The Forefront. Published in Occupied North Carolina

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1 Sons of Confederate Veterans Durham, North Carolina November 2016 Published in Occupied North Carolina Winner of the Colonel Leonidas LaFayette Polk Award for the best Camp newsletter in the North Carolina Division in 2007, 2008, 2012 and runner up "First at Bethel, farthest to the front at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, last at Appomattox" Commander: Douglas W. Nash, Jr. Lt. Commander: William G. O Quinn Adjutant/Treasurer: Thomas M. Beach Chaplain: David T. Patterson Parliamentarian: Stewart Dunaway Newsletter Editor: Richard F. Pickett Color Sergeant: John T. Flora, Jr Social Media/Advertising Officer: Matthew McGuigan Public Affairs/Education Officer: William G. O Quinn Genealogist: John T. Nash Member-at-Large: John T. Flora, Jr. Historian: David T. Patterson Communications Officer: John T. Nash H.L. Hunley Award Coordinator: Mark A. Hall Webmaster: Greg Parrott

2 Charge to the Sons of Confederate Veterans: cherish." "To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will commit the vindication of the cause for which we fought. To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved and which you love also, and those ideals which made him glorious and which you also Lt. Gen. Stephen Dill Lee, Commander General, United Confederate Veterans, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1906 Our Next Meeting: Our November meeting will be held on Tuesday the 3rd at Pomodoro Italian Kitchen, 1811 Hillandale Road, Durham beginning at 6:00 PM. Remember to arrive early so you can place your supper order. Commander s Comments: Compatriots, Deo Vendice! Flag Pledge and Salutes: Pledge to the US Flag I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Salute to the Confederate Flag I salute the Confederate Flag with affection, reverence, and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands. Salute to the North Carolina Flag I salute the Flag of North Carolina and pledge to the Old North State, love loyalty, and faith. Minutes of November 1, 2016 Camp Meeting: The meeting was called to order by Commander Nash at 6:30 PM. Invocation was given by Chaplain Patterson. Flag pledge and salutes were led by Commander Nash. The Charge was read by Commander Nash. Commander Nash introduced guest speaker Don Scott, Commander of Leonidas L. Polk Camp in Garner, who gave a presentation on Lt. General Stephen Dill Lee. The Roll was called by Adjutant Thomas Beach reporting 15 of 33 members present thereby establishing a quorum. [One-half of the active members-in-good-standing of the Camp shall constitute a quorum. An active member-in-good-standing shall be defined as a member who has attended at least three (3) of the last six (6) regular Camp meetings]. First Order of Business: Upon the motion of David Patterson and second of John Flora the Camp voted, without objection, to approve the October meeting minutes as submitted. 2

3 Second Order of Business: Report from Division DEC/Reunion Committee Mark Hall. Need to discuss further with Gerald Belton. Still looking for a suitable venue. Third Order of Business: SECU Family House supper is scheduled for Saturday, November 12th. Please meet at 4:00 PM. Fourth Order of Business: Members present agreed to make our February meeting as our next non-perishable food drive for SECU. Fifth Order of Business: Announcements. Commander Nash will not be present at December 6th meeting. Lt. Commander O Quinn will chair the meeting. Jay Stobbs spoke a little more about the election. He is running for County Commissioner in Chatham County. He brought some NRA stickers and had some Trump signs in his car if anyone was interested. Sixth Order of Business: Donation drawing for Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade by John O. Casler donated by Greg Parrott. Meeting Adjourned at 8:30 PM with the Benediction by Chaplain Patterson followed by the singing of Dixie. Recent Events: Supper for the residents of State Employee s Credit Union Family House on Saturday, November 12, 2016 Upcoming Events: February 7 th - non-perishable food drive for SECU. Did They Eat/Drink/Use That? Edmund McIlhenny ( ), a New Orleans banker, was given a gift by a soldier returning to New Orleans from Mexico of some dried peppers that were acquired in Mexico during the United States-Mexican War ( ). The soldier told him to try them in his food. He used one or two and like it, so he saved the seeds from the remaining peppers and planted them. He grew them in his wife s garden at Avery Island. McIlhenny did not raise them commercially for another twenty years. In April of 1863, during the War Between the States ( ), Edmund McIlhenny fled with his wife when the Union Army entered the city. They took refuge on Avery Island in rural Iberia Parish, where her family owned a salt-mining business. Because of the salt on the island, the Union forces invaded the island and captured the mines in The McIlhennys fled to Texas and did not return until the end of the war. The area that would became Iberia Parish was hotly contested by Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. Their battle lines moved back and forth through the area, and Union troops twice looted the town. They also seized the Weeks family mansion, now called Shadows-on-the-Teche, and used it as a command post but not before it, too, was looted. As a Union officer noted: the boys were allowed to go through it, sack, pillage and destroy every article within its walls. When the McIlhenny family came back, they found their plantation ruined and their mansion 3

