Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 Place Battle Flags on Veterans' Graves for Alabama's April Confederate History and Heritage Month

Ten members of the Sons of  Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Prattville Dragoons helped place new Battle Flags on the graves of Confederate veterans at Prattville's Oak Hill cemetery on Saturday morning March 25th.  Dragoons Commander Waldo and his son, Adjutant Sutherland, 1st Lt Rob Schwartz, Color Sgt Dennis and compatriots Larry Spears, Darrell Haywood, Todd Rogers, Louis Turner, and Thomas Griffith participated in this annual event to observe Confederate History and Heritage month of April in Alabama.  There was a big rainstorm earlier that morning which softened the ground and made inserting the wooden sticks in the ground much easier.  Adjutant Sutherland provided maps of the graveyard with the Confederate veterans highlighted so they could be located easily, old flags removed for disposal and bright new flags placed next to their headstones.  PVC pipes were previously installed in the ground to receive the flags at most of the graves.  A US flag was placed along with a Confederate flag also at the Monument to Soldiers of All Wars there at Oak Hill cemetery.  A number of Dragoons camp members are veterans of the armed forces.  The prior day, Brigade Commander Harold Groom singlehandedly placed flags on the 300+ Confederate veteran graves at Confederate Memorial Park in Marbury.  Confederate Memorial Park is at the site of the Alabama Confederate Veterans retirement home and is teh site of two graveyards of these veterans as well as a museum, historic period buildings, and the SCV AL Division library.   These flags look amazing across the expanse of the cemeteries there at CMP. 

Prattville Dragoons Grounds Maintenance Workday at Robinson Springs Cemetery

Six members of the Prattville Dragoons Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 helped with lawn maintenance at Robinson Springs cemetery the week of  March 13th.  Quartermaster Bill Myrick sprayed weed killer along the fence line on Wednesday to keep it clear.  Brigade Commander Harold Grooms cut the large areas of the cemetery lawn with his riding mower.  On Saturday morning the 18th these two compatriots plus 1st Lt Rob Schwartz, Comms Officer Doug Butler, Color Sgt John Dennis and compatriot Thomas Griffith all helped with trimming and cleaning the gravesites.  Rob also observed that the headstone cleaner applied in the fall had made further progress in making a number of markers appear much brighter.  This was the first cemetery workdays of the year at historic Robinson Springs cemetery in Millbrook AL, the final resting place for a number of Confederate veterans and community founding families.  The Dragoons maintain Robinson Springs as part of the SCV Guardian program.  

Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 Meeting for March 2023 - The Tallassee Amory Guards

Members and guests of Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 gathered on Thursday March 9th at the Prattville Masonic Lodge for their monthly meeting.  Twenty four folks were in attendance and enjoyed 1st Rob Schwartz playing the guitar and singing in the lead up to the beginning of the meeting.  Chaplain Brantley led everyone in an Invocation followed by Color Sgt Dennis leading the pledges and salutes to the flags.  Commander Waldo recited the SCV Charge and compatriot Tyrone Crowley then played a  n old radio spot featuring Brigade Cmdr Grooms telling of the exploits of Confederate General John Mosby, the Gray Ghost.   The Dragoons plan on airing new radio ads during April for Confederate History and Heritage month.  The camp then presented the nominees for the officers for the coming year and a voice vote confirmed these men into service.  Reenactments at Tannehill Furnace and Janney Furnace highlighted upcoming events along with the planned setting of Battle Flags on the graves of Confederate veterans at Oak Hill and Confederate Memorial Park cemeteries.  

Tallassee Camp 1921 Commander Randall Hughey was the guest speaker for this camp meeting.  He complimented the Dragoons for their work for the SCV and the Cause including the I-65 Battle Flag and hosting the 2021 Division reunion.  It was noted that former Dragoons' Camp Commander Wyatt Willis helped charter the Tallassee Armory Guards SCV camp.  Camp 1921 originally met in the Hotel Talisi before it burned down.  The overseer's house from the former Micou textile property was moved from Ann Street, formerly owned by the Talisi Historical Society overlooked the Tallapoosa River.  It fell into disrepair and was condemned by the city.  Members of Camp 1921 purchased the property and after a struggle to secure building permits for the renovation, were successful and have turned it into Fort Talisi complete with a 30 foot flagpole on which they fly a Confederate Battle Flag (after resistance from the city who sought to restrict thru an emergency resolution the height of any flags to 8 ft), signage displaying the SCV emblem and, a park complete with monuments, walkways and landscaping.  Future plans call for additional statues of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Forrest, and Jefferson Davis. 

