By Ed Piper
One of the most fascinating tours we have taken is to the H.L. Hunley submarine, a Confederate submersible that sank to the bottom of the Charleston Harbor after torpedoing and sinking the U.S.S. Housatonic on February 17, 1864.
Interestingly, the sub--which was never commissioned by the Confederacy, thus sometimes incorrectly referred to as the C.S.S. H.L. Hunley--was found in 1995, then raised with great fanfare in a public ceremony in 2000.
In fact, something that really impacted me was Karen, a member of the French Huguenot Church we attended in the French Quarter in Charleston, telling us that she was in the harbor for the raising, and how much that event meant to her.
This brought home to me once again how important "being Southern" is to white Southerners, who relish their heritage, including the Confederate struggle in the Civil War over 150 years ago.
Friday, April 6, 2018
Monday, April 2, 2018
"Forts, forts, forts"
By Ed Piper
It became the running joke the first few days of our Civil War travels to Charleston and Savannah last month (I'm writing April 2, 2018) that Dianna and I were visiting fort after fort, ad nauseum (at least to her nausea).
She was texting family that we visited six (or so) forts in or in the environs of the two Southern cities, which we loved, by the way. We are really feeding our enjoyment of Southern culture, having visited Mississippi (for Vicksburg) and Louisiana last spring.
On this trip, visiting Fort Sumter, of course, was the centerpiece. On the morning of our first full day in Charleston, South Carolina (Fri., March 9), we were able to get up and get out of our hotel (only a short distance from one of the ferry locations on Patriots Point) and get on an early voyage out into Charleston Harbor. The five busloads of third-graders from Spartanburg, South Carolina accompanying (though they were well-behaved) is another story.
After a beatific (I'm exaggerating) lunch at Magnolias Restaurant in the French Quarter--a gentleman in San Diego had recommended eating there, as had someone once we started our trip--it was back to the Quality Inn on Patriots Point for a much-needed nap (travel and lack of sleep continuing to take their toll).
The next day, Saturday, after a stacked doubleheader of visiting the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine research site, then touring the Middleton House on the Ashley River, a former rice plantation--already more than I could ask for in a single day--I gently nudged my supportive travel partner and asked, "Could we swing by Fort Moultrie before it closes?" Fort Moultrie, on the west side of Charleston Harbor, was a point from which Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, which is out in the middle of the harbor.
Having checked my not-trusty iPhone 5s (that story later), which was doing a lot of heavy lifting for us as far as Google Maps direction in steering our rental car around Charleston and getting info on potential sites to visit, I found that the visitors center at this latter fort closes at 5 p.m. Fort Moultrie is situated on Sullivan's Island.
We pulled into the parking lot at 4:32, in time for me to buy a to-be-cherished pin of the fort before the visitors center closed down. We were able to walk the grounds of the preserved fort, which was also in play during the Revolutionary War. Dianna chatted amiably with a member of a rock band that was going to perform that night. The various members of the band were splayed out at different points of the shore, relaxing, viewing things, as were we.
A day later, it was Fort Johnson, of which there are no remains, just a former powder house. Finding a crossbar locked across the road to the former fort's location, I walked the distance up the road. Dianna took a break in the Hyundai Sonata (which did good service during the trip; it was just a leaky tire that caused a cliffhanger on our last day--see blog entry on that).
Fort Johnson, on the western side of the harbor, was the location from which Confederates shelled on Fort Sumter from the opposite side from Fort Moultrie. A third point was a battery to the south of Fort Sumter. These were the first shots of the Civil War in April 1861.
So, three forts in three days began the legend.
When, on Monday morning, we drove the 86 miles southwest from our initial city to Savannah, Georgia, I drove us directly to Fort Pulaski, southeast of the metropolitan area, in order to save backtracking. This is where the fort legend really took hold.
It became the running joke the first few days of our Civil War travels to Charleston and Savannah last month (I'm writing April 2, 2018) that Dianna and I were visiting fort after fort, ad nauseum (at least to her nausea).
