By: Rick Hatcher   Oct. 12th is the anniversary of R. E. Lee’s death. Attached is a transcribed copy of a VMI cadet’s letter to his mother about this sad event.   Va. Military Institute Lexington Oct. 16th, 1870   Dear Mother,   I expect you have been looking for a letter from me for some time, and in fact, I would have written, but about the time I thought of writing the rains & the flood came on, destroying the bridges, canals, & & cutting off communication generally.   I s

SURRENDER OF FORT SUMTER: THE REST OF THE STORY   By: Mike Thomas   History books have long recorded the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces on April 12, 1861, and its surrender the next day. They usually mention surrender terms allowed the U.S. garrison to conduct a 100-gun salute before lowering the U.S. garrison flag and departing the fort on April 14. Some go further by noting the salute became marred when a man was killed by a premature explosion of a cannon. But

NEW YEARS EVE 1861 AT FORT SUMTER – CHARLESTON, SC   By D. Michael Thomas   By September 1863, Union guns on Morris Island had battered Fort Sumter into ruins reducing it to an infantry outpost. Hand-picked to command Sumter, Major Stephen Elliott, a Beaufort native, was under orders to hold the fort to the last extremity and performed magnificently. Under his superb leadership, Sumter repulsed one major assault and deterred others through constant vigilance. Elliott and his

THE WAR, THE NEW ORLEANS BEE, MAY 1, 1861   By Gene Kizer, Jr.   The War The New Orleans Bee, May 1, 1861   The Union is the pretext—the subjection of the South once for all to the supremacy of sectional foes is the real object of the war.   [Publisher’s Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : In this post are two editorials, one Southern, one Northern, published a week apart in early May, 1861, less than three weeks after Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South,

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES - MARCH 11, 1861   Preamble We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.   Article I

OUR CONFEDERATE ANCESTORS: The Christmas Raid of Gen. John Hunt Morgan   By Gene Kizer, Jr.   Merry Christmas! A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.   The Christmas Raid of Gen. John Hunt Morgan by Robert L. Thompson (a Confederate cavalryman who rode with Morgan)   Original article entitled “Morgan’s Raid into Kentucky” by Robert L. Thompson, 2904 Pine Street, St. Louis, in Confederate Veteran magazine, Vol. 13, No. 12, D