The Tallassee Armory was part of the original textile mills founded in 1844 by Thomas Barnett.  It is the second oldest stone structure in Alabama.  The Historical Society has secured grants to restore several buildings on the site of the mill/armory and the bell tower which rang to signal the end of shifts at the mill is a future project.  The main building was a two story structure but work moved earth up around the lower story and those windows were bricked in so it appears to be a one story structure with a basement today.  The second floor is supported by 42 ft wooden beams, 2 ft on each side, hand hewn with axes.  Poplar wood floors run throughout the building.  

Commander Hughey then regaled everyone with the history of the Armory during the War Between the States.  This account from the Tallassee Times (https://www.tallasseetimes.com/news_article_3b27.htm) provides a good history which Randall provided:

By 1864, Richmond had become vulnerable to attack and Colonel Josiah Gorgas, Chief of the Confederate        Ordinance Bureau looked for a place in the deep south to move the rifle factory. The new .58 caliber, muzzle-   loading carbine would be manufactured in the small hamlet of Tallassee, Alabama. This weapon was                    recommended by General Robert E. Lee and tested and modified by General J.E.B. Stuart. The factory was set up in the 1844 mill which was rented from the mill owner, Benjamin Micou. Captain C.P. Boles was assigned to oversee the operation and four-officer’s quarters, or houses were built on King Street in Tallassee. Three of the four still stand today.

In early summer of 1864 machinery, gunsmiths, blacksmiths and their apprentices all began to arrive in Tallassee. It wasn’t long before word got back to the Union that rifles were being manufactured in Tallassee. In mid-July, Union Major General Lovell H. Rousseau swept across Alabama with 2,500 cavalry, destroying any supplies intended for the Confederate war effort. They destroyed the depot at Dadeville, plus burned a locomotive and several box cars loaded with supplies likely headed for Tallassee. A warehouse of supplies was also burned along the railroad at Loachapoka.

Under the field command of Union Major Baird, the 5th Iowa and 4th Tennessee “Union” Cavalry headed south to destroy the Montgomery and Western Railroad of Alabama between Opelika and Chehaw station.  Rousseau’s Raiders roamed East Alabama with orders to destroy any mills or bridges along the way, but as they neared the railroad trestle over Uphapee Creek, they encountered a group of old men of the Tuskegee Home Guard.  A skirmish ensued which is now called the “Battle of Chehaw Station.” About the same time, a train arrived from the west, carrying a battalion of cadets from the University of Alabama who had been training for a short time in Selma. The cadets had old flintlock muzzle-loading muskets and one small cannon.  Baird’s troops had Spencer Repeating Rifles. The cadets joined into the fray when suddenly a mounted militia from Tuskegee, clad in the finest brown linen and riding fine horses appeared to assist the Home Guard and the cadets. The arrival of Confederate reinforcements caused Major Baird to withdraw.

General Rousseau’s report to General Sherman claims the Confederate dead were six, and wounded were approximately twenty.  Three Union soldiers were killed and ten were wounded. Even though the Confederate’s lost the battle, their brave stand at Chehaw Station kept Union forces from advancing further to discover the Confederate Armory at Tallassee.

By February 1865, Captain Boles was replaced by Major W.V. Taylor as overseer of the armory at Tallassee.  By March of 1865, Union Major General James H. Wilson with 13,000 troops advanced into Western Alabama, cutting a path of devastation through Central Alabama, similar to Sherman’s advance on Georgia.  At Selma, he destroyed as much as he could, but encountered General Nathan Bedford Forrest and decided to move on toward Montgomery. On April 14th, Wilson left Montgomery enroute to Columbus, Georgia with orders to destroy some mills and bridges on the Tallapoosa River at Tallassee.

When he got to Cowles Station down river, the officer in charge asked a local negro to guide him to Tallassee. Legend says that the black man told Wilson that he was looking on the wrong side of the river and he would have to cross over to the west side to reach Tallassee. The Union Commander’s outdated map had shown Tallassee, (the old Creek Indian Village) on the east side of the river. Thinking the black man was trying to mislead him, Wilson ordered him to be shot!

So, Wilson’s forces continued up the wrong side of the Tallapoosa River, (the east side) when he encountered what he called in his report, “A Superior Force” of Tallassee and Tuskegee Militia. Actually, it is thought that General Forrest had already reached the area in hot pursuit, so Wilson chose to continue toward Columbus and never had the chance to fire on the Confederate Armory at Tallassee.

