"The Spires of
Frederick, Maryland".
From the
National Park Service,
historical summary board,
Frederick, MD.
Civil War or Soldiers of Fortune?
John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized Barbara Fritchie and the town of Frederick, MD in his poem about the elderly Frederick resident who displayed the Union flag as a band of Confederate soldiers marched by on September 10, 1862.
On July 9, 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early held up the town! Early wrote "...we are going to make a demand upon the banks of Frederick for $200,000, and if the demand is granted, very good, if not, Frederick will be reduced to ashes".
Early would not relent despite the plea of local officials that Frederick was not a wealthy town, many residents being quite poor, that this would be a severe hardship for the town and its people.
The demand for $200,000, today a substantial sum, must have been a staggering amount in 1864. The Mayor, Alderman, and Common Council of Frederick borrowed the money from the 5 local banks and the town was spared. The final payment on the loan was made in 1951, almost 100 years later. The legacy of the Civil War was a century long tax on the citizens of Frederick.
Confederate Gen. Z. Early wanted money. Early did not seek the cooperation of Frederick's citizens or to occupy the town to feed, clothe, and house his army. Had the Confederacy, in the third year of Lincoln's War, become a loosely organized group of marauding military or paramilitary gangs desperately looting towns for money for personal use or profit?
Was the movement of Confederate troops northward really part of a war fought on principles of taxation and to prevent Union, Federal, control of economic and labor issues? What was the former condition of the Southern Confederate controlled economy, known to be agrarian and dependent on non-cash labor of indentured servants and slavery?
In and around Washington, DC and the surrounding states, northern Virginia and Maryland, there is a continuing interest in the events and people of the Civil War. Numerous national, state, and private parks and historic exhibits, many at major battlefield sites, memorialize the conflict between the North and the South, the Grey and the Blue, Union and Confederate, Federalism and Confederacy. Resolved for the immediate time, further north at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Federal General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865.
The money issues remain, through the era of the Reconstruction to the present. Though slavery was illegal then, lawsuits and settlements, related to indentured servitude or slavery by immigrants, legal or illegal, on a dark skin color or ethnic basis, persist in a divisiveness in US society.
Contemporary historians discuss the battles, battlefields, routes taken through civilian farms and towns, weapons, soldiers, generals, and politicians of the Civil War. Many questions remain about the causes of the war. In retrospect, in history books, the issues, people, reasons, actions, and consequences often appear to be clarified, classified, understood. For too many though, history is a static recitation of important dates, people, documents, actions, without a larger understanding of what happened and why.
Touring historical sites, like the battlefields, reading the roadside signs, snippets of what happened to real people, raise questions of why and how the constellation of actions taken have a continuing impact on the people and towns along the way.
Barbara Fritchie is remembered as the elderly woman who flew the northern Union Jack flag as southern Confederate soldiers marched by on September 10, 1862. Why, to frighten off the roving Confederate paramilitary bands? What if she had not?
US battlefield sites are hallowed grounds, haunted by the ghosts of those who died in their own fight or as fighters for others, for money or property, when times are hard, or for some, even when they are not.
(Read more on the issues raised in this topic or related issues in "History and Perspective" on http://monthlynotesfifteen.blogspot.com on www.google.com.)
Graphic: National Park Service poster, Frederick, Maryland.
Email mkrause54@yahoo.com or mkrause381@gmail.com to comment or request copies of this or other blogs posted by mary for monthlynotesstaff on http://monthlynotesffteen.blogspot.com (http://monthlynotes.blogspot.com) on www.google.com.