She was texting family that we visited six (or so) forts in or in the environs of the two Southern cities, which we loved, by the way. We are really feeding our enjoyment of Southern culture, having visited Mississippi (for Vicksburg) and Louisiana last spring.
On this trip, visiting Fort Sumter, of course, was the centerpiece. On the morning of our first full day in Charleston, South Carolina (Fri., March 9), we were able to get up and get out of our hotel (only a short distance from one of the ferry locations on Patriots Point) and get on an early voyage out into Charleston Harbor. The five busloads of third-graders from Spartanburg, South Carolina accompanying (though they were well-behaved) is another story.
After a beatific (I'm exaggerating) lunch at Magnolias Restaurant in the French Quarter--a gentleman in San Diego had recommended eating there, as had someone once we started our trip--it was back to the Quality Inn on Patriots Point for a much-needed nap (travel and lack of sleep continuing to take their toll).
The next day, Saturday, after a stacked doubleheader of visiting the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine research site, then touring the Middleton House on the Ashley River, a former rice plantation--already more than I could ask for in a single day--I gently nudged my supportive travel partner and asked, "Could we swing by Fort Moultrie before it closes?" Fort Moultrie, on the west side of Charleston Harbor, was a point from which Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, which is out in the middle of the harbor.
Having checked my not-trusty iPhone 5s (that story later), which was doing a lot of heavy lifting for us as far as Google Maps direction in steering our rental car around Charleston and getting info on potential sites to visit, I found that the visitors center at this latter fort closes at 5 p.m. Fort Moultrie is situated on Sullivan's Island.
We pulled into the parking lot at 4:32, in time for me to buy a to-be-cherished pin of the fort before the visitors center closed down. We were able to walk the grounds of the preserved fort, which was also in play during the Revolutionary War. Dianna chatted amiably with a member of a rock band that was going to perform that night. The various members of the band were splayed out at different points of the shore, relaxing, viewing things, as were we.
A day later, it was Fort Johnson, of which there are no remains, just a former powder house. Finding a crossbar locked across the road to the former fort's location, I walked the distance up the road. Dianna took a break in the Hyundai Sonata (which did good service during the trip; it was just a leaky tire that caused a cliffhanger on our last day--see blog entry on that).
Fort Johnson, on the western side of the harbor, was the location from which Confederates shelled on Fort Sumter from the opposite side from Fort Moultrie. A third point was a battery to the south of Fort Sumter. These were the first shots of the Civil War in April 1861.
So, three forts in three days began the legend.
When, on Monday morning, we drove the 86 miles southwest from our initial city to Savannah, Georgia, I drove us directly to Fort Pulaski, southeast of the metropolitan area, in order to save backtracking. This is where the fort legend really took hold.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Byrne on the phone from Gettysburg
By Ed Piper
Paul Byrne, La Jolla's head track coach, was on the phone from Gettysburg. "I'm in a hotel so it could be noisy," said the math teacher, submitting to an interview about this year's Vikings girls and boys track teams.
Later in the conversation, he revealed that he was in the historic town, where he is one of 12 teachers or teachers' spouses serving as chaperones on the "East Coast Experience" for 145 eighth-graders at Muirlands Middle School.
On Wed., March 28, 2018, the six-bus group, including "boys red bus" and "girls blue bus" lists, rolled into the Pennsylvania town, where the Civil War took a turn against the Confederacy despite heavy losses for the Union, after visiting Amish country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Thursday's schedule was equally as hectic: a bus and walking tour of the battlefield, then on to Washington, D.C. to see several memorials and an opportunity "to take a photo of the White House through the fence". No slack time here. The teacher's motto: Keep 'em busy, and they won't get into trouble.
As I write this Thursday morning, the group is already activated for the day--three hours ahead of Pacific Time--facing visits tonight, after dinner, to the following memorials in D.C.: the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, and the Marine Corps War Memorial.
