SOUTH CAROLINA: Earthen Confederate Fortifications Visible in Charleston
CHARLESTON – The earth mounds can turn up anywhere in the Lowcountry, it seems – odd-shaped crowns or crooked rows, a little too large and too strange to be natural.
They are haunts of the past.
Kevin Byrd was a kid playing in the West Ashley woods near the Ashley River when he came upon the first one to catch his eye, a circle of humps twice as tall as a man.
In this photo taken on Feb. 4, 2015, Kevin Byrd steps carefully around the base of Fort Bull, an earthen mound that was a Confederate defensive site near the Bees Ferry and Ashley River Roads in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/The Post And Courier, Wade Spees)
He knew it was something but had no idea what.
Even as an adult he keeps looking for it when driving past. He’s now 54 years old.
The mounds he played on are what remains of Fort Bull, an earthworks fortification dug a century earlier by Confederate soldiers as part of a defense network for Charleston that has been described as genius.
They are among more than 200 such earthwork forts in Charleston County alone.
And they’re not the only haunts out there.
Indian mounds – mysterious snakes of dirt rising along the river floodplains – are burial grounds of native peoples.
A lot of the rumpled, mound-and-ditch works found throughout river bottoms were cut during phosphate mining in the late 19th and early 20th century.
What was Fort Bull now is just big bumps in the sweet gum trees, crossed and crisscrossed by dirt paths, littered with bottles and cans.
The leaves of one small bush along a path have been spray-painted white for no apparent reason.
That’s not unusual. Overgrown, eroded and overrun by humans, a lot of the forts are virtually unrecognizable, known to historians but few others.
Some are so vulnerable that historians are reluctant to locate them specifically.
The acreage is in private hands or squeezed by developments. Fort Bull is one of those.
The little money available to preserve that sort of thing tends to go to higher profile sites, usually where battles were fought.
No known skirmishes were fought at Fort Bull.
The fort briefly snared some public attention when a 2000 study was publicized partly to promote the sites, in order to try to preserve them.
But little has come of it so far.
The South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, maybe the lead preservation group for the sites, is in the process of identifying the earthworks in Charleston County.
The trust has taken on preservation efforts but, constricted by costs, has made a priority of sites most vulnerable to being lost.
Bull is not a top priority yet.
Only about 50 sites identified so far can still be seen, in one form or another.
Only about half are protected, said Douglas Bostick, trust executive director.
An obscure, virtually unused earthwork wouldn’t appear to have much historic value at first glance, but they could teach important historic and environmental lessons.
You have to look not at the individual sites, but the grand scheme of them across the countryside, said Steven Smith, S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology director.
“What you see today, you would find them in some of the oddest places,” Smith said.
But that’s because the landscape has changed, after years of draining and development.
They sit at what were pivotal “choke points” for rivers, roads or railroads in what once were swamps.
They were the work of Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, and Gen. Robert E. Lee had an early hand in the design, Smith said.
The fortifications usually were left vacant, but their position along travel paths such as railroads meant they could quickly be manned if Union forces were reported headed that way.
It was a way of fortifying a lot of wetlands with relatively few troops.
“Using the railroad to protect itself, it was quite innovative. It tells the story of the Civil War in the Lowcountry,” Smith said.
Bostick agreed.
“It was the genius of Beauregard,” he said. “It’s the deep history of the city. It pieces together the history of the community in which we live.”
The sites were so critical that the earthen forts often were built on top of earlier, sometimes Revolutionary War-era earthworks.
And today they really do sit in odd places, one of them along the 11th tee at the Country Club of Charleston, Bostick said.
For Byrd, a history buff, the mounds are riveting.
He’d like to see what’s left of Fort Bull preserved.
“I imagine this was pretty squared off then, and look at it now,” he said. “The important thing is that people know they are here, and the people who live nearby take on a stewardship role.”
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TENNESSEE: Historians, Authors Gather for Sesqui Event
The 2015 Tennessee Civil War Sesquicentennial Event will welcome acclaimed historians and authors to present “Reconstruction Tennessee” to audiences in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area is the co-sponsor of the speaker events.
This year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Caroline E. Janney, history professor at Purdue University, is the author of “Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation,” an examination of how men and women protected memories of the Civil War. Janney will present her keynote address “Remembering the Civil War” 7 p.m. April 30 at The Bijou Theatre. The world-renown Fisk Jubilee Singers will open the evening with a special musical performance.
