Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Story Of Jacob Miller... Hard Headed Yankee Takes One Between The Eyes.

I doubt me and you are related.

As to the marksmanship issue, certainly those from rural backgrounds, especially Scots-Irish, on average were better marksmen, this included a larger proportion of Southern men who found themselves fighting very similar ilk when they went up against Union troops from Wisconsin, Minnesota and other more-recently settled areas.

Overall though, the Springfield and Enfield rifled muskets and their parabola trajectories required exact range estimation and practice, a thing in short supply in both armies. That and tactics, as actually deployed in battle the practical range of the rifled musket was scarcely greater than that of the smoothbore musket, which is precisely why some Union regiments preferred the old .69 cal smoothbores a loaded with buck and ball.

Ironically, England at that time was far ahead of us in formal marksmanship training. Part of the reason the US on both sides was flooded with Enfields is that these had been civilian-owned weapons of various quasi-military competitive shooting clubs. Shortly before our War of Secession the British government announced that none of these citizen militias were eligible for acceptance into the Army unless they were equipped with Enfields actually made in the Enfield armory, hence guys were unloading their knock-offs to re-equip.

It was Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, formerly a Corporal in the British army, who incorporated formal British Army-style marksmanship training for his men at the end of 1863 as a result of their dismal marksmanship.



Who fought the most battles on the defending side? When the South did go on the offense such as Shiloh, Gettysburg and especially the bloodbath at Franklin their losses were also heavy also.



Guys like you always talk like Lincoln could somehow compel two million pro-Union guys to throw themselves time and again into hailstorms of Southern lead.

Even in the midst of the unremitting slaughter suffered under Grant in 1864, those exact same troops gave Lincoln his victory in the election that year, one Lincoln fully expected to lose.



“They”? You mean the degenerate John Wilkes Booth and his pathetic ragtag crew? IIRC he got no assistance at all from his fellow Southerners during his flight, assassination was and is a repugnant tactic.

If Lincoln had let the southern states "go in peace," that would not have been the end of it. the precedent would have been established. Very soon, Texas or some state would have seceded from the confederacy. California, New England, or some other region, distant from the main part of the North, could have seceded from the USA. Just imagine Illinois threatening to secede if the Feds didn't bail out their corrupt pension system. The nation could not exist with secession.

If it had turned out differently, the Germans would probably have won WWI. Well, at least there would not have been WWII.

The South was stupid. If they had stayed in, they would have had enough votes to prevent the 13th Amendment, that outlawed slavery, from passing. Then they could have gradually emancipated the slaves without the excesses of Reconstruction. Does anyone seriously believe that slavery and all the "moonlight and magnolia" stuff could have survived until 2020?

Nothing to say about the civil war, but I've found in life that if you want to lose a friend or make an enemy, prove them wrong. It will work almost every time.

"If" Europeans had supported the CSA there might still be a CSA, but they didn't support the CSA, probably because they were unable to get over the moral hurdle of supporting the continuance of slavery in the CSA when they had already abolished it themselves.

Heck, if I knew the winning number for tonight's Mega-Millions drawing I'd buy a ticket with that number and win some portion of a jackpot estimated at $113,000,000.

I enjoy your bike travels and so on, but you've overloaded your ass with this statement.....

No doubt, some northerners fought to preserve the Union as well as some fought to end slavery. Two totally different POLITICAL reasons why the north went to war.

Your statement about most fought to preserve the Union is not correct. A vast majority of Union troops were recent immigrants who got off a boat from Europe who were broke as hell with no jobs, little to no food, and no place to sleep the next night. Many of them ended up in the Union army for two reasons that had nothing to do with either of the two above political issues. They were literally recruited right off the boats.

1. The military offered them three meals and a bed which they otherwise didn't have. So they enlisted in droves.......

2. Many rich Yankee who did not feel that saving the Union or ending slavery was important enough to go to war over paid replacements to take their places in the military.

The Union army was made up with many of those immigrants in the ranks but for two reasons cited just above, again which neither one had anything to do with preserving the Union or ending slavery. Most of them were simply trying to survive. Some got a "job and a roof over their head" in the military while some literally got paid up front to be soldiers so some rich kid didn't have to be a soldier and fight "to preserve the Union and end slavery".

If preserving the Union and ending slavery is what you teach your HS students when they ask why did the Northern people actually fight the Civil War, you need to tell them the entire story...... Once Lincoln saw that "Preserving the Union" wasn't a catchy enough political phrase strong enough to keep the populace motivated to fight, he politically interjected the other questionable option which was "to free the slaves" And he only did that after the Union victory at Antietam literally kept the vultures from the front door of the White House. And all it did in spite of 11th grade history saying it "freed the slaves" was to free slaves in lands already secured from the Confederacy. In essence, it was a shallow political statement to rally the people that really didn't mean anything at the time. But it bought Lincoln more time to survive politically at the expense of immigrant soldiers.

Was that your experience while you served, or do you just have old letters to rely on for your modern day opinions?

btw - what you quoted of me, I was saying that many in the north who had money didn't see slavery as a big enough issue to risk getting shot in the ass over.

Served for seven years.

Obviously, neither that nor your letters from ancestors have made you an expert on the Civil War.

You get the casualty numbers right, and then are so far off on this? I think you’re BSing here on purpose



Sorta like how if you had twenty slaves you were excused from the Confederate draft, the fear being there wouldn’t be enough White guys left around to control the slaves.

Which brings up another point; part of the disparity in numbers between Confederate and Union armies was made up for in the large numbers of slaves the accompanies Confederate armies, even into Pennsylvania where Lee’s troops were rounding up escaped slaves and Free Blacks alike. The largest single haul was make by JEB Stuart; most of the 140 Union supply wagons he captured on his idiot end run around the Union army in PA were driven by Free Black teamsters, subsequently carried off into slavery.