Whew. That sounds exhausting, just reading it.
Meanwhile, Byrne's track speedsters and jumpers are enjoying the Spring Break week off back here at home. Deyna Roberson Brookins, who coaches runners primarily, is running abbreviated or partial workouts at La Jolla High.
"It's a fun time," said Byrne, reflecting on the explosion of 175 student athletes receiving uniforms this season for the track team. That includes a humongous and talented freshman class.
That 175 number is up from 60 team members only four years ago, when Byrne took the head coaching position after a couple of years of turnover of head coaches that crippled the Vikings' continuity and the diminished the attractiveness of the program.
Now, as Brookins says, "There is a lot of excitement (around the track program). Even football players come out." One of Byrne's innovations is a middle school track meet, this year's taking place on cinco de mayo (May 5) (in Spanish, dates and months are not capitalized--you could win a grammar trivia contest with that).
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Civil War travel trials
By Ed Piper
The last day of our recent trip to visit Charleston and Savannah Civil War and Southern culture sites (March 8-20, 2018) ended up being more exciting than we hoped for.
A left rear tire on our rented Hyundai Sonata, with a slow leak, became a terror by late afternoon as we speeded on the final leg of our journey from Atlanta back to our starting point at Charleston, South Carolina, where we would take our flight home the next morning.
I watched in increasing fascination and mini-horror as the LED display on the car's dash, indicating the pressure in each of the tires, remained at 44 or 45 for each of the other tires, but every five or 10 minutes by 3:30 or 4 p.m. dropping the left rear pressure to 36, then 35, and on.
Wanting to catch a last bite of Southern cuisine at Magnolias, a restaurant we went to for lunch on our first day a week and a half before, we raced into the French Quarter of Charleston. Dianna was able to secure a table for us in a room in the back, which had a neat, quaint setting.
Meanwhile, I negotiated the downtown parking situation near the Battery, the area facing the famous harbor where the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861.
When we returned to our rental car after a scrumptious meal (identical to what I ordered our first day at Magnolias: pulled pork, mac and cheese, collard greens, also a decadent pecan brownie we shared), the PSI in the offending tire had dropped even more. This was going to be a problem, because now the tire wasn't leaking slowly. Apparently, the energy generated by our speed through the afternoon from Atlanta (a five-hour drive) had elevated the pressure inside the tire, or, I'm thinking now, whatever was stuck in the tire causing the leak was now not keeping its finger in the figurative dike as well.
I advised Dianna, elevating her blood pressure, I'm sure. We were both tired from a long day, we were at the end our trip, and we had the challenge of finding our hotel and getting to the Charleston airport early the next morning for our 7:23 a.m. flight.
Someone had told Dianna there was a Kangaroo gas station down the street. We found it. We located the tire inflating machine. I went inside the convenience store to ask if the pump was reliable. The clerk said yes. A young man who was inside paying for something else heard me and helpfully suggested using a can of the substance you spray in the stem to plug small leaks. "Do you have a can of it?" he asked. I said no.
He followed me out the door, I thought, but as I returned to the tire pump across the parking lot, I couldn't spot him.
The machine said it took credit cards. My credit card wasn't working. Dianna had some quarters, but I wanted to make the credit card work if we could--we had already added air to the tire three times previously during our two-week trip, so if we had an emergency with low inflation leaving the gas station, her change might come in handy later. Or if we needed more change than we had, we wouldn't have to go scrambling for more coins.
A woman nearby, like the young man, was very helpful. The time of day was already late afternoon, and it was going to get dark eventually. Dianna: "We're going to have to sleep at the airport." I said, "No, we won't. We will solve this."
The woman encouraged me to go ahead and use the coins. It worked. I couldn't change the automatic setting for the pump above 32 PSI. The other tires were at 44 to 47 PSI pressure, so I wanted to pump the bad tire up to 48 or 50 if I could, then we would make a dash to the airport for a replacement car.
