The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 02:33 PM

Little Hawk, I respectfully disagree. I hate to make so obvious a point, but the men who died on the Hunley are... how shall I put it?... DEAD! They won't know or care whether there are flags on their coffins. As most people recognize, funerals are for the living. The North won the war, slavery was abolished, and there are a lot of folks who don't consider it appropriate to honor the symbol of a racist past (particularly since there are still groups around that would love to resurrect it), thereby dishonoring the brave men who fought on the side of Union and against slavery. It should be possible to have an appropriate memorial for these men without incorporating the discredited symbols of a government founded primarily to perpetuate an economic system based on slavery.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 02:51 PM

I understand your concerns, Whistle Stop...

I would still be inclined to honor all those who fell, regardless of what side they were on.

As for people being dead, I don't believe anyone dies. They just leave the body behind, that's all. If these men were given a funeral now, I believe their spirits would most likely stop by to have a good look and might feel somewhat gratified at having received mention for their courageous efforts in the worldly adventure story.

I do not in any way support slavery or racism.

To honor the fallen of one side in no way dishonors the fallen of the other side. Not ever.

Most people are easily fooled by media and government propaganda and social custom. The southerners who fought for the Confederacy were just as well-intentioned in a general sense as soldiers of any other cause. In their minds they were fighting for their homes, their wives, their children, their livelihood, their sovereignty, and their entire way of life.

Were they wrong to support slavery? Yes. Like I said, people are easily fooled by common propaganda.

I anticipate that there will be much controversy raised over this issue, however, and that is most unfortunate.

Political correctness is a virulent form of fascism that is much in style these days. One form of prejudice condemning another is what political correctness is.

As for the groups you allude to who would like to resurrect the "racist past"...yes, they should not be encouraged, so I appreciate your concern about that. No one said it would be easy dealing with these things. It never is.

We are certainly in partial agreement, anyway.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Naemanson
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 03:08 PM

Please understand that these men were not necessarily fighting for slavery. Probably none of them were slave owners. They were fighting for the right of their state to make that decision instead of the Federal government! they fought for states rights. It just got wrapped up in slavery because that was the issue du jour. If slavery had been abolished earlier than the 1860's, as it almost was in Virginia before the invention of the cotton gin, then they would have been fighting over another issue.

Either way, those men fought and died for their state, not the right to own slaves. As such the conditions of their funeral should be dictated by that.

Of course this is all moot. Didn't someone already point out that they were not military? Wasn't the Hunley a privateer working under a Letter of Marque?

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 06:07 PM

Allow me to make a few points. The first being when letters of marque are issued, the crew is considered part of that nation's naval forces. (As was John Paul Jones much to the vehement protests of the British Royal Navy, who considered him a pirate.) Secondly, the remains of German soldiers are found and buried periodically to this day under the German flag even though they lost the war and Hitler's peccadillos were far worse than Jeff Davis' ever though of being. The ordinary soldier was fighting for the Confederacy because he felt his home was threatened. The Confederate government was fighting for "States rights" The particular right being slavery. All of that having been said, it must be noted that when the Civil War started and even before, when the Confederate states seceded, they did so because they didn't like who the people elected as president. It gets a bit convoluted. Also, they were military men in that P.G.T. Beauregard commissioned them to undertake the mission in the Hunley in an attempt to break the Union blockade of Charleston. They deserve to be laid to rest with military homours under the flag they served (At that time I believe it was the second national flag) Kindest reguards and thanks for a very fine discussion, Neil PS- I'm a big Clive Cussler fan and his work with NUMA makes that doubly so!

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 06:41 PM

Here's another thing that should probably be pointed out. Although slavery was the "hot" emotional issue of the war...particularly in the North, which needed an emotional issue to motivate its civilians and fighting men...there was a much deeper and more fundamental issue underlying the War Between the States.

It was that the South had been steadily losing its political clout in Congress for generations, due to the following reasons: a) a much smaller population than the North b) much less heavy industry c) the declining importance of cotton and agriculture d) the lion's share of the big banks and big money was in the North.

So, the North was basically getting a stranglehold on financial and industrial control and dominating the political process at the same time. The South felt disenfranchised, just as the West presently feels disenfranchised in Canada...for much the same kind of reasons. These were the issues that would have eventually resulted in Southern secession whether or not the South had abolished slavery...and secession meant war.

The South fought a defensive war. They fought merely to survive as a separate entity. (Lee's one offensive foray, which led to Gettysburg, was simply an attempt to discourage the North into abandoning further war efforts against the Confederacy). The South didn't have enough men or industry to fight anything but a defensive war, and they had almost no navy, a crucial factor.

