Heh...I think I already expounded on some of this in the AGEOD Civil War thread over in Other Games, but here goes:
GGG-grand-uncle Pinckney ("Pink") Cranford (if there was one thing the South had in surplus, it was WTF first names) and his brother (another GGG-grand-uncle) John Parson Cranford and a cousin Levi Cranford, were all conscripted in November 1862 into Company G, 52nd NC Infantry Regiment.
They fought at Goldsboro, NC in Dec 1862, deserted to go back home, then reported back for duty around April 1863, just in time to get sent north for the Gettysburg campaign. Pink was wounded and captured on Jul 1 (first day of the battle). John Parson was wounded on the 3rd, but avoided capture. Pink was eventually tranferred to a Union POW camp at Ft. Mifflin, Pennsylvania, where he died in September.
GGG-grandfather James Davis joined up at the ripe old age of 38 or 39, deserted and came back home long enough to father his 6th child, returned to the army, then vanished. Family lore holds that he defected to the North and resettled up there somewhere to raise a new family. I've tried tracking him down, but there's over 25 different James Davis'es in the Confederate forces from North Carolina. (Obviously his name was too normal for him to remain in the South, and he didn't want to change it to McCager, Shadrach, Abednego, Ratio or Otho -- yes, these are all names that appear in my tree).
Got a host of more distant cousins that fought for the CSA. Most of them had similar service records -- sign up for the money (or conscripted), do some marching, say "f**k all this" and head back home. Sometimes they went back, sometimes they stayed home. No officers, no war heroes, and no slaveholders.
Fun fact: North Carolina was one of the last states to secede (and did so reluctantly) and had one of the lowest rates of slaves per capita and slave ownership in general, and yet contributed the most troops and suffered the heaviest losses. The tenacity of North Carolina regiments earned them the nickname "Tarheels", which is still used for the University of North Carolina and the state in general.
My wife's family is from New York, and her side is all mid-level Union officers and local war heroes in the 20th NY Infantry "Ulster Guards" (named for Ulster County, NY). Upper-crust families who bought their commissions (and then to their credit, did a good job and actually got into the thick of the fight...numerous wounded).
In a couple of battles (most notably Gettysburg), her ancestors and my ancestors were actually in the same place at the same time on opposite sides. Never directly shooting at each other, but still....I think the dichotomy in our histories says a lot about the Civil War and why it's not something easily swept under the rug and forgotten. There were so many social divisions involved...rich v. poor; immigrant v. "native" Anglo-Scotch-Irish who had been there 100 years longer; Catholic v. Protestant; agrarian v. industrial; new money v. old money. And many of those divisions were within the same side. The guys shooting at each other frequently had more in common with each other than they did with their commanders.
In the end, it was a war fought mostly by the poor on behalf of the rich (on each side) in an arguement over economics. And a chance for upper-class young men to "earn their honours" the same way that the British high society expected their young men to spend a few years shooting at Indians, Arabs, Boers, etc.
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Topic: Ancestors who fought in the American Civil War ? (Read 3765 times)