In between all of this, the young man had made his appearance again to inform me he didn't have a can of the leak-sealer in his car. I mentioned we had a rental car. He: "Then let the rental agency take care of it."
With his suggestion, my plan changed from filling the tire and making our way to our hotel, 10 miles south, where I could call a tow truck or find another way to have the tire patched, to skedaddling to the airport 12 miles away and exchanging cars.
On Google maps, my cell phone told me the distance to the airport.
The helpful lady tapped the button setting the machine's tire pressure and we got the setting up to 48. Achieved.
Both people, by the way, were African-Americans, which we noted. We found a good, if not ideal, camaraderie throughout our trip with people of different races and cultures. It was very encouraging after recent incidents of racial tension and violence in the news.
Leaky tire filled temporarily, we barrelled toward Charleston International Airport, Google directions in hand.
The LED indicator showed 47, then 46, but slowly. The drop in pressure in the bad tire wasn't precipitous, as it had been at the end of our Atlanta-Charleston jaunt, or on our nervous short drive from Magnolias to Kangaroo. The air in the tire was cooler in temperature? It had dropped to a low of 17 or less before the reinflation.
We pulled into Enterprise car rental's return lot just outside the airport terminal. We parked. We had made it without getting stuck in the dark on the side of the highway. Thank God.
We had an Alamo rental, but Alamo closes at 3 p.m., so arriving and now, we dealt both times with Enterprise, which owns Alamo. (National is part of the same megacorporation.)
The gentleman at the counter was very nice, helpful, as was the man attending cars outside. The former asked me if a truck was okay. I asked, "Where would we put our luggage?" He then said, "I have two Ford Fiestas." My mother had had one, and I had bought it from her, the last car she owned. I knew, though 6'5", I could get into it. I said, "Yes, that will work."
So, within a few minutes, we were loaded in our new rental car--one large suitcase turned on its side to fit in the small back seat, the other in the tiny trunk--and on our way to our hotel.
We slept from 10 p.m. (fitfully?) to 4:08 a.m., when I woke up and saw the time and said to Dianna, "Hun, it's 4:08. We need to get going." We checked out of our hotel (without breakfast, which didn't open until 6 a.m.) by 5:25.
The last day of our recent trip to visit Charleston and Savannah Civil War and Southern culture sites (March 8-20, 2018) ended up being more exciting than we hoped for.
A left rear tire on our rented Hyundai Sonata, with a slow leak, became a terror by late afternoon as we speeded on the final leg of our journey from Atlanta back to our starting point at Charleston, South Carolina, where we would take our flight home the next morning.
I watched in increasing fascination and mini-horror as the LED display on the car's dash, indicating the pressure in each of the tires, remained at 44 or 45 for each of the other tires, but every five or 10 minutes by 3:30 or 4 p.m. dropping the left rear pressure to 36, then 35, and on.
Wanting to catch a last bite of Southern cuisine at Magnolias, a restaurant we went to for lunch on our first day a week and a half before, we raced into the French Quarter of Charleston. Dianna was able to secure a table for us in a room in the back, which had a neat, quaint setting.
Meanwhile, I negotiated the downtown parking situation near the Battery, the area facing the famous harbor where the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861.
When we returned to our rental car after a scrumptious meal (identical to what I ordered our first day at Magnolias: pulled pork, mac and cheese, collard greens, also a decadent pecan brownie we shared), the PSI in the offending tire had dropped even more. This was going to be a problem, because now the tire wasn't leaking slowly. Apparently, the energy generated by our speed through the afternoon from Atlanta (a five-hour drive) had elevated the pressure inside the tire, or, I'm thinking now, whatever was stuck in the tire causing the leak was now not keeping its finger in the figurative dike as well.
I advised Dianna, elevating her blood pressure, I'm sure. We were both tired from a long day, we were at the end our trip, and we had the challenge of finding our hotel and getting to the Charleston airport early the next morning for our 7:23 a.m. flight.