Fearing sure destruction of the Tallassee Armory, Major Taylor was instructed to ship all machinery and the 500-completed rifles to Macon, Georgia.  No one knows the fate of the 500-Tallassee Carbines. Only about 12-are known to exist today. Four of those are at museums at Chickamauga, Columbus, Georgia, The Smithsonian and Confederate Memorial Park in Marbury/Mountain Creek. Macon had been captured by the time the rifles arrived and the Union troops had orders to destroy all ordinance that could be used by the Confederacy to make war. The rifles were likely burned or thrown into the Oakmulgee River. The ones that survived were likely taken as souvenirs by Yankee officers.

Randall showed a reproduction 58 caliber carbine of the design which was manufactured at the Tallassee Armory.  A heavy gun with a shorter barrel meant to be a cavalry weapon, this was one of fifteen commissioned as exact replicas of the original guns produced during the WBTS.   Following the presentation, Randall fielded a few questions and then Commander Waldo recited the SCV Closing and Chaplain Brantley saw everyone off with a Benediction.  

Prattville Dragoons Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Commander's Column for March 2023 - A Rising National Sentiment for Secession

A firestorm erupted recently when US House Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly espoused the idea of splitting the United States into two sections based on predominant political ideology, the blue and red states.  "We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.  People saying national divorce is a bad idea because the left will never stop trying to control us literally make the case for national divorce," Greene wrote on Twitter.  "Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat's traitorous America Last policies, we are done.  The last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war," she told Sean Hannity. "No one wants that -- at least everyone I know would never want that -- but it's going that direction, and we have to do something about it.”  She was promptly lambasted by RINOs like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney who was recently ousted from office in the last election cycle. 

It should be very transparent the rationale and numerous reasons which persist today which justified and motivated the Southern states’ secession including generational cultural divisions, a polarized dysfunctional Congress, unconstitutional executive orders and mandates, and overreaching federal government.  Just as in the 19th century even before the Southern states’ secession, many states explored the idea of secession including Yankee Federalists who saw the nation’s wars, imperialist expansion and economic issues as justification for a split from the newly formed United States. Thomas DiLorenzo provides an excellent account of this movement in his essay “Yankee Confederates: New England Secession Movements Prior to the War Between the States”.   (http://www.ditext.com/dilorenzo/yankee.html) 

Today, state secession movements have grown in California and especially in Texas with the Texas Nationalist Movement (https://tnm.me/news/political/texit-is-it-illegal-for-texas-to-leave-the-union/) ; citizens broached the idea and lawmakers in Idaho passed a bill supporting the secession of conservative adjacent portions of Oregon to join Idaho and similarly in Maryland three counties sought to secede and become a part of more conservative neighboring West Virginia. 

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy at the recent CPAC didn’t come out and call for secession or a national divorce in those very words but his rhetoric explaining the cultural differences and political issues are a marked parallel to the reasons our ancestors sought and fought for an independent Confederate republic.  He said regarding Biden, “I do not hate anyone. The Biden administration sucks.  You measure anyway you want.  COVID.  The economy. Inflation. The national debt.  The border. Crime.  Cancel culture.  Treating parents like domestic terrorists.  Afghanistan.  Our energy independence.  Now lost.  President Biden has been spectacularly awful.”  Would the Democrats of 1860 produced a similar litany of reasons for an exodus from a Lincoln Presidency?  Senator Kennedy went on, "The truth is that Americans aren't perfect.  But the other side is crazy. Now, Americans do not deserve to be governed by deeply weird ... people who hate George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potatohead, who hyperventilate on their yoga mats if you use the wrong pronoun. They think kids should be able to change their gender at recess ... and think they are better than us." 

What was that, we “do not deserve to be governed” by people who are so ideologically different?   Apart from the cultural upheaval in our country, think of the thousands of your tax dollars which have been misappropriated and redistributed at the federal level for foreign aid to third world corrupt governments, weapons to prosecute wars on other continents for which the United States has little interest or relevancy, the removal of God from the public classrooms while allowing warped gender ideologies and Project 1619 racial indoctrination of our children thru the Department of Education, the Department of Energy picking winners and losers in the energy sector providing subsidies for wind and solar farms and electric vehicles while shuttering coal plants and mines and raising your cost of home electricity and the gasoline for your ICE automobile, and the IRS and FBI  weaponized to investigate and prosecute  select  political opposition.  