Certainly from the Southern end, in their own words “preserving slavery” was a prime motivation. In the North, Abolition, like Pro-Life today was a viewpoint and moral imperative held by a dedicated minority viewed by many as dangerous radicals. Certainly being an outspoken Abolitionist would tank your career for most Union Officers.

The generally accepted view is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a political master stroke by Lincoln to preclude formal recognition and support of the Confederacy by the British and their Empire. Queen Victoria was a fervent Abolitionist, and while not an absolute Monarch her influence on British Policy was enormous. Lincoln woulda done it earlier but he needed a credible victory (ie. Antietam) first or else it would look like an empty gesture.

As for Lincoln’s views on slavery (as opposed to Black people) one only has to look at his unceasing labors on his final masterwork; the 13th Amendment which DID end slavery, everywhere in the United States, serving notice to the fading Confederacy that there would be no compromise.

While the North was trying to advance themself with mechanical automation the retards from the south were still stuck on slave labor.

Even worse, for the previous forty years ALL the Southern Leadership had been members of the “Plantation Aristocracy” making short-sighted decisions designed to preserve the cotton/slavery economy for their own benefit to the detriment of all else.

The same people were stupid enough in 1861 to try and blackmail England into recognition by withholding their own cotton exports, a move which backfired badly as public opinion across England turned against them as well as prompting the Brits to develop their own sources in Egypt and India.

Yep, pretty amazing.

Understandable though since apparently many of them fought in the civil war, claiming "we" did this or "we" coulda done that if...and "won the civil war". Never knew there were so many civil war veteran survivors still around. They'd have to be what, 170 yrs old or so by now? Stolen Valor on a grand scale.

I never claimed to be an expert on the American Civil War, rather I'm the keeper of my ancestors' treasures that I have the honor to preserve. I've read all of the letters, made photocopies of them, and transcribed them, as the paper that they were written on is very old and very fragile. I haven't looked at the actual letters since the last time that I read them to my Grandmother, on July 4, 2002. None of the letters mentions slaves or slavery, mostly gossip and in a couple of them complaints about the leadership of Burnside, Hooker, and Mead between Fredericksburg and the downtime between Gettysburg and Bristow Station.

Among my ancestors who were abolitionists was Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury from 1861 to 1864 and Chief Justice of the SCOTUS from 1864 to 1873.

What did your ancestors who served in the Confederate military write home about?

Pretty much the same things. And yes there are family records that have been preserved.

My grandfather's family were share croppers in South Carolina after coming from Europe. My grandfather was born here. I do remember from experience listening to him that my Grandfather and his older brothers had no real animosity about losing the war, but he distinctly remembered with a lot of passion what his family endured under Reconstruction as he was a young man when their land was confiscated and sold by northerners who had no authority to take the land other than having the Union Army "on the take/getting a percentage" to back them up.

I mentioned the Brenham, TX issue as it is near where I now live. So Reconstruction and its consequences on the South weren't isolated instances. They were a systemic pattern of behavior on the part of an occupying army and its political cronies fed by corrupt politicians in the north. I carry pretty much the same opinion of the Civil War and its consequences that they held. The south lost.....No big deal in the long run, but Reconstructin was an unneeded vengeance against people who now were considered to be part of the once-again restored Union.

Today people want to tear down Confederate monuments and erase everything that some families still hold dear. Kind of like old letters but more public, huh? I'm not in that "cancel culture" crowd. History is what it is. Learn from it and respect it. I have seen the graves of two older brothers of my grandfather (he was the youngest of 7 brothers) who have had stones turned over on their graves at night in recent years because the stones recognize their military service in the SC Infantry. Neither died in the war but the Civil War was forever a part of their lives, and as a result its part of my family's history. One of them, who was my grandfather's oldest brother, had a thumb shot off at the Battle of Honey Hill which was a small/minor battle in comparison to other Civil War battles. Still its part of my family's history.

Interesting story, I had seen his photo. Quite the determination to surive! The buckshot falling out was different! Jacob was from the time of wooden ships, and iron men!

your grandfather was in the Civil War? mine was born in 1885....

That's not what I said. Two of his older brothers were however. He was old enough to remember Reconstruction and that the land that they sharecropped on was seized to profit the Yankees who took it. Among other things.

I'm 100% against tearing down any monuments in an attempt to be politically correct, but I can see how anything associated with the Confederacy might make black folks uncomfortable.

My paternal grandmother's ancestors had come to American while it was still a British Colony, settling in the town of Oyster Bay, NY, in the early 1700's. They were Crown Loyalists and instead of morphing into U.S. Citizens, they decided to remain British Subjects and were relocated to New Brunswick, Canada. I'm sure that they felt put upon, having to give up the land that they had been on for over 70 years, but by the time I knew people on that side of the family they had lost most of their memories/stories of that part of family history. The artifacts that the ancestors had brought with them had been scattered, but I remember that they had a Brown Bess that interested me more than anything else on their family dairy farm.

One of my maternal grandmother's ancestors who fought in the American Civil War was wounded at Kennesaw Mountain. While he was recovering he met a local woman who was employed by the U.S. Army in some capacity. The wound must have been quite severe, as he didn't return to duty until February 1865 somewhere in South Carolina. When the War ended, he mustered out, returned to Georgia and got married. He, his Wife, and some of her Brothers bought land around Vinings. As far as I know, he was the only member of the family who didn't return home to live or returned home and then headed west.

And very much in need of raw materials from the agricultural south for their factories.......and tractors had not been invented yet.......idiot.