Someone had told Dianna there was a Kangaroo gas station down the street. We found it. We located the tire inflating machine. I went inside the convenience store to ask if the pump was reliable. The clerk said yes. A young man who was inside paying for something else heard me and helpfully suggested using a can of the substance you spray in the stem to plug small leaks. "Do you have a can of it?" he asked. I said no.
He followed me out the door, I thought, but as I returned to the tire pump across the parking lot, I couldn't spot him.
The machine said it took credit cards. My credit card wasn't working. Dianna had some quarters, but I wanted to make the credit card work if we could--we had already added air to the tire three times previously during our two-week trip, so if we had an emergency with low inflation leaving the gas station, her change might come in handy later. Or if we needed more change than we had, we wouldn't have to go scrambling for more coins.
A woman nearby, like the young man, was very helpful. The time of day was already late afternoon, and it was going to get dark eventually. Dianna: "We're going to have to sleep at the airport." I said, "No, we won't. We will solve this."
The woman encouraged me to go ahead and use the coins. It worked. I couldn't change the automatic setting for the pump above 32 PSI. The other tires were at 44 to 47 PSI pressure, so I wanted to pump the bad tire up to 48 or 50 if I could, then we would make a dash to the airport for a replacement car.
In between all of this, the young man had made his appearance again to inform me he didn't have a can of the leak-sealer in his car. I mentioned we had a rental car. He: "Then let the rental agency take care of it."
With his suggestion, my plan changed from filling the tire and making our way to our hotel, 10 miles south, where I could call a tow truck or find another way to have the tire patched, to skedaddling to the airport 12 miles away and exchanging cars.
On Google maps, my cell phone told me the distance to the airport.
The helpful lady tapped the button setting the machine's tire pressure and we got the setting up to 48. Achieved.
Both people, by the way, were African-Americans, which we noted. We found a good, if not ideal, camaraderie throughout our trip with people of different races and cultures. It was very encouraging after recent incidents of racial tension and violence in the news.
Leaky tire filled temporarily, we barrelled toward Charleston International Airport, Google directions in hand.
The LED indicator showed 47, then 46, but slowly. The drop in pressure in the bad tire wasn't precipitous, as it had been at the end of our Atlanta-Charleston jaunt, or on our nervous short drive from Magnolias to Kangaroo. The air in the tire was cooler in temperature? It had dropped to a low of 17 or less before the reinflation.
We pulled into Enterprise car rental's return lot just outside the airport terminal. We parked. We had made it without getting stuck in the dark on the side of the highway. Thank God.
We had an Alamo rental, but Alamo closes at 3 p.m., so arriving and now, we dealt both times with Enterprise, which owns Alamo. (National is part of the same megacorporation.)
The gentleman at the counter was very nice, helpful, as was the man attending cars outside. The former asked me if a truck was okay. I asked, "Where would we put our luggage?" He then said, "I have two Ford Fiestas." My mother had had one, and I had bought it from her, the last car she owned. I knew, though 6'5", I could get into it. I said, "Yes, that will work."
So, within a few minutes, we were loaded in our new rental car--one large suitcase turned on its side to fit in the small back seat, the other in the tiny trunk--and on our way to our hotel.
We slept from 10 p.m. (fitfully?) to 4:08 a.m., when I woke up and saw the time and said to Dianna, "Hun, it's 4:08. We need to get going." We checked out of our hotel (without breakfast, which didn't open until 6 a.m.) by 5:25.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
'Us' vs. 'Them'
By Ed Piper
Southerners still view themselves as apart from Northerners.
At least, from the monuments we visited and the people--very friendly, by the way, both black and white--we interacted with on our just-completed trip to South Carolina and Georgia, the descendants of the Confederacy identify as being different from us folks from points north.
The young man, 30-ish, white, who charged us our admission at Old Fort Jackson near downtown Savannah, Georgia, was amiable and didn't have a Southern drawl. But in giving us information on the site, he said, "We (meaning the Confederate side) had a submarine, and they (the Union) had one, too."
