I guess it was inevitably going to happen... It might be a good time to support our local businesses and at the same time try to keep some of these locally-found Civil War relics close to home instead of scattering them away through their sales. Maybe the city, county or historic societies could acquire them for preservation? Maybe some of you collectors could develop some local pride and donate them? Or hand them down to your interested children and grandchildren... As a boy I was one of those following the tractors in Graysville, after a rain, looking for bullets. Without a detector I found many things that I would for years show to the students at Graysville School, to show them that historic things indeed happened in Graysville, Georgia! Bullets, a spur, a Union breastplate... all made me want to learn what had happened to make Graysville so important that at one point 40,000 Union troops would occupy it (a place with and old town population that barely reached 100 in my lifetime), and what would make them burn down town founder John Grays factory (he was a Scottish ex patriate, making gunstocks and knives for the CSA). I have given away a bullet over the years but would never sell any of this local history. I believe through the years since, however, modern Neo-Confederates have hijacked that history and made it political again, and thus controversial. The subject of this article shows what has happened since. And what is most tragic is that locally, they are wrong. Local people here imagining that some united Southern front met the United States invasion should read the history. Catoosa County was evenly divided on the issue of secession and war. It was a terrible time here, and the war ravaged Catoosa County, West and East. I do think historic places should certainly be preserved, for local children to be inspired as I was to learn the answer to the local question: Did anything big or important ever happen here? But to scatter our history to the highest bidder? That part saddens me.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 12:21:56 +0000