4 plundered. One possession remained, a crop of capsicum hot peppers. Determined to turn the peppers into income, he devised a spicy sauce using vinegar, Avery Island salt, and chopped capsicum peppers. McIlhenny packaged his aged sauce in 350 used cologne bottles and sent them as samples to likely wholesalers. He passed some of his sauce onto General Hazard, who was the federal administrator in the region. The general knew a good thing when he tasted it. His brother happened to be the largest wholesale grocer in the United States. General Hazard sent some of the hot sauce to his brother in New York, and told him it was made from a new kind of chili pepper. On the strength of the purchase orders that followed, Edmund McIlhenny began a commercial operation in At first he wanted to call this new sauce Petite Anse Sauce (after the island), but when family members did not like the commercial use of the family s island name, he opted for his second choice Tabasco. Some historians say it is a Central American Indian word that means land where the soil is hot and humid. This certainly describes the climate of Avery Island. Other historians have put forth that it actually means place of coral or oyster shell. More at The Real History of Tabasco. Food for Thought: It is interesting to note that on October 3, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Just five days prior he had received a letter from Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74 year old magazine editor, who had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as editor of Godey s Lady s Book. Lincoln listened, where other presidents ignored her. It was at that point, that the last Thursday of November was set as a national day of Thanksgiving and praise. This was during the height of the Civil War. It was a very moving and inspirational proclamation and asked to implore the Interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of a nation and restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes..according to The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy Basler, a year later the proclamation manuscript, handwritten by William Seward, then Secretary of State, was sold and its proceeds were used to benefit Union troops. It is interesting that a document that was meant to bring reconciliation to a nation was ultimately used to fund the Civil war. Read more at The History of the first Thanksgiving. Confederate Railroads: Railroads of Virginia Investors built rail lines to connect agricultural regions in the Piedmont and valleys west of the Blue Ridge to port cities in Virginia, so during the Civil War there were few north-south rail lines for the Union army to support armies marching to Richmond. The overt fighting in the Civil War started in 1861, but the foundations for Union victory were laid in the preceding decade. If the war had started in 1850, secession might have succeeded. One of the key changes between was completion of four separate railroad links between the Ohio River/Great Lakes and the northern states. Without the railroads crossing the Appalachians, farmers in the "Northwest" of the 1850's (especially Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio) would have relied upon the Mississippi River to carry crops to market in New Orleans. Development of the steamboat in the 1850's, allowing a two-way trip to haul products back upstream, strengthened the business connections between the southern port and towns up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. New Orleans emerged as the largest city in the south and as the key slave market in North America. Farmers in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio 4

5 may not have bought their own slaves in order to grow corn/wheat, and social and family bonds to the eastern states would have remained strong - but if those farmers depended upon New Orleans for their living, then the people living in the Northwestern states may have been unwilling to fight and die in a civil war just to maintain a union with marginally-relevant states on the Atlantic coast. Those railroads, along with the Erie Canal, created economic ties that shaped the loyalty of the states north of the Ohio River. After 1861, political leaders known as Copperheads tried to get those states to secede, but economic links to the northern states shaped loyalties thanks to the four rail corridors: -the Erie Railroad connected New York to Lake Erie, south of the Erie Canal portal, in the Pennsylvania Central connected Philadelphia to the Ohio River at Pittsburg in the New York Central added another rail line parallel to the Erie Canal when it linked New York to Buffalo in the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) linked Baltimore to the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia in 1853 Because wood-burning locomotives could transport far more supplies than hay-eating horses, key Civil War campaigns in Virginia were designed to control (or block use of) rail lines As described by George Edgar Turner in Victory Rode the Rails, the boundaries of the Union vs. the Confederacy were determined a decade before the war started: "Perhaps no commercial event in American history has had effects comparable in national significance to the completion of the trans- Allegheny railroads. In the nick of time they brought an awakening of national interest, an awareness that the states were in fact united, and an abrupt end of the potential danger of sectionalism in the Northwest." Confederate Manufacturers: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta sits along the Augusta Canal. The canal, which opened in 1846, provided transportation and waterpower during the Civil War for the powder works, as well as for a Confederate firearms plant, ordnance foundry, and bakery. Confederate Kinfolk Corner: Chesley Preston Herndon, great-great grandfather of Rodney Watson, enrolled 26 June 1861 at Cedar Forks for service in Company G (Wake Regulars), 7 th Infantry Regiment, North Carolina State Troops. Chesley was 21 years old and stood six feet tall. He mustered in on 21 August 1861 at Camp Mason in Alamance county. Chesley had been born in Orange county about 1839, but resided in Wake county. Present or accounted for until captured at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 3rd, Confined at Fort Delaware Union prison, Delaware until transferred to Point Lookout Union prison, Maryland on October 15-18, Paroled at Point Lookout on October 11, 1864 and transferred to Cox's Wharf, James River, Virginia where he was received October 15, 1864, for exchange. Present or accounted for through October Chesley was the son of Harmon Herndon and Elizabeth George. He married Mary E. George on 13 February 1866 and they had nine children. Rodney descends from their 7 th child James Mebane Herndon born 31 December