Marching with H. K.
It’s the standard Edgerton performance, ending with his dramatic interpretation of “I Am Their Flag.” I hadn’t realized until today that Edgerton has added his own lines to the poem, including references to the Confederate Battle Flag being “the Christian Cross of Saint Andrew, the first Apostle of Jesus Christ.” That characterization would certainly be a revelation to the South Carolina secessionist who designed that flag in the first place, and those lines don’t appear in the original poem. They seem to be Edgerton’s own personal, Christianist embellishment, like Hathaway’s “there is no denying God’s hand in this…” assertion last year about a story that defied credibility on its face. Beware of false prophets, y’all.
But anyway. Edgerton apparently makes a good living assuring his patrons that slavery wasn’t so bad, that the violence against African Americans attributed to the Klan during Reconstruction was a Yankee false-flag operation, and that Jim Crow laws were a burden imposed on white southerners by the Supreme Court.
Entertainment for white people, as Kevin says. I’m pretty sure the white nationalists from the League of the South in Oxford yesterday got some laughs out of Edgerton’s show.
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Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Confederate Heritage gets more bizarre with each passing day. If Edgerton can command 20k per engagement plus mileage for peddling this crap, I’m clearly in the wrong line of work. Perhaps I should come up with some more ahistorical material along these lines and undercut him on price…I could make a bundle on this.
That’s the figure he gives on his website. Then again, the same site claims that Southern Heritage 411 is a non-profit organization and that donations to it are tax-deductible, which doesn’t appear to be the case at all.
When it got into the Sherman bashing I had to stop watching that blasted video. That’s pretty rancid stuff. Please see: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/myth/myth.htm. I wish for once these folks would get their facts even halfway straight. They’ve written their distorted history for so many years that they can convince a lot of folks who don’t know better that that’s the way it was because it’s been written in so many books. As a schoolkid in Ohio I was fed this southern fried crap, and we had a lot of Lost Cause mythology in our own textbooks. Luckily, even then, I had a pretty good “crap detector” and I knew that there was more to this war than “states’ rights.” Years latter when I began to read the actual history of the times from modern scholars (many at southern universities, I might add) and first-person accounts of my ancestor’s regiment (http://www.78ohio.org), I realized the undeniable truth — no slavery no war. For a real good read about the attitudes of slaves in the south at the time of the late insurrection read the POW letters of Capt. W. W. McCarty on my 78th OVI web site referenced above. Though I really like the South and visit there often, and really like the vast majority of southerners that I’ve met over the years, these neo-Confederate types really get my Irish up (Yes, I’m Irish on two different paternal lines — Hanley, Sharp and my mother was Icelandic, and they are generally regarded as about 30 percent Irish.)
Here’s part of a post that I made recently on Brooks Simpson’s cwcrossroads blog: “I have a modest proposal. Kind of a compromise idea. Why don’t these Flaggers and neo-Confederates come together and make a command decision to promote a different flag to represent their Confederate Heritage? How about the “Bonnie Blue Flag,” or the First National Flag (the Stars and Bars)? While these flags have all sorts of connections with Confederate Heritage they don’t carry the excess baggage of racial hatred that the CBF does. As much as they might like to wish it away the use of the CBF during Reconstruction and on into the 20th Century by the KKK and other white supremacist groups has forever tarnished that flag as a symbol of any positive aspects of Confederate Heritage.” Brooks thought my proposal would fall on deaf ears. If he’s right, which sadly he probably is, it says a great deal about the true motivations of at least the leadership of these movements. I’m guessing that a large number of the followers would go along with this shift in emphasis if the leaders had either the guts or moral courage to do so. Or, are the leaders really just old-fashioned bigots marching under a flag that best represents their worldview?
