Bummer’s family heritage from before and during the Civil War era is as common as so many others that have been researched. Most were pro-union, however some of the folks in Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee, supported the Confederate cause. The Southern leaning kin were not slave owners, but were stubborn state’s rights fanatics. They were not uneducated or dirt poor, they were just like others on a new frontier, enjoying what they could and enduring the rest, in survival mode.
From family journals and diaries of the time, Bummer has gleaned an understanding of a secular confusion between politics, religion and patriotism. Most division among families was based on a faith versus constitutional concept. Many of Bummer’s ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War and had a preconceived mindset of the meaning of State’s Rights. They were suspicious, almost paranoid of Eastern business, banks and newspapers. When any political clout in the seat of government was threatened, they became incensed and sided with the Aristocratic Machine in their state.
The majority of these forbearers originated from Eastern Tennessee where the geography, religion and history did not lend itself to slave ownership. However as the families expanded south and west, state allegiances changed and at least for Bummer’s ancestors the conflict and division was not just slave based.
Bummer
Ulysses S. Grant on Victories, Defeats and Truth
“I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought….For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man. ”