This was in response to my wife Dianna's mention about our earlier visit to the lab in Charleston, South Carolina, analyzing the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submersible that sank the U.S.S. Housatonic, then went down itself with all eight men aboard. (The sub is sitting in solution at present, having been cleaned of its outer "concretion" accumulated from 1864, when it went down, to 2000, when it was raised in Charleston Harbor.) (The Hunley was never commissioned, so it is sometimes wrongly referred to as the C.S.S. H.L. Hunley.)
The "us" versus "them" terminology contrasted with the words of the owner of Hillbilly Willie's BBQ in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we ate later in the trip. Working the tables in a right friendly bit of Southern hospitality, this latter gentleman talked in terms of "Northerners" coming down to do battle with the Southerners during the Civil War.
In the Magnolia Cemetery in a rundown part of Charleston, we drove to view the burial places for the 21 crew members of the Hunley. (You note that earlier I said eight men went down with the submarine; they did, but there were two accidents before the torpedoing of the Housatonic, claiming more Confederate sailors' lives.)
There, in the cemetery (which is in bad repair, just as the area of the city surrounding it), the Hunley partisans had been buried with honors after their remains were raised, complete, with the sub in a public ceremony.
In fact, a member of the French Huguenot Church we visited in Charleston told me with evident pride that she had been present in the harbor on the day the Hunley was raised, after 136 years at the bottom. She said there was a big ceremony, with a lot of fanfare.
I asked Dianna at one point of the trip: Did anyone ever think of these men fighting against their own rightly-established federal government as being guilty of treason?
In the areas we traveled to, and on the interpretive materials provided at historical sites, we were informed that men who took up arms for the Confederacy "made the ultimate sacrifice" (if they died), were dedicated and honorable men, and the like. I don't know that the Civil War is still being fought now in the minds of many (or most) white people in the South. But they, from all indications, carry a mindset of us versus them.
I need to clarify something from my second paragraph. Black and white folks down South, we found to be very friendly and willing to take the time to talk (something I don't always slow down to do back home in San Diego). But I have yet to encounter an African-American who speaks up for the cause of the Confederacy. Only white folks in the South, of those we've met and interacted with, do that.
An African-American woman who checked us in at our hotel in Savannah, while beyond friendly, gracious, and helpful to us as we arrived tired after a day of travel from Charleston followed by activities, made clear she wished us all the best in visiting Civil War-related sites--but she wanted no part of it herself. "I can know history, but I don't have to relive it," she said in a boundary-making statement I found very sensible and articulate.
John, the volunteer tour guide at Fort Pulaski, outside Savannah, was a fish out of water in these parts. When we came upon him prior to our 1:00 tour of the fort, administered by the National Park Service, he was engaged in an exchange with another white Southerner, a woman, who had just taken his earlier tour.
"Your comments about the Lost Cause (the myth that the South lost a glorious struggle against Northern oppression in the Civil War, fighting for state's rights rather than to preserve slavery), I have a problem with," this 30's-something woman said, obviously emotional. John, who grew up being inculcated in Lost Cause thinking by his parents, had debunked it in comments during the tour.
Said she, "Women and children in the South were tortured by Union soldiers. They were maimed."
John, thoroughly calm, replied, "Let's not let facts get in the way of a good story." He went on to acknowledge that bad things were done by the Union army, but he said bad things were done by both side. "In the Gettysburg campaign," he pointed out to her, "the Confederate army committed some abuses." His response to the lady was that reports of attacks and mistreatment of civilians by Union soldiers were exaggerated to support Southern claims.
But she wasn't having it. Her voice tremored as she concluded the exchange, "Well, thank you for the tour," and headed for the front gate.
Southerners still view themselves as apart from Northerners.
At least, from the monuments we visited and the people--very friendly, by the way, both black and white--we interacted with on our just-completed trip to South Carolina and Georgia, the descendants of the Confederacy identify as being different from us folks from points north.