The North fought an offensive war. They weren't fighting just to survive, they were fighting to conquer the other side completely...which they did. Unconditional surrender was their credo, and they got it.

I've played historical military wargames most of my life, due to an interest in strategy and military history. The South had virtually no chance of winning or even surviving that war, because they were outnumbered in men, money, and material at a ratio of 4 or 5 to one. That they lasted as long as they did was mainly due to the absolute brilliance of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and a few other commanders, and to the very noteable skill and elan of their troops.

Ulysses S. Grant correctly deduced that he could grind Lee down in an unimaginative battle of attrition, and he eventually did just that. The US Navy tied down the South, crippled their economy, and allowed Federal forces to invade at many points, and to control the Mississippi. The Hunley's mission was one of various desperate attempts to oppose the naval blockade. Those attempts were brave but fruitless.

The ironclad Virginia (sometimes called Merrimac) made another such attempt...equally fruitless in the end.

The South would have been wise to have discontinued slavery prior to seceding, and to have freed the blacks. It would have given the North far less political ammunition to work with, and the cotton farmers could have hired freedmen, and would have. Unfortunately, this was not done. Southern men were proud and in many cases arrogant and cocksure...they were sure they could beat the Yankees on the field of battle. Well, they did beat them quite a few times, but time was not on their side.

The fact is, they didn't have a dog's chance in hell, no more than Hitler did when he simultaneously took on England, Russia, and the USA.

The Civil War and the defeat of the South were virtually inevitable...slavery or no slavery.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 07:20 PM

Very good post,Hawk,but I disagree that the South should have abolished Slavery prior to seceding. Despite the facts you state as to the Confederacy's motivations, slavery was inextricably linked with its economic survival as an independent entity. There was not enough cheap labor to make the vast plantations profitable without it. And so slavery,I think, was always the unspoken cause. Lincoln was an abolitionist at heart for long before he abolished it: He had straddled the fence out of fear of alienating his political support,and in hope that the rebellion would run its course.

The South did,in my opinion,have a chance to win though. The early victory at Bull Run shook the Union to its core. Many in the South thought the war over when the battle was won. The succeeding string of military defeats suffered by Union forces might have cause another man to hesitate,or declare truce,but Lincoln was a stubborn and dedicated man, and he hung in until Gettysburg and Grant reversed the tide.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 11:07 PM

Yeah, Lonesome, you may be right. The thing that fascinated me in those wargames was...what if the South could win dramatic enough victories early on...maybe even capture Washington in the first year. If so, the North might have sued for peace, and there would have been 2 countries, not one, south of Canada.

It would have been an extraordinary situation, and would probably have led to further wars later on.

Similarly, in World War II, the Germans had 2 crucial windows of opportunity...one was the Battle of Britain in 1940 (which they very nearly won)...and the other was the approach to Moscow in the summer and fall of 1941...which fell short by just a hair of defeating Stalinist Russia. World history would have been radically different if they had won either of those campaigns.

You may also be right that slavery was crucial to the Southern economy. I'll have to look further into that.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Sourdough
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 12:04 AM

About the Bonhomme Richard:

As far as I know, NUMA never had any luck locating it. I asked the sonar men what they had been looking for. What is left of a wooden ship nearly two hundred years after it sinks in a place with strong currents? The main item they were looking for was ballast which would all be set together in one place. The rocks would have made a pile where they fell. Then there should be cannon scattered about the site in a fairly compact debris field.

I spent part of this morning looking for my Hunley/Numa t-shirt. Today seemed like a good day to wear it but I am afraid that somewhere between Washington and Sonoma COunty, it found its way into Davy Jones' locker or some other hard to reach place.

I do want to repeat one thing abut raising the Hunley. The crew are being recovered, not desecrated. They are being brought to a place marked by an appropriate gravestone where people, including their descendants, will be able to come and feel the closeness, the opportunity for communing, that it affords. Some people will use their moment to feel pride that they share the same blood as those men who died on the Hunley, others will reflect on their courage and probably most of us will wonder if we ever would have had the courage to do what these men did if it were our homes and families that were threatened. Having the remains of the Hunley, itself, nearby will make the reality of what the nine men did, their sacrifice, all the more concrete.

