Albemarle Tradewinds August 2015 Web Final

No, I only want to reference the rank and file soldier whose wives, children and grandchildren
wanted to honor the service and memory of these men with a simple monument on the public
square. How important was it for the post- war Southern Culture to recognize the rank and file
soldiers of the Confederate Army? Many families could only give 15 cents per year or less to their
hometown monument committee. These nominal amounts of money represented an entire year’s
worth of disposable income in most cases because the entire south was living under the military
occupation and economic despotism of reconstruction. The Elizabeth City monument was erected
in 1911, the memories still fresh of the war and the occupation in many a person’s mind.
This article has attempted to create a synopsis of the many conversations I overheard as a child
of these Confederate Veteran’s children and grand-children. I wanted their voices to heard and in
some small way enter the current social conversation modern America is having over the
Confederacy. It’s hard for a modern reader to understand North Carolina’s reluctance. And how it
could have given so many soldiers and lost 40,275 lives to a cause of which most wouldn’t benefit
from its outcome either way.
Most Confederate Veterans who were lucky enough to survive and rebuild had one lesson to pass
on to their children and families: “It was a rich man’s war, and poor man’s fight.” These
monuments all over the South represent the memories and honor of that “Poor Man’s fight”.
No time for social media....
give Scott a call
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)
was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First
Soldiers’s Dream
World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches
By Wilfred Owen
and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried
Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at
the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; were published posthumously – are “Dulce et Decorum est”,
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; “Insensibility”, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Futility” and
And rusted every bayonet with His tears. “Strange Meeting”. Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the
First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and
And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs, gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel. beginnings to a stay at Broxton by the Hill, when he was ten years old. The Romantic poets Keats
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael; and Shelley influenced much of Owen’s early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet
And when I woke he’d seen to our repairs. Siegfried Sassoon, later had a profound effect on Owen’s poetic voice, and Owen’s most famous
poems (“Dulce et Decorum est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”) show direct results of
Picture and Biography Sources: Wikipedia Sassoon’s influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon’s handwriting.
Owen’s poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor.
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