The young man, 30-ish, white, who charged us our admission at Old Fort Jackson near downtown Savannah, Georgia, was amiable and didn't have a Southern drawl. But in giving us information on the site, he said, "We (meaning the Confederate side) had a submarine, and they (the Union) had one, too."
This was in response to my wife Dianna's mention about our earlier visit to the lab in Charleston, South Carolina, analyzing the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submersible that sank the U.S.S. Housatonic, then went down itself with all eight men aboard. (The sub is sitting in solution at present, having been cleaned of its outer "concretion" accumulated from 1864, when it went down, to 2000, when it was raised in Charleston Harbor.) (The Hunley was never commissioned, so it is sometimes wrongly referred to as the C.S.S. H.L. Hunley.)
The "us" versus "them" terminology contrasted with the words of the owner of Hillbilly Willie's BBQ in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we ate later in the trip. Working the tables in a right friendly bit of Southern hospitality, this latter gentleman talked in terms of "Northerners" coming down to do battle with the Southerners during the Civil War.
In the Magnolia Cemetery in a rundown part of Charleston, we drove to view the burial places for the 21 crew members of the Hunley. (You note that earlier I said eight men went down with the submarine; they did, but there were two accidents before the torpedoing of the Housatonic, claiming more Confederate sailors' lives.)
There, in the cemetery (which is in bad repair, just as the area of the city surrounding it), the Hunley partisans had been buried with honors after their remains were raised, complete, with the sub in a public ceremony.
In fact, a member of the French Huguenot Church we visited in Charleston told me with evident pride that she had been present in the harbor on the day the Hunley was raised, after 136 years at the bottom. She said there was a big ceremony, with a lot of fanfare.
I asked Dianna at one point of the trip: Did anyone ever think of these men fighting against their own rightly-established federal government as being guilty of treason?
In the areas we traveled to, and on the interpretive materials provided at historical sites, we were informed that men who took up arms for the Confederacy "made the ultimate sacrifice" (if they died), were dedicated and honorable men, and the like. I don't know that the Civil War is still being fought now in the minds of many (or most) white people in the South. But they, from all indications, carry a mindset of us versus them.
I need to clarify something from my second paragraph. Black and white folks down South, we found to be very friendly and willing to take the time to talk (something I don't always slow down to do back home in San Diego). But I have yet to encounter an African-American who speaks up for the cause of the Confederacy. Only white folks in the South, of those we've met and interacted with, do that.
An African-American woman who checked us in at our hotel in Savannah, while beyond friendly, gracious, and helpful to us as we arrived tired after a day of travel from Charleston followed by activities, made clear she wished us all the best in visiting Civil War-related sites--but she wanted no part of it herself. "I can know history, but I don't have to relive it," she said in a boundary-making statement I found very sensible and articulate.
John, the volunteer tour guide at Fort Pulaski, outside Savannah, was a fish out of water in these parts. When we came upon him prior to our 1:00 tour of the fort, administered by the National Park Service, he was engaged in an exchange with another white Southerner, a woman, who had just taken his earlier tour.
"Your comments about the Lost Cause (the myth that the South lost a glorious struggle against Northern oppression in the Civil War, fighting for state's rights rather than to preserve slavery), I have a problem with," this 30's-something woman said, obviously emotional. John, who grew up being inculcated in Lost Cause thinking by his parents, had debunked it in comments during the tour.
Said she, "Women and children in the South were tortured by Union soldiers. They were maimed."
John, thoroughly calm, replied, "Let's not let facts get in the way of a good story." He went on to acknowledge that bad things were done by the Union army, but he said bad things were done by both side. "In the Gettysburg campaign," he pointed out to her, "the Confederate army committed some abuses." His response to the lady was that reports of attacks and mistreatment of civilians by Union soldiers were exaggerated to support Southern claims.
But she wasn't having it. Her voice tremored as she concluded the exchange, "Well, thank you for the tour," and headed for the front gate.
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