Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Dragoons Donate to Prattville Fire Relief Effort

 A disastrous fire destroyed a Prattville apartment building earlier in October and a plea went out to the community to help with clothes and home goods and donations for the families affected.  The Dragoons of SCV camp 1524 answered the call by donating a check for $500 to the Fire Victim Relief fund and presented the check to Ms. Josette Dudle of the Autauga Interfaith Care Center in downtown Prattville on Thursday October 29th.  2nd Lt Karl Wade had previously made contact with the Prattville City Hall regarding how to direct the donation. Compatriot Tyrone Crowley delivered the check and was thanked for the camps continued generosity in community service initiatives.   

Sons of Confederate Veterans Dragoon Bill Branch Volunteers Expertise for Prattaugan Museum

             Prattville Dragoons Camp Member Bill Branch made staff and board members very happy at the Prattaugan Museum on Wednesday 14 October 2020, when he managed to find a way to get a century-old music box to play.  Staff at the Museum had been hoping to hear music from it ever since it was donated in 2017.  The music box is important for local history because it belonged to the Northington family and is similar to one owned by Daniel Pratt.  The music box was originally in the Northington House in Prattville, Alabama.

                With the recent passing of Dragoon James Spears, Bill at age 85 is now the eldest member of our camp.  Bill is a retired mainframe computer field engineer and technical instructor, and is quite good at resolving mechanical and technical problems.  When he learned of the problem with the music box, he volunteered to look at it and see what he could do to get it to play.

                Bill spent three hours studying, cleaning and lubricating, and making adjustments to the Olympia Music Box, which plays large metal discs. Thanks to Bill, the music box can now be enjoyed again by visitors to the Prattaugan Museum.  Not surprisingly, Bill's assistance to the Museum here has made him the object of much praise and gratitude both from the board and members of the Autauga County Heritage Association.  The music box will require further repair, and Bill has helped locate an expert in Georgia who will be coming over to assess what's needed.

                Bill is descended from Branch, Peyton and Oglesby families, from  Memphis, and Shelby County Tennessee.  In addition to his membership in the Dragoons, Bill is a member St. Mark's Episcopal Church,  the Autauga Genealogical Society, The Sons of the American Revolution, The Peyton Society of Virginia, First Families of Tennessee and shoots skeet weekly with the Chilton County Gentlemen's Gun Club.

                Bill joined the SCV using ancestor David Mitchell Sanders, whose father Charles Grandison Saunder was a plantation owner with 83 slaves to work the plantation.  When war broke out in 1861, Charles at 63, David and his brother Norval joined Company I of the 10th Mississippi Infantry Division.  Norval was wounded, but all three survived the war.  On Bill's mother's side, her paternal grandfather was Dr. Thomas Fleming Peyton, a civilian doctor during the War whose wife Martha Custis Woolsey (Peyton) was arrested by Federal authorities in Memphis for smuggling medicine through the Federal lines for her husband's patients out in the county and charged with spying.  Dr. Peyton's brother, Dr. Craven Peyton, was a Confederate Surgeon in Arkansas. These are Bill's direct ancestors.  He has many more collateral relatives that were loyal Confederates, as well.

Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Donation of Firewood to Autauga Interfaith Care Center

The Prattville Dragoons, SCV Camp 1524 made a donation of fine oak firewood to the Autauga Interfaith Care Center on Thursday morning, October 22nd.  1st Lt Harold Grooms, 2nd Lt Karl Wade and Quartermaster Bill Myrick used their trucks to load the beds with cut firewood to haul it from Indian Hill cemetery to the AICC building in downtown Prattville.  This firewood was cut and split from the tree which fell during Hurricane Sally.  Previously a number of camp members and friends had put in a series of workdays cutting up the massive oak which fell in the winds overnight of September 16th after the hurricane made landfall three hours south near Gulf Shores AL as a category 2 storm.  The folks at AICC were thrilled to take receipt of the firewood as it is another way they can help families in need by providing this resource.  Denise Brown of the Autauga Interfaith Care Center was there on Thursday to thank the gentlemen for the donation and hard work.  

Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Fall Muster

 The Dragoons of SCV Camp 1524 enjoyed a beautiful fall day on Saturday October 17th at the camp's fall muster.  The event was held at the Dismuke's property just south of Millbrook as it has for the past few years.  Close to thirty members and their friends and family were in attendance over the course of the morning and early afternoon as folks were able to shoot some clays and enjoy a BBQ picnic.  The camp provided pulled smoked pork butts and beverages.  1st Lt Grooms and 2nd Lt Wade brought a couple crock pots of camp stew.  Karl also brought Conecuh sausage which Will grilled for appetizers.  Quartermaster Myrick brought his world famous baked beans and hummingbird cake.  Others brought sides including potato salads, pasta salads and corn casserole in addition to desserts like brownies and cookies.  Too much good food.  A number of guys enjoyed shooting the clays with Commander Waldo and his children and Adjutant Sutherland helping to throw the targets.  Just before the picnic dinner was served a flag retirement ceremony was conducted to burn a number of old weather and worn US and Confederate flags in a fire pit.  1st Lt Grooms led the ceremony and Commander Waldo's daughter played Taps on the trumpet.  It was a lot of fun seeing some members who we don't get to see often at camp meetings and everyone's significant others.  Beautiful day, good food, wonderful fellowship and a great time.  

Dragoons Attend Rededication of Jefferson Davis Statue at SCV National HQ at Elm Springs

     Saturday, 10 October, a group of compatriots, estimated at between 200-250, braved the rain and wind generated by Hurricane Delta to gather at Elm Springs, the General Headquarters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans., located south of Columbia, TN. They were there for the re-dedication of the statue of President Jefferson Davis that had been removed from Memphis. The program included posting of the colors, an Invocation by National Chaplain Dr. Herman White, a recitation of the SCV Charge by past Commander in Chief Kelly Barrow and a welcome by Commander in Chief Larry McCluney.  A keynote address was provided by H. Edward Phillips, III, JD.  The Nathan Bedford Forrest SCV Camp 215 whose project it was to move and place the statue at this permanent space at the National Museum hosted the unveiling and the local UDC Chapter placed a wreath there also.  Following the program, attendees were also able to tour the beautiful new National Confederate Museum. The museum is essentially completed, and the process to acquire, catalog, and display historical artifacts has begun.

        The Alabama Division was well represented; Jimmy Hill, Army of Tennessee Commander; Carl Jones, Army of Tennessee Councilman; Mike McMurry, Division Commander; Joel Goolsby, Division Lt. Commander; John H. Land, Division 2^nd Lt. Commander; Brigade Commanders Doug Barrett, Jimmy Martin, and Dragoon Josh Stover as well as other compatriots from Alabama including Tyrone Crowley from Camp 1524 who provided the photos from that day.

Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 Commander's Column for October 2020 - Our Nation in Peril with the Approach of Elections

 We are approaching the national elections and candidates and pundits are declaring this the most important election in our lifetimes.  It well may be.  We are at the precipice of our republic sliding into socialism.  Our country fought wars and suffered tens of thousands of casualties in an effort to contain socialism and communism and now members of the US Congress and Democrat Presidential nominees now openly espouse Marxism.  The BLM movement which has tainted sports events as “woke” athletes disrespect the country with their flag kneeling during opening anthem presentations at NASCAR, NFL, FBS NCAA, and NBA events was founded by a self-proclaimed “trained Marxist”.  Their documented goals include the “’disruption (of) the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.’  (And) for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a ‘progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.’”  (https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-agenda-black-lives-matter-far-different-the-slogan)  BLM militant socialists and their anarchist Antifa henchmen scream a mantra of racial injustice and systemic racism at “peaceful protests” promoting their drug addicted, drug dealing, rapist heroes on posters plastered on public buildings they set afire even while international corporations make sizeable donations to the organization.

This all seems unprecedented but as our chaplain has pointed out, the parallels are striking with past history.  Racial tensions in 1860 revolved around the institution of slavery and the abolitionist movement stoking uprisings and revolts.  Today, the progressives teach our children in schools and universities using a 1619 Project curriculum a doctrine of white privilege and that there should be a realization of white guilt because of the advantages inherently enjoyed by Caucasians due to a system of racial prejudice created by them meant to disenfranchise blacks who should largely have been credited with the development of the nation from the arrival of the first slave ships to the present.  BLM rejects the contrary Christian “All Lives Matter” argument and instead demand that whites kneel in subject to the raised black power fist.  Many corporations now are openly advertising their initiatives to hire more minorities apparently in disregard of a consideration of qualified Caucasian candidates. The governor of California is sponsoring legislation requiring corporate hiring of management and executive levels in accordance with affirmative action quotas which have been proven unconstitutional. Corporations preach the immeasurable importance of diversity while failing to produce quantifiable measurements of the benefits to the bottom line. Sure to enhance employee job satisfaction and company performance or resentment and career limitations?

