A history nugget …

Hello again, mate.
… from Jim Remsen.
A great thrill for me in researching the life and times of the dozen black Civil War soldiers from the fugitive-slave settlement in Waverly, Pa. my old hometown, was learning of the men's undeniable valor during the war. I say undeniable because it flew in the face of widespread bigotry. Here's what I mean:

"Obstinately heretical." Six of Waverly's black recruits were at the forefront of breakthrough victories at Petersburg that were so historic that a painting of them in action hangs at West Point. It's even depicted on a U.S. postage stamp! Here's how one battlefield correspondent described their bravery: “In the thickest of the fight, and under the most trying circumstances, they never flinched. The old Army of the Potomac, so long prejudiced and so obstinately heretical on this subject, stand amazed as they look on the [cannon] works captured by the negroes, and are now loud and unreserved in their praise.’’ Another reporter, though, offered the vile theory that the victories must be due to “the Southern aristocratic blood in the veins of many of these colored troops.” Oy.

"Traduced and abused." During the war, the Waverly area was a mix of true-blue Lincoln loyalists and anti-Lincoln forces, known as copperheads, who agitated loudly against the war, black rights, and abolition. So the North wins and, at a victorious July Fourth 1865 celebration in nearby Benton, a white Union veteran named Lyman Green took the podium. "I have been for the last four years slandered, maligned, traduced and abused, stabbed in the front and rear, by the copperheads of Benton, so much so, as to seriously threaten the disruption of my domestic relations." Green requested prayers of pity for the copperheads, calling them "the most miserable God-forsaken class of sinners to be found in the country. " Green had dodged bullets and lost a brother during the war, so he was entitled to a blast of bitterness.

I look forward to writing up Lyman's Green's story, and of the concurrent re-entry of the black vets into Waverly. The manuscript has reached that era now. Also, I've been in touch with descendants of two of the Waverly figures, who are asking their own kin for any extra info on their ancestors. Onward and upward.