I couldn’t agree with you more on the flag. If their leadership ever wanted to promote the use of the Stars and Bars or any of the less notorious Confederate flags, they’ve had every opportunity. I’m a native South Carolinian; I’m fully aware of the fact that Confederate Heritage leadership is confrontational–which makes the Confederate Battle Flag the perfect symbol for them. My impression is that they don’t want to be diplomatic; they want to stick the flag and their version of history in everyone’s faces. That’s why they spend their time putting up giant CBFs alongside heavily traveled freeways instead of attending to real heritage issues such as preserving important battlefields, graves, and other significant sites.
The 78th OVI were a good regiment–I’ve just been looking through their service history; they were in action from Fort Donelson all the way through Bentonville! It looks like they were in “Blackjack” Logan’s division during the Vicksburg campaign, under McPherson. The XVII Corps was one of the better organizations in the Western Theater. Have you found any photos of your ancestor–what was his name?
One of my ancestors was in the 16th NY Heavy Artillery from Feb. ’64 to the end of the war. He was at Chaffin’s Farm and the second assault on Fort Fisher–they served as infantry on both occasions.
If you look at Company K on the website you’ll see a bunch of Denbows. Bazzel is my g2grandfather, John is my g3grandfather, and the others are g2uncles. The old man was 62 when he joined and lied about his age. Said he was 44. He is in an unmarked grave at Mound City National Cemetery near Cairo, Illinois. One of my future projects is to try and identify his grave. There are some records as I understand it of which bodies came from St. John’s Hospital in Paducah, Ky,, where he died — so if it’s possible to narrow his grave down to one of a half dozen or so, it might be possible to do DNA testing. In that Company K listing William and Levi were with the regiment up to Savannah and William made it through to the Grand Review. The rest were sent home at various stages due to disease, One (James) died very soon after arriving home. Another brother — George — was in the 27th OVI and was in for a long time and fought in Bentonville (Maurer’s Charge) and onto the Grand Review with brother William Your summary of the 78th is correct in all details. This regiment had a decidedly abolitionist leaning; this is described in the regimental history as well as in the writings of some of the veterans.
Your mention of Chaffin’s Farm reminded me that this past Veteran’s Day we put up an historical marker at the location in Athens, Ohio, were Milton Holland raised what became Co. C of the 5th United States Colored Infantry: http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/13-14/11/holland-historical-marker.cfm
Also see: http://www.ohio-forum.com/2013/11/freed-slave-fought-for-freedom-of-our-brothers-in-bondage/ .
Direct link to McCarty letters referenced above: http://78ohio.org/pow-account/
Something seems to be wrong with the link you supplied–it isn’t bringing your site up…
Hmm . . . I just tried the link and it worked. I was using Chrome, but I would think it should work in other browsers too. If the link doesn’t work for you, try copying the link and pasting it into your browser.
Thanks for the suggestion, and for the other links–copying and pasting worked! Great site; I’ve got it bookmarked now. I found your Denbows on the Co. K roster; hopefully the records will be complete enough to locate John’s grave at Mound City. DNA testing may well be a possibility.
One of my collateral ancestors, Joseph Shiley, was in Co. D of the 148th NYVI; he died of disease, too, in Virginia in October, 1864. George Patrick Shiley, the one who was with the 16th NY Heavy Arty., was 20 years old in 1864; he enlisted while a $300 bounty was being offered; his family needed the money. He survived the war and went back home to Waterloo, NY when the regiment was mustered out a few months after Appomattox.
It’s interesting how Union regiments were all over the spectrum when it came to abolition, especially since so many of the men came from similar backgrounds.
Interesting. We were just in Waterloo, NY, and visited the Memorial Day Museum. In the 78th there were quite a few men with Quaker influence. John’s wife, for instance, was an ex-Quaker who was “read out” for marrying out of meeting.
You forgot a crucial news story that has unspeakable ramifications. Way back in January you spoke of James Montgomery-Ryan’s timetable to get Yankees out of the south. His timeline was the end of July: that deadline has come and passed, and the dreadful Yankees are still throughout the good ol’ Confederacy, which totally never surrendered; only that one guy who commanded its main army did. The only logical conclusion is that there is impending Yankee genocide.