The Lincoln Republican platform of raising tariffs to fund industrialization in the New England and Midwest states with a disproportionate disregard for the agricultural Southern states was a primary impetus for the secession movement of 1860.  We have unfortunately become accustomed to the notion of the state and federal government redistributing private wealth thru a system of taxation and welfare programs but the idea of a socialist “radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth” as a political platform should be very disconcerting to us and for our children and grandchildren.  History has proven that socialist economic systems fail while suppressing the impetus for individual effort, excellence and success, indeed the bedrock of our nation’s fundamental individual freedoms and liberty.  Taking from the entrepreneurial wealth creators to give to those who have no desire or drive or responsibility, unearned and undeserved, deters innovation and investment.  

The 1860s Republican platform sought to bring the western territories into the Union as free states which threatened to forever shift the balance of power in the federal government in opposition to the Democrat controlled slave holding states.   The 2020 Senate Democrats have threatened that if the Republicans pursue their Constitutional duty to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court Justice before the year end elections that, should they gain control of the Senate and the Presidential executive office, they will pursue statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington DC which again threatens to shift the balance of power in the Senate indefinitely to the Democrats who are increasingly under the control of radical socialists and their progressive atheistic one-world-order agenda.  In addition, the Democrats have threatened to stack the Supreme Court with four additional jurists which would again shift the ideology of the court for generations to support progressive precedents and make it little more than an extension of their liberal legislative branch.

The anarchy and riots in American cities in the name of social and racial justice harkens to the class warfare espoused by the Communist activist Saul Alinski and his Rules for Radicals.  They are not seeking an understanding and appreciation of the value of blacks in American society as they abort black babies by the tens of thousands and assault black police officers on urban streets.  They are seeking the deconstruction of the American economic and social system of free enterprise, property and competition and of personal liberty silencing those who disagree with their extremist fascist philosophy, violating their freedom of speech and expression.  George Floyd, a worthy martyr?  How many times does it need to be shown that these BLM posterboys are drug users and dealers and rapists and that the police were justified in apprehending them?   There is no racial injustice inherent in the police and legal systems; unfortunate events and repercussions happen when one puts oneself in criminal situations and activities.    There is no systemic racism in this country and indeed the affirmative action and welfare initiatives over the past decades speak to the generosity, benevolence and magnanimity of the American people.   America is not the great nation it is because its citizens are entitled to reparations or special treatment – it is because each one of us has the freedom and liberty to pursue our dreams and become whatever our effort and skills earn us.  The election of 1860 and the subsequent Southern States secession and resultant War Between the States certainly changed forever the trajectory of the United States of America. The election of 2020 may have similarly dramatic ramifications.

Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 October 2020 Column - Pray for Our Country in the Midst of Divisions and Unrest

 A contentious election. Political unrest throughout the country. Deep divisions and racial and sectional hatred throughout the country. Hateful speeches and animosity towards one another.

   Is it October 2020 or is it October 1860? Yes. And as SCV members and historians we all see the ominous parallels.

   If you go back and read the fake news, er, newspaper of that time, you see that history really is circular. Our ancestors dealt with the same issues we deal with today and we can look to them and the courage they showed 160 years ago.

   And what is the one mighty constant then and now and all through history? Jesus Christ.

   And as followers of Christ, we are not promised easy lives or easy times.  Scripture does remind us that trials are part of those who pick up the Cross. But we are promised that He, the great I AM, is by our side, always.

   Romans 8:18 says ‘I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

   The Book of James takes it one step further, adding, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have it’s perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing“ (1:2-3).

   Gentlemen, do not spend all your time on the worries of the world and Man, but rather get in to the Word. Make sure you are spending each day in prayer and reading your Bible. Remember, He wants a relationship with you!  And while you are in worship with Him, Please pray for our country, the state of Alabama, our organization and camp.

 

Amen.

May God continue to watch over you and your families and protect you all.

And may God save the South!

       Remember those on our prayer list.