Howell Raines says North Alabama Union soldiers lit the first matches to burn Atlanta. Makes Bama Senator Katie Britt laughable with Trump endorsement.

      About 3 15 Jan 5 I was on the air with Paul Finebaum to talk about Howell Raines new book Silent Cavalry about the soldiers from North Alabama who fought with the Union in the Civil War. My Great Grandfather Jordan was among them. A Hundred Years ago his son, My Grandfather born in 1881, ran as a Lincoln Republican for School Supe in Dekalb County , Alabama and was soundly defeated .

    So I am enchanted and resonate with Raines when he writes about personal archaeology.  With some family anecdotes at end of Chapter Five Raines says:  "such are the chips through which defining traits marinate across generations of families that don't quite buy into the commanding culture. It's a mysterious process, difficult to calibrate, and especially daunting when it comes to rescuing unheralded difference makers from the scrap bin of history."

      There is a grand review of the book in the Guardian, and Raines has a long piece in the Wash Post you should be able to using facebook to navigate the firewall.

       With all Raines Bravado some historians I have already contacted say he overcooks his claim to be the only one out there to give the north alabama union story its deserved notice. Ed Bridges for long time state archivist of Alabama and a graduate of Marshall Frady and my Furman University has a grand thirty pages in his recent official Bicentennial of the state, with a superb brief paragraph on the damage of Daughters of Confederacy to the truth.

     And in the story telling style of Raines it should be noted while not directly a part of the North Alabama story, it was the voices of the Sacred Harp family of Dekalb County forty five first cousins  of the Iveys and friends on the soundtrack of the Oscar movie by Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. . They are singing the Idumea to great effect at the battle of St. Petersburg where North Alabamian Lucas Black says we got us a turkey shoot. He was Confederate in the moment. 

     If some of his history is self serving, Raines does us all a great service with his story telling, even fast forward to current Winston County going ninety percent Trump. But there is a remnant of folks like him who are true to the best of North Alabama and Winston County, Judge Frank Johnson in particular.

     Raines before he spoke at Samford with Carl Elliott in the audience told me Frank Johnson was the second greatest man to breathe air of Alabama in the twentieth Century with ML King the first. About five years ago before he started his Sunday School class in Plains, President Carter said Johnson was the greatest American of his lifetime.

    My father was raised in Rome Ga, so Raines pages on Sherman's stay there in May 0f 1864 were of great interest as was his assertion the North Alabama soldiers coulda shut down the whole thing at Snake Gap Creek outside Resaca, Ga two weeks before they Burned Atlanta.

      Had some of Sherman's orders not been lost in Translation, Atlanta would been spared; but as it turned out according to Raines the North Bama Unionists were the first to light the matches on Atlanta.

     Raines takes great offense to Shelby Foote fame in Ken Burns nineties Civil War Documentary and he almost mocks some of the late 20th Century Confederates in Bama, one speech in particular at Auburn Montgomery in early 1990s with Frank Johnson himself in the audience.

    Even so there was not superior virtue among the rank and file soldiers of either side most of which fell in with the over powering tribe. Clearly Lincoln was superior to the cotton planters of south Alabama, but as Sam Hodges points out in his tribute to his Great great Grandfather Letters to Amanda , a confederate from below Macon Ga.; his dying thought was of the sacred harp phrase, Jesus can make a dying bed soft as downy pillows are.

     This book is fascinating. If you have any integrity to speak of and a hint of literacy and have ties to Alabama, get a copy. Call Katie Britt, the US Senator, former U Bama SGA President, whose blue blood family goes back several generations at FUMC Montgomery and invite her to the altar.

    Else the whole U Bama campaign Where Legends are Made is a bunch of Bull Sheet.