"TWO WARS" Confederate General Samuel French...

5fish

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I found this general and he wrote a book they may be insightful...

Link to the book can be read for free...

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45603



I found this article about him and this book...

Link to the article: https://ironbrigader.com/2013/07/11/samuel-gibbs-french-northern-born-confederate-general/

Snip...

Now we bring to your attention Samuel Gibbs French, a Northerner who became a Confederate General in the Civil War. French was a graduate of West Point, Class of 1843, which included future Union General and President Ulysses S. Grant. Other Northerners in the class that fought for the Confederacy were Ohio-born Roswell Sabine Ripley and New York-born Franklin Gardner.

Snip...

French kept a diary that he published in book form late in life. “Two Wars: An Autobiography of Gen. Samuel G. French.” He dedicated it to his wife and children, and to the Confederate soldiers “who battled with the invading foe to protect our homes and maintain the cause for which Oliver Cromwell and George Washington fought.”

Snip...

He talks about his childhood glowingly, learning about the American Revolution from its veterans, as well as tales of Napoleon Bonaparte from a French immigrant, the local shoemaker. “New Jersey was a slave State when I was born,” he says, “In 1820 slavery was abolished; but there were two hundred and thirty-six slaves for life in 1850 in the State, because it did not emancipate a slave then in being. It only set free the unborn babes. You see the difference between abolition and emancipation?

Snip...

“The class of 1843 is remarkable in one respect,” French writes, “So far as my investigations have extended every one of the class living in 1861 entered the military service except Father Deshon; all obtained the rank of general save one. In no class did all the graduates enter the service, nor did those in the armies obtain uniformly such high rank as the Class of 1843.” French recalls that everyone knew Ulysses S. Grant’s “real name was U.H. Grant but “the appointment called for U.S. Grant, and he entered the Academy as U.S. Grant, and was usually called ‘Uncle Sam’ Grant.” The “Two Wars” French writes about are, of course, the Mexican War and The Civil War.

Snip...

French writes of these events that occurred in 1859: “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s publication of an imaginative work ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ Hinton Helper’s pamphlet called a manifesto, and John Brown’s raid in Virginia to raise an insurrection among the slaves and to kill the whites like distant thunder, presaged the coming storm.”

Snip...

Like his classmates, Ripley and Gardner, French married a Southerner. However, French does not cite his marriage as his motivation for taking up his sword for the South. French gives the names of 26 Northerners** who held high rank in the Confederacy (including himself), twelve of them having been educated at West Point, and writes:
“They believed in the right of States to secede, and, owing allegiance to the States where they lived or wished to reside. they cast their lot with the South.

Snip...

However, David J. Eicher, author of The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography
(1997), says French’s indictment of the North is more than a little over the top: “French blasts the Yankees for nearly everything wrong in civilization, and the bitter partisanship of many passages mars the work’s credibility…. the casualty figures he quotes in many instances are wildly inaccurate. The lengthy appendix, relating French’s ideas on numbers and statistics is worthless. What does remain useful in this work are the author’s diary accounts and recollections of the military campaigns and battles he witnessed.”

Whatever opinion one might have of such a man as Gen. Samuel Gibbs French, his memoirs contain much information about the 19th century that is not taught in schools.
 

5fish

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Here is his eight events that changed the course of the 19th century and the list of Northern Officers that fought for the south... we will have to read the book why these eight events of the 19th century were so changing....

*The 8 great events of the 19th century:

  • When Jenny Lind sung in Castle Garden.
  • When Henry Ward Beecher sold slaves in Plymouth pulpit.
  • When the Prince of Wales was in America.
  • When Henry Clay bade farewell to the Senate.
  • When Grant went around the world.
  • When Lincoln was inaugurated.
  • When Kossuth rode up Broadway.
  • When Mackay struck the great bonanza.
**Men of Northern birth who held high rank in the Confederacy:

  • James L. Alcorn, general, Governor of Mississippi, U.S. Senator), Illinois;
  • Albert G. Blanchard, general, Massachusetts:
  • Charles Clark, general and Governor of Mississippi, Ohio;
  • John R. Cooke, general, Missouri;
  • Samuel Cooper, general, New Jersey;
  • Julius A. DeLagnel, New Jersey;
  • Johnson K. Duncan, general, Pennsylvania;
  • Samuel G. French, general, New Jersey;
  • Daniel M. Frost, general, New York;
  • Franklin Gardner, general, New York.
  • Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance, Pennsylvania;
  • Archibald Gracie IV, general, New York;
  • Bushrod R. Johnson, general, Ohio;
  • Danville Leadbetter, general, Maine;
  • William McComb, general, Pennsylvania;
  • John C. Pemberton, general, Pennsylvania;
  • Edward Aylesworth Perry, general, Massachusetts;
  • Albert Pike, general, Massachusetts;
  • Daniel H. Reynolds, general, Ohio;
  • Roswell S. Ripley, general, Ohio;
  • Daniel Ruggles, general, Massachusetts;
  • Francis A. Shoup, general, Indiana;
  • Martin L. Smith, general, New York;
  • Hoffman Stevens, general, Connecticut;
  • Walter H. Stevens, general, New York; and
  • Otho French Strahl, general, Ohio;
 
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