TODAY!

 

The Alabama soldiers who fought FOR The Union.

 

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist reveals the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books.

“It is my sincere hope that this compelling and submerged history is integrated into our understanding of our nation, and allows us to embrace new heroes of the past.”—Imani Perry, professor, Harvard University, and National Book Award–winning author of South to America

We all know how the Civil War was won: Courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But is there more to the story?

As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Howell Raines shows, it was not only soldiers from northern states who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers—including at least one member of Raines’s own family.

Called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., this regiment of mountain Unionists, which included sixteen formerly enslaved Black men, was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy. The famed general hailed their skills and courage. So why don’t we know anything about them?

Silent Cavalry is part epic American history, part family saga, and part scholarly detective story. Drawing on the lore of his native Alabama and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade southerners—a key component of the Lost Cause effort to restore glory to white southerners after the war, even at the cost of the truth.

In this important new contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, Raines tells the thrilling tale of the formation of the First Alabama while exposing the tangled web of how its wartime accomplishments were silenced, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League and a sanctimonious former keeper of the Alabama state archives. By reversing the erasure of the First Alabama, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of historians to destroy as well as to redeem.

Alabamians FOR The Union

 

‘Silent Cavalry’: Not all Southerners wanted the Confederacy to win

Howell Raines’ book tells of Alabama cavalry that fought for the Union.

Howell Raines calls it the most amazingly counterintuitive fact in all of Civil War history: “White volunteers from the Alabama hills helped Sherman burn Atlanta.”

A mounted regiment of nearly 3,000 subsistence farmers from the state’s hard-scrabble hill country not only joined the Union side in the battle of Atlanta, they were “the point of the spear” in Sherman’s relentless march through Georgia to the sea.

Source: The Atlanta Journal:

https://www.ajc.com/things-to-do/silent-cavalry-not-all-southerners-wanted-the-confederacy-to-win/JKE4I74QXFFRXKIY4U27V5Y2NY/

Way Back When

 Here I am "interviewing" Dwayne, the parking lot attendant who kept our cars from being ticketed, among other helpful actions.

The photo was taken in front of WERC Radio's location on 2nd Avenue North. 

First Light Today

 

 The old greyhound bus station in Montgomery, reflected in the windshield of a bus parked out front. The station is now an historic site.

Union Guards Confederates

 An old "Union Street" street sign "stands guard" over confederate graves in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery. It was used to mark the edge of the cemetery roads after modern street signs were installed.

The Moon Tree & I.

 I moved from Manhattan in NYC to Birmingham in 1976.

That's the same year the "Moon Tree" was planted at the Alabama Capital building.

 

It's a loblolly pine that is a good 80' tall now.

I'm more or less the same height 😎. 

Read More about it HERE.

Wet Deck. Indoor Day.

 

Opening This Saturday!

 

I have two photos on exhibit.

One is on paper, unframed, in the hallway.

Montgomery Fire & Rescue-Madison Avenue

 

Cloudy Capitol Building

 

Winter 2024

 

Montgomery's Moon Tree

 

Immediately left of statue.

Today is a VERY cold day---not the best day to visit....but when you have a chance, take the kids and introduce them to the Moon-Tree on the Alabama Capitol grounds.

 

HERE is a list of where the moon trees were planted, including five in Alabama.

 Note that another Loblolly Pine Moon Tree, like Alabama's, was planted  on the White House grounds in 1977.

Tonight's Moon

 

Delaying Winter/Extending Fall

 

Winter is short, here in the South, but I still don't like 

the 

cold.

 

So here's a temporary 

 

visual 

Fall extension.

😎

Capitol/Davis Inauguration

 No, I did NOT tale this photo of the Jefferson Davis Inauguration... (I'm up there in years, but I was it was taken in 1861, a century before my birth!)..however, I did some AI work to make it more viewable. You can zoom in more on the AI version.

Original 1861 photo

AI improved and cropped a bit.

Selfie---Click.

 

F-35 Training

 Alabama Air National Guard pilots may have some intense training come up in a few months when the F35's arrive:

"After some training, pilots come out looking like they are 100 years old," another test pilot said.

Source: HERE.

Star Marks Spot Where confederate president Jefferson Davis Was Sworn-in.

 Did The Daughters of The Confederacy Choose The Wrong star?

I think they intended to use the seven pointed star, no?

One way or the other, the star marker sits between the center columns at the front of the Alabama Capitol building, though there are reports Davis actually stood on a wooden platform built for that purpose over the stairs.

Alabama's Coat of Arms

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Alabama

 So where is the reference to the Native American Tribes that were here LONG before the other countries that are given some Coat of Arms real estate?

"The" Bridge in Selma

 

Ghost Boys

 Some boys peer through the glass doors of the Alabama Archives building as those doors reflect the 1852 capitol dome across the street.

table-shadow

 

Storm Night Light

 The pedestrian tunnel that lets people access the Alabama riverfront
in Montgomery by going under the railroad tracks. The lights in the tunnel change colors based on seasons and holidays.

 

Light Door

Sunlight from a nearby window illuminates and interior door in the Alabama Capitol building.
 

A Selma Photo Day

 I spent a while in Selma today, and here are some of the photos I made:

 

This bears the name of a New Orleans metal casting company. It is attached to a building on Broad street in Selma. You can see the building HERE. (Thanks to George McDonald for pointing out to me that the Broad Street building is ONLY a facade. There's just an empty lot behind it! I HOPE someone will save these "Bennett & Lurges" markers when, and if, that facade is dismantled!)

Jefferson Davis Statue

The statue of confederate president Jefferson Davis outside the Alabama Capitol Building in which the confederacy was founded. Davis was sworn in on the front steps of the building in 1861. The confederate capital was moved to Richmond three months later.

The names of the states that seceded from the United States are engraved in the base of the statue.

(The South Secedes

The secession of South Carolina was followed by the secession of six more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas–and the threat of secession by four more—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.)

Long-closed grocery store

 

This is a long-closed grocery store on Hull Street in Montgomery, not far from I-85.

Montgomery Fountain in the fog

 

Birds Reflected

 

 

Birds aloft, reflected in the water, taken from a bridge in Downtown Wetumpka, Alabama.

Montgomery Photo Festival 2023

     

The juror has included a photo of mine for this year's Montgomery Photo Festival! See it, and the other images that made it in, at my photo site HERE.                                            

Parking Be Damned!

 Am I the only one in Montgomery who hates the Downtown parking meters that require you to use a credit card?

There are plenty of people who are NOT going to download an "app" just to be able to park!

Some of them include a warning NOT to use coins, even though there is a coin slot in the damned things. And if you don't have a smart phone, they give you a phone number to call! What if you don't have a cell phone?

Where are the senior citizen groups protesting?  

https://centralalabamaaging.org/

https://www.aarp.org/ 

In The Mighty Concrete Jungle