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#1572478 - 12/18/19 06:59 AM
Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War
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lue-jones
Demigod
Registered: 02/17/12
Posts: 611
Loc: Virginia, USA.
City or County: Vinton
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Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War The above video is a fascinating look into Guerrilla Warfare during the later stages of the war. The “Gray Ghost,” as he was known, was a showman, wearing a scarlet-lined grey cloak and plumed hat, and he reveled in his notoriety. His assignment was to harass, delay and demoralize Northern troops occupying central and western Virginia and he did it well.
The South called him a hero. The North called him a guerrilla and thief.
He was all three. Mosby’s methods were revolutionary. His headquarters were in the saddle; there was no place for the enemy to attack. His raids occurred when the time was right and no one knew his plans until they met at the appointed place.
Read the full Washington Post Civil War 150 series.
He modeled his operation on Continental Army Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, known as the Swamp Fox, who ambushed the British and then disappeared into South Carolina woodland or swamps during the American Revolution. Mosby’s Rangers got the official military designation of Company A, 43rd Battalion, 1st Virginia Cavalry. By then, Mosby had been promoted to major.
They operated in a large swath of Virginia that became known as Mosby’s Confederacy and the name lives on today.
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#1572488 - 12/18/19 07:23 AM
Re: Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War
[Re: lue-jones]
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lue-jones
Demigod
Registered: 02/17/12
Posts: 611
Loc: Virginia, USA.
City or County: Vinton
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John W. “Jack” Hinson, better known as “Old Jack” to his family, was a prosperous farmer in Stewart County, Tennessee. A non-political man, he opposed secession from the Union even though he owned slaves. Friends and neighbors described him as a peaceable man, yet despite all this, he would end up going on a one-man killing spree. In the fall of 1862, Jack’s 22-year-old son George Hinson, and his 17-year-old brother, Jack, went deer hunting about a mile from their home as they always did. Unfortunately, they came across a Union patrol who suspected them of being bushwhackers.
The boys were tied to a tree then shot, after which their bodies were dragged back to town. There the corpses were paraded around the Dover courthouse square as an example of the Union’s zero-tolerance policy toward resistance. The remains were then decapitated and left there, while the heads were brought to the Hinson plantation.
Before the entire family, the heads were stuck on two gate posts as an example of Union justice.
Of Scottish-Irish descent, Jack could not let the murders of his sons go unpunished. He buried his children’s remains, then sent the rest of his family and slaves to West Tennessee to stay with relatives.
He then commissioned a special 0.50 caliber rifle with a percussion-cap muzzle-loader. Besides its lack of decorative brass ornamentation, this rifle was also unique because it had a 41” long octagonal barrel that weighed 17 pounds. The length of the barrel ensured that he could accurately hit targets from half a mile away. The most spectacular story of his sniping career was when an entire boat of Union soldiers surrendered to him. After Jack fired on the boat, the captain thought he was being attacked by Confederate soldiers. To avoid further bloodshed, the captain beached his boat, raised a white tablecloth, and waited to be captured. But Jack couldn’t possibly handle them all, so he retreated and let them wait. Union records, however, blame him for over 130 kills – though it’s believed that he may have killed “only” a little more than 100.
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#1572503 - 12/18/19 08:06 AM
Re: Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War
[Re: lue-jones]
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lue-jones
Demigod
Registered: 02/17/12
Posts: 611
Loc: Virginia, USA.
City or County: Vinton
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That story about Jack Hinson though interesting, is reprehensible. We have seen much more modern examples of snipers in the news however, depending on which side of the barrel you're on these guys are either hero's or cowards. Who remembers John Mohammad? Or the sniper attacks on the California power station? Crazy to think about what our guys are capable of overseas. And guys like Hinson, for better or worse, contributed to the overall body of knowledge we have today on this topic. John Allen Muhammad, 45, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 21, brought America's capital to a standstill in 2002 as they picked off white targets at petrol stations and shops in the city's prosperous suburbs.
