There were just a few family members in the military service. I have yet to find any that served in Union Army. But I'm sure I will one day. A bit of lore is that my gg grandfather, Norris Palmer Eccleston was a soldier in the Union Army, that has yet to be proved or disproved. More information will be added to this page in coming weeks. The * indicate my direct ancestors.
William Brantley Richardson*
COL, 51st Reg, 13th Brigade, Moore Co Militia
Alexander Barrett
2d LT, Co D, 49th Reg
William Riley Barrett
Private, Co D, 49th Reg
David Samuel Barrett
CPT, Co D, 49th Reg
Sylvanus Barrett
LTC, 51st Reg, Moore Co, 13th Brigade, Militia
Anderson Fields
died Elmira NY
Tobias Fields
Private, 1st Co I, 36th Reg NC
died 4 Mar 1865 Elmira NY
Thomas Nicholas Meriwether*
Eli T Sears
Sgt, AL Inf, 1st Reg Co K
George Washington Sears
AL, 3rd Cav, Co H
Anderson S Warner
Co H of the 26th, Moore Independents
killed Bristow Station 14 Oct 1863
Swain Warner
Private, Co D, 49th Reg, NC
In 1996 my mother sent me a newsletter she had received at work. I am quoting from it directly. From the Newport/Keyport Division STING, New London Detachment, Vol 12 No 1 1996 in an article entitled HAPPY LEE-JACKSON-KING DAY
Lee, as is happens, is Robert E Lee; Jackson is Stonewall Jackson; and King, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr. In Virginia, Lee's birthday (Jan 19) has been a state holiday for more than a century, and earlier in this century Stonewall Jackson's birthday (Jan 21) was added to Lee's to make Lee-Jackson Day-a kind of Confederate commemorative occasion for two native sons. The new federal observance of Martin Luther King's birth (Jan 15) posed no problem for Virginia: The two memorial occasions, and the three disparate gentlemen, were neatly combined into one, making (seemingly) everyone happy.
In a decisive step away from our country's past, the national history curriculum, newly commissioned by the National Endowment for the Humanities, never once mentions Robert E Lee. Future students of American history will have no reference of the South's greatest captain, the best general of the Civil War. Lee, whose academic record at West Point has never been equaled, served and revered the Union; unlike Lincoln, however, he thought it was divisible. Offered command of the Union armies, he declared his loyalty to Virginia: A union maintained by force of arms, was not worth the bloodshed, he thought.
Like many Southerners of the time, Lee was a paradoxical rebel: he abhorred slavery and freed his own. Having worn himself out battling the North, against insuperable odds, he spent the balance of his life preaching reconciliation and presiding over the affairs of a small Virginia college.
Another paradox, which resonates a little more loudly today is that the Confederacy was not just a protest against obdurate federal power; it was also the embodiment of Jeffersonian principles--personal freedom, decentralized government, agrarian democracy, individual responsibility--which have lately been neglected by the Democrat party, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson. It is surely one of the crowning ironies of politics that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, now dominates the politics of the South precisely because it seems to represent those old jeffersonian ideals in modern garb.
During the Civil War, it was Lincoln who suspended habeas corpus, censored the press, arrested his critics, even sent opponents into exile. Throughout the Confederacy, press freedom was complete, and civil liberties were inviolate (for whites). Modern America, in a curious way, resembles the Confederacy in more ways than we think, and is less like Lincoln's Union then we probably imagine.
It is part of our national genius, that conjures up Lee-Jackson-King Days to observe. It is the sense that the struggles and triumphs of the past must blend into the present.
Excerpted from a 1995 Providence Journal-Bulletin Commentary by Philip Terzian
LINKS
49th Regiment North Carolina
North Carolina Civil War Home Page
This is a new page, but full of information. An absolute must see
Music - Dixie (naturally)