I haven't been to Charleston yet but hope to some day. Got this print museum quality framed and hanging in my bedroom. The Guns Of Autumn by Mort Kunstler. Gen. Lee in Charleston in December 1861.
I've certainly enjoyed this BD. Brings back memories
I'm not what you'd call a Civil War Buff but having been born in West Virginia and lived for a time in Virginia, went to college in Georgia, and also lived in Harford County, Maryland about 4 miles from the John Wilkes Booth home, and visited Gettysburg a couple of times, it's hard not to be a history buff.
So I've enjoyed this...and that's very nice piece of art you have too. When I saw it priced at $550 though I decided I'd rather copy yours and run it through photoshop to be printed and framed when I can get to it.
This one I took of the Wilmer McLean home years ago in Appomattox, Virginia where Lee surrendered. It's not an old picture. I just made it look that way. The home has some of the original furnishings. I don't remember which but it gets your attention that General's Lee or Grant may have sat in that chair, or signed the paperwork on that table.
Here's a bit of fascinating history about Wilmer McLean.
He was there when it started and there when it ended.
First Battle of Bull Run.....
at 5:15 a.m., Richardson's brigade fired a few artillery rounds across Mitchell's Ford on the Confederate right, some of which hit Beauregard's headquarters in the Wilmer McLean house as he was eating breakfast, alerting him to the fact that his offensive battle plan had been preempted.
What were those odds?
One more thing that comes back to me from 65 years ago. The last battle of the Civil War was actually at Petersburg, Va. My grandfather was born in 1878 in the same house in Charleston that I wrote about earlier. He eventually settled in Petersburg. I was in the 4th grade there. A friend of mine from down the street was named Shelton Smith. We would find civil war artifacts all the time in the surrounding woods. mini balls, rusted canteens and so forth. Often we would find mini balls with initials carved in them. One day he found a few with initials SS. That was a big deal to him. Enough for show and tell in the classroom anyway.
Fast forward to my college American History class. The professor made it interesting by having borrowed some letters from the Georgia Historical Society. The letters were from a Confedrate soldier in Petersburg back home to his family in Georgia.
He read two or three of them during each class of our study of the Civil War. In the last one, in the last battle, he described at Petersburg the conditions they were dealing with...food, medicine, morale, and ammuniton. He wrote that they had started carving their initials in their mini balls to hopefully protect from them being stolen by other soldiers.
Suddenly I remembered the 4th grade show and tell. The soldier's name was Samuel Stevens or Simpson, I don't exactly recall the surname....but the initials were SS.
When I told the professor the story, he asked me if there was anyway to track down my little friend from years ago Shelton Smith. I didn't know where to start and so I didn't. He probably wouldn't have kept those balls anyway.