To say that these men should not be honored because lawyers will try to make an issue of them or because sensational journalists will use them to sell their publications is a cop out. We can honor them for living up to a higher standard than most of us will ever be called on to face. We may disagree with the government we understand they were supporting but to say these men were misled, misguided, uninformed is more of a slap in the face than moving them from the bottom of Charleston Harbor could ever be. The men who made up the Hunley's crews knew that their country was under attack, that their friends and families were suffering from lack of jobs, food, and sheter and that in battles throughout the South, Virginians were fighting and dying. That was enough for them to feel that risking their lives was their duty.

And we are left with the question, "What ideals do we have for which we would risk our lives?"

Sourdough brought up one mile from the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Nashua, NH

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 10:23 AM

Amen, sourdough. Well said. Your words might well be placed by their memorial.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: rangeroger
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 11:51 AM

Cussler in "The Sea Hunters" says they made two attempts to locate the Bonhomme Richard and were unsucessful both times.

They did,however,run onto and identify a Russian spy trawler that had mysteriosly sunk a short time prior to their discovery.The Royal Navy was highly interested in that one.

rr

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Naemanson
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 12:14 PM

Sourdough, if you were referring to my remark about sleazy lawyers and politicians please reread my post. I agree completely that these men should be honored for what they did and what they believed in. I, too, believe they should be honored under the flag they fought for.

My remark was intended as a sarcastic comment on our times. Someone will try to make a greasy buck out of the Hunley and that is, to my mind, as criminal as desecrating a graveyard.

About slavery being crucial to the south - It was my understanding that slavery almost died out in Virginia becasue even with slaves it was not economical for farmers pay to process their cotton. Then Eli Whitney came along and invented the cotton gin and the farmers could process the cotton themselves. Slavery was reborn and our feet were placed on the path the the Civil War.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 02:02 PM

I re-reading my post,it occurs to me that my statement in which I say "I disagree that the South should have abolished slavery prior to secession" can be interpreted to say that I am in some way justifying that criminal act. I want to emphasize that I did not intend that meaning, but aam saying that,doomed as it was, the South's economic fate was tied to slave labor,and thus could not reject it.

Thanks to Sourdough for expressing my thoughts about those who died defending their homes and what they believed to be their God-given right to declare their independence. We can little understand their selfless bravery in light of the self-centered world in which we live. When I think of the courage it took for Pickett's Brigade to make that long walk in the face of withering fire,for the Irish Brigade to press forward up the Fredricksberg hill against impossible odds. or the Union troops to charge at Cold Harbor where 7000 were killed in 40 minutes ,their names pinned to their coats,it seems obvious that these men had an abiding faith in God and in each other. These men,whether or not their lives were noble,died nobly. Their flag symbolized their aspirations.We are not the ones to judge them.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Banjer
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 06:31 PM

OK...Had about all of this I can stomach....The original cause of the Civil War was NOT SLAVERY as so many of the politically correct like to assume! The South seceded from the Union over the issue of states rights. That is to say whether or not any individual state should take their guidance from a central form of government. Slavery did not become an issue until the early part of 1863 when Lincoln called for 300,000 more troops and the good folks of the North told him to go take a hike. They wern't sending any more of their sons or husbands to get slaughtered in a conflict which the North originally promised they would have solved in 90 days or less. When Mr. Lincoln realized his call was falling on deaf ears, he wrote the Emancipation Plroclimation in late 1862, to turn the war into a moral fight rather than just a legal issue. I firmly believe the crew of the Hunley (the third one to sink) should be placed with full Confederate military honors next to the bodies of the first two crews.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: GUEST,unreconstructed
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 08:50 PM

Right.
CLICK HERE

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: GUEST,Unreconstructed
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 08:54 PM

my error-
CLICK HERE

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Sourdough
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 09:06 PM

Naemanson: I was not reacting specifically to you but I appreciate your reminding me of what you said.

Banjer: We all suffer from the problem of trying to give cause to major events. It seems as though the only way we can talk about big issues is to oversimplify. If you have ever pondered over "War and Peace", that is much what the novel is about, trying to figure out why there are wars, why people are willing to fight, to follow a charismatic leader, to fight for a homeland.

Wars which involve millions of people contain almost as many motives. You wrote, "The original cause of the Civil War was not slavery". You can make that argument but you have to admit that other reasonable people can make a counter argument. From the early nineteenth century to the present, slavery has been the cause of a great running sore in the American body. Newspaper editors were beaten, political careers were truncated, the Amistad, the Dred Scott decision, compromises in the Senate reached only after Senators got into fights including beating one lawmaker with a walking stick on the Senate floor, public bravery and private cowardice all were a part of how America dealt with the issue. SOme ministers went to jail for their abiolitionist beliefs. Others figured out how the Bible supported slavery, giving it a moral basis. Slavery was a major issue in the nation. If you read the newspapers of the time, you can see that slavery was considered by many to be a moral issue. Others saw it as an economic issue, others a States Rights issue but it was an issue that everyone at the time had an opinion about.