Malvo testified that Muhammad, driven by hatred of America because of its "slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy" and his belief that "the white man is the devil", planned to kill six whites a day for 30 days. Muhammad's ultimate plan, Malvo testified, was to indoctrinate 140 young homeless men at a Canada compound who would "shut things down" in cities across America, unless they received £5 million. Was an attack last April on an electric power station near San Jose, Calif., the work of vandals or something far more dangerous — domestic terrorism or a trial run by an individual or organization bent on damaging the nation's electric grid? Snipers play a key role in the world’s armies. They’re excellent scouts and can target commanders on the opposing side with an outsize impact. Working by themselves, they can pin down a group, creating fear and confusion. Snipers are what military strategists refer to as force multipliers. Simply put, a force multiplier is an individual or small team that, through the use of special tactics, can do the damage of a much larger force. What's amazing about snipers is that they are capable of force multiplication without ever directly engaging the enemy. The Marines believe their snipers have killed hundreds of insurgents, though that figure alone does not accurately portray the significance of sniping. A sign on the wall of sniper school at Camp Pendleton displays a Chinese proverb: “Kill One Man, Terrorize a Thousand.” "Normally I would shoot and run, but if I had them at a distance, I wasn't worried," Mawhinney says. "I would shoot and then [lie] there and wait and wait and wait, and pretty soon somebody else would start moving toward the body. Then I would shoot again.
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#1575785 - 12/28/19 08:13 AM
Re: Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War
[Re: lue-jones]
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lue-jones
Demigod
Registered: 02/17/12
Posts: 611
Loc: Virginia, USA.
City or County: Vinton
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During the war, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contributed dozens of insightful articles for the New York Tribune and, later, for the Viennese Die Presse on political and military issues. Engels specialized on the military strategy of the Lincoln administration and that of the Confederate Jefferson Davis rebel government. Marx strongly supported the Union from the outset, saw the slaveholders confederacy as the principal enemy, and attacked those British liberals and radicals who were condemning Lincoln for not immediately advocating the abolition of slavery. In this excerpt from an 1861 article in the New York Tribune, where he is writing positively about a response from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Britain in defense of the Lincoln government, Marx makes this important critique of both honest and hypocritical anti-slavery thinking. He also made the point that many who are critical of Lincoln denounced the John Brown raid and said that a revolution of the slaves was worse for civilization than slavery. Marx also followed the progress of the Civil War closely because so many of his fellow exiled European revolutionaries fought in the ranks of the Union Army. Defeated and sent into American exile after a wave of European revolutions in 1848-49, many discovered in the struggle against slavery more hopeful strategies than any they had previously pursued. There were even avowed Communists in the Union Army fighting the Civil War
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#1575980 - 12/28/19 03:30 PM
Re: Guerrilla Warfare in the American Civil War
[Re: lue-jones]
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lue-jones
Demigod
Registered: 02/17/12
Posts: 611
Loc: Virginia, USA.
City or County: Vinton
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The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and is the corner stone of Marxist ideology. The idea of class struggle is a central concept in Marxism/Communism/Socialism, the proletariat (working class) and bourgeoisie (middle class elite). At its core, this central concept in Marxism is applied in terms of the oppressed and oppressor, good vs evil, black vs. white and its this completely narrow concept of reality that is applied in real world terms such as that of the Civil War which is quite clearly viewed through the specter of that exact lens today in popular American culture. As the information posted above attest too, the role of Communism and in particular Karl Marx and Engels themselves in the American Civil War was much greater than the vast majority of people understand and realize today. With Marx and Engels running intellectual roughshod over the American and European peoples through their wrtings in the mainstream newspaper media, with Engels reportedly being a perveyor of Union military strategy with Marx offering unwavering support for the Union we get a glimpse of a little known part of Civil War history that deserves to be remembered. And here we are, over 150 years later, and this same ideology is still knocking at the doorsteps of Virginians. And whats worse, approximately 50% of the population supports this barbarous ideology responsible for untold suffering world wide.
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