The Yankee Confederates, the Southern states who seceded and formed the Confederate States of America and growingly, the 21st century canceled and marginalized citizens of the flyover regions of these United States hold many of the same justifications for a secession movement.  As DiLorenzo highlighted in his essay, “Their cause was virtually identical to the southern Confederacy's: they were defending the principles of states' rights and self-government from an overbearing federal government. The (Yankee Confederates) condemned the Jefferson administration as being plagued by "falsehood, fraud, and treachery," which induced "oppression and barbarity" and "ruin among the nations."  They believed that the South -- especially Virginia -- was gaining too much wealth, power, and influence, and was using that influence against New England politically. Their complaints are virtually identical to John C. Calhoun's concerns, decades later, about the unjust regional impacts of excessive federal power.”   Today it is these New England and left-coast states and more specifically the woke urbanites residing therein who are wielding too much wealth and power and influence and using that against the conservative, Christian, red-state, blue-collar hard working class.  Paraphrasing Senator Kennedy’s CPAC speech, “(They) think they are better than us.   (We) do not deserve to be governed by deeply weird people who hate (our heritage).” 

Prattville Dragoons' Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1524 Chaplain's Column for March 2023 - When God Says "No"

 

Chaplain’s Column- When God Says “No.”

 

“God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

 

 Like many of you I can recall many times in my life when I have heard the word “no.” I remember in high school, I had a crush on a girl named Stacy. On the last day of the school year, I asked for her phone number, and she told me “no, I will be out of state for the Summer.” Ouch. I remember shortly after graduating college I applied for a job I really wanted. Yep, you guessed it, nope. In both instances I was hurt, confused, and angry. Per usual, I yelled at God and threw a temper- tantrum. How could He tell me no?

I wish I could tell that I stopped hearing “no” a long time ago. Negative. Being human, I ignored the multiple times God has answered Yes and blessed me. The best example was when I asked Jennifer to marry me and she said yes. I got a two-for-one blessing on that one with my Stepdaughter, Allison. 

But why does God tell us nope to things that we really (think) we want or need? In Acts 16:6-9, the Apostle Paul was set to travel to Asia Minor to preach, but God said “no.” At first, Paul thought he understood God’s plan; and he again tried to travel through Asia, but this time the Holy Spirit also told him “no.” Paul wanted to listen and obey God, regardless of what he personally wanted. So, Paul left Asia Minor and went into Macedonia instead. In Macedonia, Paul started churches that touched the entire world. Paul had shown a different reaction to a “no” from God and chose to obey God and redirect to another plan.

I think about our Confederate ancestors, who experienced a great spiritual awakening in the camps and towns during the war. They fought valiantly under terrible conditions and were outnumbered in almost every battle. I am sure that when they fasted and prayed, they were expecting a victory on the battlefield, fighting for their freedom. But, they, too, were handed a “no.” They returned home to a decimated Southland. Homes destroyed, many starved, or were forced to move to survive. They suffered the indignity of “reconstruction” and occupation for over a dozen years.

But in that defeat, there was also a victory for our ancestors. The men who had come to God in the battlefields and camps during the war came home and started churches and revivals. The Word of God spread throughout the South. Thanks to those men, today the South is known as the “Bible Belt.”

It is hard for us to see God’s plan in everything. When we suffer a setback or a defeat, or hear a “No” in our lives, we can become angry and confused. Even worse, we can tell God that we will do it our way. A wise man once said that “God laughs when we are making other plans.” We must trust Him and be patient. Abraham had to wait 25 years (!). Not only that, because he was impatient, God did not allow him to live to see the “Promised Land.” As the Christian songwriter and singer, TobyMac tells us, “God is our promised land.”

Finally, let us rejoice when God gives us a “no” in our lives. Paul was spared a horrific death when God told him to not go to Asia Minor. God was not done with him and needed him in the ministry and in Macedonia. As we know now, Paul would go on to write 2/3 of the New Testament, mentor Titus and Timothy and dozens of others to ministry. All because he trusted God when he heard a “no.” and went to where God said “Yes!”

Amen.

Upcoming Events for Confederate Compatriots from the Prattville Dragoons Camp 1524 Dispatch for March 2023

 

Upcoming Events for Confederate Compatriots

 

Battle of Tannehill Furnace Reenactment – Mar 3-5^th, Tannehill State Park, McCalla AL

 

Dragoons March Camp Meeting – Thursday March 9th^th at the Masonic Lodge in Prattville

 

Flag Setting for April as Confederate History and Heritage Month – Sat March 25^th, 8am Oak Hill Cemetery, Prattville

 

Battle of Janney Furnace Reenactment – Mar 25-26^th, Ohatchee AL

 

Dragoons Spring Picnic – April 15^th 10am til, Confederate Memorial Park, Marbury AL