Confederate Dead

[Niner]

In the US south there are lots of cemeteries with plots dedicated to soldiers who died in the lost cause. Photos of British buried in Europe mentioned in Duncan's post and Americans buried in Holland in Dutch Mosin's post got me to go fish out some old snapshots I took years ago of a plot in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile. There was a figure of a Confederate soldier standing guard on the pedestal in the middle of a lot of graves once. It was knocked down by lightning and put up....what was left of it....on a different lower base to one side of the plot.
General Braxton Bragg is buried in one corner of the plot. Bragg always got bad press.....he had bad luck as a general and deserved it due to his lack of military skill and judgement....at least the way I read it. Men from my great grandfathers old outfit are buried in this plot. D company 21st Alabama Regiment was his old company.

Notice the simple spire to the memory of the men of the Hundley.

[Niner]

I forgot to add Bragg's plot. He was only in Mobile for a while after the war. He had family there.

[Niner Delta]

So you don't have to be a great leader to have a military base named after you???

Vern.

[Niner]

Great leader? Hell...you don't even have to be on the winning side. How about the home of the infantry...Ft. Benning? Most people have no idea who Benning was so it probably doesn't count that he was a Confederate.

[Niner Delta]

Since this thread is about the Civil War, thought I would add some things I just learned.
Robert, it is possible our gr. grandfathers may have literally fought each other. (or side by side)
I have learned a little more about my Union ancestor in the war, Henry A. Weed. He started as a Private and ended as a Full 4th Corporal. (what ever that is)
He was with the Iowa 26th Infantry regiment for 3 years, having fought at Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw Mountain, and many smaller skirmishes.
Then he was with Sherman's March to the Sea and then up through the Carolina's and was present at the capture of Columbia.
He marched in the Grand Review at Washington and then was mustered out.
I had no idea he took part in so many famous battles, and survived, in one attack on Vicksburg they lost 1/4 of the unit in one day.
My Dad's other grandfather, Ira C. Chapman, fought for the South, he was in Co. E Infantry, Hampton Legion South Carolina Volunteers. Wonder if they ever fought each other?

Vern.

[Niner]

Looks like both sides of your family tree belonged to serious fighting outfits. Wade Hampton's Legion participated in about every major battle in the East. Probably both sides of your family exchanged shots at one time or the other.

My great grandfather, a private, was at Shiloh where the 21st Alabama....although heroic enough.... was pretty shot up and took fifty percent casualties. It went back to Mobile for reorganization and coastal defense. It was later involved in the battle of Mobile Bay. My grandfather was at a sand battery between Dauphin Island and Cedar Point. When overwhelmed by Yankee canon fire from ships he and his company swam and waded ashore at Cedar point. He later fought at Spanish Fort and Blakely. His outfit was with the last major unit to surrender East of the Mississippi.

If you ever go to Ft. Morgan at the Eastern point of Mobile bay, there is a blood stain on the top step of a ramp of steps leading to the top of the fort where there had been a bank of guns on the side facing the mouth of the bay. The blood stain is from the dead body of somebody with my family name that was an officer during that battle. He was from the same Regiment as my great grandfather. I've wondered sometimes if he wasn't in some way part of my family tree.

I mentioned this before some place, but I did run into a guy from the same battalion I served with in Vietnam. There was this picture in what was probably the last publication of the third brigade of the 9th. It was of an RTO stuck up to his butt in mud in some nippa and another RTO offering him a hand. I had been there that day and mentioned something about the picture to a guy who ran what was the first and best 9th Division site. He put me in contact with one of the guys that had been stuck in the mud. The guy he put me in contact with, his great grandfather had been on one of the Union ships breaching the mouth of Mobile Bay. I always suspected that his great grandfather might have been loading one of those cannons that made my grandfather's company take a swim.