After reading William Wells Brown's historical account of the senseless slaughter and abuse of black soldiers in Louisiana's "Native Guard" at the Siege of Port Hudson, in his THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION (1867), wherein so many were needlessly sacrificed, including their incomparable Captain Andre Callioux, I cannot help but regard General Nathaniel Banks, their racist commander and a former Massachusetts governor--who succeeded Benjamin F. Butler, as the Union Commander at New Orleans--in the Civil War, as mean-spirited and demonic, based on this appalling, battle strategy, which succeeded in spite of him, and not because of him!
Frankly, the inhuman savagery at Ft. Pillow, Tennessee, by Confederates upon elements of the 2nd Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, whose fort had been overrun, and were killed in cold blood after they had surrendered-in contravention of all rules of war-pales in comparison!
Just goes show that a Northern, political 'copperhead' was just as racist, just as venomous, as its Southern kindred, during that great struggle, wherein our people gained their own freedom and saved the nation from dissolution against all odds, all comer's, and expectations!
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
PORT HUDSON AND FORT PILLOW
After reading William Wells Brown's historical account of the senseless slaughter and abuse of black soldiers in Louisiana's "Native Guard" at the Siege of Port Hudson, in his THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION (1867), wherein so many were needlessly sacrificed, including their incomparable Captain Andre Callioux, I cannot help but regard General Nathaniel Banks, their racist commander and a former Massachusetts governor--who succeeded Benjamin F. Butler, as the Union Commander at New Orleans--in the Civil War, as mean-spirited and demonic, based on this appalling, battle strategy, which succeeded in spite of him, and not because of him!
Frankly, the inhuman savagery at Ft. Pillow, Tennessee, by Confederates upon elements of the 2nd Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, whose fort had been overrun, and were killed in cold blood after they had surrendered-in contravention of all rules of war-pales in comparison!
Just goes show that a Northern, political 'copperhead' was just as racist, just as venomous, as its Southern kindred, during that great struggle, wherein our people gained their own freedom and saved the nation from dissolution against all odds, all comer's, and expectations!