Was it the original cause? I can understand your saying it was not but what does that mean? The Union soldiers who went out to fight may have been searching for what the fFrench Army calls "La Gloire" , at least early in the war. However, even those felt their personal lives were somehow enriched by the fact hat they were fighting slavery. Certainly, many of those Union soldiers who were wounded and spent the rest of their lives in shattered bodies believed that they had been involved in a great crusade of liberation. You can see it in songs like "We are coming Father Abraham" and Battle Hymn of the Republic". For the fifty or more years following the war, The Grand Army of the Republic, made up of Union veterans took pride in their role of ending slavery in the US.

I think people get it wrong when they say that Lincoln was not against slavery. I think it is clear that he found it distasteful. What he said was something to the effect that he felt that the Union was more important than the issue of slavery. He could accept slavery if he had to if it meant that the union would be indivisible. That is not the same as saying he did not care.

I did not mean to go on so long about this. My major interest is in the Hunley expedition and don't mean to drone on so. Excuse me, please.

Longwinded but now winded Sourdough

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: GUEST,The Yank
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 09:09 PM

OK...Had about all of this I can stomach....The cause of the Civil War was NOT SLAVERY

Think you probably just answered This Question!

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 10:43 PM

Well, I did make the point that there would have been a civil war with or without slavery, because the South was losing their economic and political sovereingty to the more populous and industrialized North...so that was the root cause, I would think.

The slavery issue was another contributing cause, and a very thorny one, that inflamed people's emotions far more than the economic and political issues, so it cannot be dismissed as a cause of the war, but not necessarily THE cause.

Then there is state's rights...a very issue leading to that war.

People have the right to divorce, so why should a state not have the right to secede?

Obviously, everyone has made useful points in this discussion. For each one of us the crucial cause in the above will seem to be the one which happens to push our particular emotional buttons the most...and that depends on our upbringing, what we've been exposed to, the "filter of our perceptions", to quote from another thread (women's causes in music...or something like that).

Hey folks, we're all subjective to an extent, and every one of those causes played a part in bringing about that war. That's life.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Sourdough
Date: 13 Aug 00 - 12:18 PM

Little Hawk:

You managed to say, in far fewer words, what I was struggling to get out.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 14 Aug 00 - 09:05 AM

Coming back to this thread after a few days' absence, I discover that we seem to be fighting the Civil War all over again. The debate over the cause of the war -- slavery vs. states' rights -- has been going on since before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. Most historians agree that both were important causes which were inextricably linked. The hot political issue of the day was the "right" of the southern states not only to continue slavery (Lincoln allowed that he would not try to stop that), but also to extend it to new territories and states. They had an interest in extending it in order to maintain the viability of their economic system, and to avoid being outvoted in Congress every time an issue related to slavery came up for a vote. States' rights was clearly an important issue, but the primary "right" being defended was the right to keep slaves and maintain a viable slave-based economy. As in so many wars, the primary cause was economics, which is based on a lot of factors (manufacturing vs. agrarian economies, trade with other nations, etc.). But slavery was an essential element of the confederate states' economic systems, and the one which ultimately proved to be the defining issue of the war.

For the record, I believe that the men who died in the Confederate cause (including a number of my ancestors) are deserving of praise and honors. Like most soldiers in most wars, they were fighting for their fellow soldiers, and for the folks back home. Most soldiers did not own slaves, and most did not consider slavery to be the primary issue. But I do not feel it is necessary to honor them by draping their coffins with newly-manufactured Confederate flags, any more than I think it would be appropriate to resurrect all the pomp and circumstance of Nazi rituals (swastikas, SS honor guards, etc.) whenever a German soldier's newly-discovered remains are laid to rest. We can honor them without honoring their discredited cause. And the fact that that cause is frequently used as a rallying cry for racist groups that are active in the US now makes it all the more important that we don't legitimize it.

People who lose wars do not get to hang onto their symbols, for good reason; the winners do not want these symols to serve as a rallying point for those who would fight the same war over again. That's the way the world works, and I think it is as it should be. {And my view is that the bones of the silors recovered from the deep really would not object to the absence of Confederate flags at their funerals.]

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Naemanson
Date: 14 Aug 00 - 10:28 AM

My daughter goes to school at Gettysburg College so I see a lot of that area. In the town there is a wide range of attitudes towards the Civil War, most aimed at making money from the tourists. But when you go out on to the battlefield all of that drops away and only the honor and respect for the men of both sides is evident.

