I ain't saying the U.S. Didn't. There were several cities firebombed into nothing but soot, Dresden being the most famous. But as a rule, the U.S. concentrated on stuff to damage the German war effort. As a matter of fact the U.S. Refused the Dresden raid until the Brits pointed out the huge rail depot there.
Hiroshima was picked as a target for the bomb mainly because it was (A) relatively undamaged by bombing and (B) the seaport and small army base located there. Nagasaki was hit because of cloud cover over the primary target. (I forget what city)
Japanese industry was broken up into smaller cottage shops in civilian areas. Most everything there was built of paper and wood.
Comparing Sherman's March to bombing Germany and Japan is pretty Apples to oranges to my mind. I still maintain that his primary concern should have been The Army of Tennessee. The shortest route to the end of the war was by destroying the Confederate Armies.
7mm

An aerial armada of 334 B-29 bombers took off from newly established bases in the Mariana Islands, bound for Tokyo. In the space of a few hours, they dropped 1,667 tons of napalm-filled incendiary bombs on the Japanese capital, killing more than 100,000 people in a single strike, and injuring several times that number. It was the highest death toll of any air raid during the war, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By comparison, the bombing of Dresden a month earlier had resulted in around 25,000 deaths.
Read more at https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/deadliest-air-raid-history-180954512/#IjBBLkTxSSAlibib.99

What? I didn't compare anything other than your comment. "neither ever deliberately targeted civilians." Now you admit sometimes they did in WW!! and the A bomb was unleashed on civilians.. Approximately 600,000 civilians is a not insignificant number.

Other than reply on your comment of deliberately targeted civilians, did I at anytime compare Shermans tactics to Germany and Japan. Damn, make sure you don't decide to ever write a history book.

You are guessing on what his primary concern should have been. Simply put he didn't think much of your suggestion, and his object was to wreck havoc and horror on each and all that left the Union ranks.

Having your opinion of the whys and whats is fine with me. However, making incorrect comments about mine isn't.


"Fierce Patriot" by Robert O'connell will give some lacking insight into Sherman.


"Memoirs of General William T. Sherman" by the man himself would be another.

War isn't pretty and the things the Japanese did to our soldiers was pretty remarkable. They were brutal not only to us but to anyone they fought. Ask the Chinese and Burmese what it was like under Jap control. We didn't want to have to invade Japan so decisions were made. Those bombs were horrific but ultimately brought the war to an end. It had been predicted we'd loose a million troops if we invaded. Hitler had no problem dropping bombs on London so "he that sows the wind will endure the whirlwind". Or something to that effect.

The Civil War is not much different. It was another time with other ROE. I tend to let it rest in peace. We lost a lot of good men on both sides. As for the rifles left at Gettysburg Who knows what happened in the heat of battle. one thing's for sure the Confederates lost that one and ultimately the war.

7mm wants to know if they killed any civilians. If they did, he thinks it was an exception and most certainly not done on purpose.

Sherman probably smiled from somewhere:

“If war with the Japanese does come, we’ll fight mercilessly,” General George C. Marshall told news reporters in an off-the-record briefing on November 15, 1941, three weeks before Pearl Harbor. “Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians—it will be all-out.”
Read more at https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/deadliest-air-raid-history-180954512/#MBfmJT23mjXg2ttq.99

Bob, is there a Historical Marker there ?