|
Execution Monument
Rededication
HARRISONBURG, VA - The rededication of a memorial marking the site
of a post-Civil War execution will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday,
June 27th. The memorial is on U.S. 11, about two miles north of
New Market. The Luray Chapter 436 of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy is hosting the ceremony. The memorial marks the spot
where two former Confederate soldiers were shot and killed more
than two months after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of
Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House. Confederate Capt.
George Summers and Sgt. Isaac Koontz were executed by the U.S.
Army on June 27, 1865, for stealing horses belonging to the Union.
Summers and Koontz were part of a group of four men who stole Army
horses at gunpoint while returning home from the war in March
1865, according to an account by Robert H. Moore II, who has
written a book about the incident. After the men arrived at their
homes in Page County, family members prevailed on them to return
the horses. They returned the property to the satisfaction of the
commanding officer and the matter appeared settled. But during an
argument weeks later involving one of the men, an assertion was
made that the horses had not been returned. The allegation
appeared to rekindle the issue. A subordinate officer issued
orders to find the men and execute them while the commanding
officer who made the earlier arrangement was not in camp,
according to Moore's account. Soldiers found two of the four men
and brought them to the Army camp at Rude's Hill, Moore's account
said. The two men were executed without a trial, according to
Moore. Military authorities eventually pardoned the two other men
involved in the theft of the horses. Valley Civil War veterans
preserved the memory of the execution with a monument where the
men were shot. They helped dedicate the monument on the
anniversary of the execution in 1893. Four years ago, the
Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation acquired the monument
and surrounding property.
Last year, members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans camps
Summers-Koontz, Luray, and Jack Adams, Edinburg, and the
battlefields foundation, which is also hosting Saturday's event,
worked to clean and restore the monument and iron fence and create
access to the site from U.S. 11.
Lincoln's First Solution
to Slavery
Early in his presidency, Abe was convinced that white Americans
would never accept black Americans. "You and we are different
races," the president told a committee of "colored" leaders in
August 1862. "…But for your race among us there could not be
war…It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated." Lincoln
proposed voluntary emigration to Central America, seeing it as a
more convenient destination than Liberia. This idea didn't sit
well with leaders like Frederick Douglass, who considered
colonization to be "a safety valve…for white racism." One of the
first attempts was on Île à Vache, a.k.a. Cow Island, a small isle
off the coast of Haiti. The island was owned by land developer
Bernard Kock, who claimed he had approved a black American colony
with the Haitian government. No one bothered to call him on that
claim. Following a smallpox outbreak on the boat ride down,
hundreds of black colonizers were abandoned on the island with no
housing prepared for them, as Kock had promised. To make matters
worse, the soil on Cow Island was too poor for any serious
agriculture. In January 1864, the Navy rescued the survivors from
the ripoff colony. Once Île à Vache fell through, Lincoln never
spoke of colonization again.
|
|
Inaugural Address of
Jefferson Davis
Delivered at the Alabama Capitol, Monday, 18 February 1861
Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of America,Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of
the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the
discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my
abilities, but with a sustaining confidence in the wisdom of those who
are to guide and aid me in the administration of public affairs, and
an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of the people.
Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government
to take the place of this, and which, by its greater moral and
physical power, will be better able to combat with the many
difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate
nations, I enter upon the duties of the office, to which I have been
chosen, with the hope that the beginning of our career, as a
Confederacy, may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our
enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have
asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain.
Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the
history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments
rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the
people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become
destructive of the ends for which they were established. The declared
purpose of the compact of union from which we have withdrawn, was "to
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare;" and when in the judgment of the
sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted
from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer
the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the
ballot-box, declared that so far as they were concerned, the
government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they
merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776
had defined to be inalienable. Of the time and occasion for its
exercise, they as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself.
The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the
rectitude of our conduct, and he, who knows the hearts of men, will
judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the
government of our fathers in it spirit. The right solemnly proclaimed
at the birth of the States and which has been affirmed and re-affirmed
in the bills of rights of States subsequently admitted into the Union
of 1789, undeniably recognizes in the people the power to resume the
authority delegated for the purposes of government. Thus the sovereign
States, here represented, proceeded to form this Confederacy, and it
is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a
revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State its
government has remained, and the rights of person and property have
not been disturbed. The agent, through whom they communicated with
foreign nations, is changed; but this does not necessarily interrupt
their international relations. Sustained by the consciousness that the
transition from the former Union to the present Confederacy has not
proceeded from a disregard on our part of just obligations, or any
failure to perform any constitutional duty; moved by no interest or
passion to invade the rights of others; anxious to cultivate peace and
commerce with all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, we may at
least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly
engaged in it. Doubly justified by the absence of wrong on our part,
and by wanton aggression on the part of others, there can be no cause
to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the
Confederate States will be found equal to any measures of defense
which honor and security may require. Continued
here
|
for more Confederate News