My own great great grandfather fought there as did, I'm sure, many of the relatives of the United Statesian Mudcatters. I like to go out to the monument and view the area where he stood and where he was wounded. I also like to go up to Little Round Top and see where Joshua Chamberlain's men made their lonely stand. I have seen people in the uniforms of both sides out there and their intent is always the honor and respect for the men who fought there. While on the battlefield the old arguments cease.

Other Civil War areas I have seen are usually treated the same way. The only exception I have seen was in Americas, Georgia, where the Civil War prison Andersonville once stood. There, on July 4, 1984, I saw a re-enactment where the ragged "Yankees" came into town to rape the women and slaughter the children. Then the noble boys in grey came in and shot all the Yanks. While that was difficult enough to stomach (the rape and slaughter) what really got to me was the man who explained to his little son that the re-enactment was "how it really happened."

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: InOBU
Date: 14 Aug 00 - 05:55 PM

Gee I don't know why I took so long to read all this. I was interested in the Hunnley ever since as a kid, I saw the episode about it in JKF's Profiles In Courage (written by Salinger actualy we know know...) But anyway... As to the confederate flag, as a radical lawyer, though not high paid, as you all know from earlier posts... I think there is a huge difference in draping their coffins with the flag for which they fought, then there is flying a flag of session over a state capitol. I think it would be very appropriate to have a funneral with both Confederate and Union uniforms to honnor the step forward in US military technology to which their bravery led.
As the the questions about the Fennian Ram, the song is not fiction, though it is not accurate. The Ram, or the Holland 6 was built in NYC on 18th street, or west 16th Street, I forget. It is presently on display in Patterson NJ. It was stolen from Holland by the fenians who paid him to build it, when it was about to be taken by the British when the British purchased and foreclosed on Holland's debts. Holland was not a big Republican, though he was not fond of England. The Fenians sank the sub while trying to learn how to work in, in the Patterson river. It was raised in 1916 and put on display at a fund raiser to rebuild Dublin after England's bombardment of the town by the light cruiser Helga. It had a compressed air torpedo tube and had successfully sunk a barge purchased for the purpose of testing torpedos. Holland went on to design the first generation of US military subs. I don't believe he was the Holland who engineered the Holland tunnel, but I may be worng.
Best to all
Larry

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Sourdough
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 05:45 AM

Not having your background in history, InOBU, when I read that we all know now that Salinger (I figure you mean Pierre not J.D.) wrote it Profiles in Courage, it comes across as a knee-jerk pedestal attack. Since it was written at a time when JFK was ill and needed a project to keep him from getting depressed, I assumed he really wrote it. He said he wrote it. His wife said he wrote it and the Encyclopedia Brittanica said he wrote it so it seems fair to say that we don't all know that Salinger wrote it.

That's not to say he didn't but I would be curious where you, and presumably everyone else, learned that he didn't.

Sourdough

PS: I had the same history teacher in high school that Kennedy had, Russell Ayres. He was a remarkable man himself. When I was his student, at the end of his teaching career, he could point to two of his former pupils with great pride, Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy. It is no coincidence that each of them became both students and shapers of history.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: InOBU
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 06:14 AM

Hi Sourdough:
There was a widely covered report on network news several years ago about how JD Salinger had ghost written Profiles In Courage, as the writing is completely like the rest of his writing. It is not to take away from the legacy of JFK, and in fact, many wealth patrons put their name on work that they produce rather than write. I will see if I can find a site for that report - its most significant point was not about Kennedy's lack of scholarship, he was a good scholar, but about how the Kennedy family was prepairing to reintroduce him into his political career.
All the best
Larry

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: bob schwarer
Date: 07 Sep 00 - 09:35 AM

Ran across this today from "Twisted History" Don't know why it's called "Twisted". A little more submarine info.

1776 - David Bushnell of Connecticut attacked a British ship of the line, HMS Asia, in New York harbor with his oak-hulled submarine Turtle. He was entangled in Asia's rudder bar, loosed his ballast and surfaced, attempted to secure a cask of gunpowder to Asia's hull, but the cask floated away and Bushnell was captured.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: The Confederate Sub 'Hunley', any info?
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Sep 00 - 09:55 AM

David Bushnell built the Turtle, or at least designed the Turtle, in Westbrook Connecticut, my mother's home town.

Larry Kaplan wrote a neat little (funny) song about it. I heard him sing it at Mystic about three years ago.