The “Reconstruction Tennessee” Speaker Symposium will take place 1-2:30 p.m. May 1 at the Knoxville Convention Center. Speakers Todd Groce, Luke Harlow, Bobby L. Lovett, and Tracy McKenzie will conduct a discussion on Reconstruction Tennessee. A book signing with authors will follow the event.
Todd Groce is the president and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society. With 25 years of experience, Groce is one of the leading public history executives in the nation. He has led initiatives that have raised $50 million for educational programming, capital projects, and endowment.
Luke Harlow is a historian of slavery, race, abolition, and religion during the 19th century in the U.S. His first book, “Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880” was published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press. Harlow was co-editor with Mark Noll of “Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present” which was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press.
Bobby L. Lovett is professor emeritus, an award-winning author, speaker, historian and retired professor of Afro-American history. His book, “The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee: A Narrative History” won the Tennessee History Book Award from the Tennessee Library Association and Tennessee Historical Commission.
Tracy McKenzie is a history professor at Wheaton College. He has written three books including “One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee”; “Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War,” which received the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award; and “The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us about Loving God and Learning from History.”
The state’s 2015 Sesquicentennial Signature Event, “Reconstruction Tennessee,” will be held April 30-May 1 in Knoxville and surrounding historic sites. The Tennessee Sesquicentennial Commission sponsors a series of free signature events including the keynote speaker Dr. Caroline E. Janney and educational events for teachers and students.
For more information on Tennessee’s Civil War Sesquicentennial, visitwww.tncivilwar150.com or download the free, Addy award-winning Tennessee Civil War 150 iPhone app, available at www.itunes.apple.com/us/app/tennessee-civil-war-150.
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WASHINGTON, D.C.: VA Has Roots in Civil War
The Department of Veterans Affairs evolved from the first federal Veterans’ facility established for Civil War soldiers and sailors of the Union Army, known initially as the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. On March 3, 1865, a month before the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln signed a law to establish a national soldiers and sailor’s asylum.
Civil War era soldier’s hospital PHOTO BY MATTHEW BRADY
Renamed the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873, it was the first government institution in the world created specifically for honorably discharged volunteer soldiers. The first National Home, known as the Eastern Branch of the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, opened November 1, 1866, near Augusta, Maine.
As the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Congress established new benefits for World War I Veterans that included programs for life insurance, disability compensation, prosthetics, vocational rehabilitation, and hospitalization, along with new federal agencies to administer them. Federal Veterans medical care shifted from lifelong residential care to short-term treatment in general or specialized hospitals, supplemented by job re-training or disability pensions. General Omar Bradley took the reins at VA in August 1945 and steered its transformation into a modern organization.
In January 1946, Public Law 293 established VA’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, along with numerous other programs like the VA Voluntary Service to provide better services to Veterans. The law enabled VA to recruit and retain top medical personnel by modifying the civil service system, establishing medical research, and affiliating VA hospitals with medical schools to place Veterans’ medicine on par with the private sector.
1988 – Veterans Administration becomes Department of Veterans Affairs
VA was elevated to a Cabinet-level executive department by President Ronald Reagan on October 15, 1988. Vice President George H. W. Bush hailed the creation of the new Department, saying, “There is only one place for the Veterans of America, in the Cabinet Room, at the table with the President of the United States of America.”
The Veterans Administration was then renamed the Department of Veterans Affairs, but continued to be known by the general public as “the VA.”
VA’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, established in 1946, was renamed as the Veterans Health Services and Research Administration at that time. On May 7, 1991, it was changed to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
A “Noble Dream” to Honor Our Patriots
The National Homes were founded on the principles of Florence Nightingale and the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The noble dream of providing care for the nation’s patriots began as a simple idea to fill a need in the midst of war in 1863. The public wanted it, Veterans needed it, and our nation’s leaders legally authorized it on March 3, 1865. There was no model to follow; this kind of Veterans care didn’t exist in the world. What they created was unprecedented.
Today’s VHA — the largest of the three administrations that comprise VA — continues to meet Veterans’ changing medical, surgical, and quality-of-life needs. New programs provide treatment for traumatic brain injuries, posttraumatic stress, suicide prevention, women Veterans, and more. VA has opened outpatient clinics, and established telemedicine and other services to accommodate a diverse Veteran population, and continues to cultivate ongoing medical research and innovation to improve the lives of America’s patriots.
The VA health care system has grown from 54 hospitals in 1930, to include 150 hospitals, 800 community-based outpatient clinics, 126 nursing home care units and 35 domiciliaries.
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