Wrath of God - Charlestown SC - Great Fire of 1861 – Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar

The picture above of the devastated Catholic cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar was taken in 1865.  Not much had been done in Charleston since the great fire of 1861 that destroyed one third of that city.  The fire spread due to the fact that most of its firemen had enlisted in the Confederate Army and only unskilled slaves were left to man the fire pumps and ladder companies in the city.  A touch of irony, in that the fanaticism of the Southern cause, whereby blind patriotism is not worth a pitcher of spit to throw on an out of control urban firestorm.

Because the pictures are dated in 1865, many times the destruction of the fire of 1861 which had not been restored by 1865 is mistaken by some historians and or southern propagandists, in that these photos are assumed to be the direct cause of Northern hostilities and bombardment etc.

While the Catholic cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar was not struck down by lightning from the Almighty, it did on April 14, 1861 celebrate a mass of thanksgiving, marking the surrender of Union Soldiers at Fort Sumter in the harbor, the official start of the Civil War, the mass followed by the singing of Te Deum, the national anthem of the RCC.

Patrick Neeson Lynch

Jefferson Davis’ Confederate Ambassador to the Vatican Bishop Patrick Lynch encountered a few obstacles in his career.  Pius IX refused to receive Lynch as Ambassador, since the Vatican had not given full diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. The winds of defeat were in the air in 1864 and Pius did not want to be identified with a losing cause.  Lynch was received in private audience with His Holiness as a "bishop" only.

Bishop Lynch defended slavery and the Confederacy in the press north and south.  There were many quotations in the war of words between himself and northern abolitionists and northern bishops centered on the 1839 Papal Bull Supremo Apostolatus condemning slavery. Lynch and other slave owning bishops in the south interpreted the bull as merely condemning the slave trade and not the institution.

In Supremo Apostolatus

In Supremo Apostolatus is a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XVI regarding the institution of slavery. Issued on December 3, 1839 as a result of a broad consultation among the College of Cardinals, the bull resoundingly denounces both the slave trade and the continuance of the institution of slavery.

Once in Europe, he traveled extensively to seek aid for the Confederacy and even got an audience with Napoleon III of France. Because the war was going so bad for the South in the final months of the American Civil War, few ships were available to run the Northern Blockade and fewer still that would transport someone traveling under Confederate credentials. Lynch got stuck in Europe for a long time.

Lynch tried to get a visa under President Andrew Johnson’s general amnesty following the war but Lynch was refused based on his history.  He made application to the American Secretary of State for an exemption and downplayed, lied about all his anti-abolition writings and instead emphasized his inflated role in the Church’s humanitarian aid to Northern POWs, hospital aid to battlefields etc. 

Once back in Charleston, Lynch and the South were penniless.  He went on a wide tour in Europe and in Northern states begging for money to rebuild the loss of many buildings, schools, convents, orphanages lost in the great fire of 1861 and through the war itself.

After the passing of the Archbishop Dagger John Hughes of New York City, a friend of abolition and Abraham Lincoln, Lynch who had kept up a courteous but frosty correspondence with Hughes during the war went there and did a complete PR makeover in NYC.  (You know how that goes, turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse even to this day. Wink. Nod. LOL).  

Lynch was now famous in the North as the Catholic humanitarian who traveling across enemy lines with diplomatic humanitarian papers bringing medical supplies, aid and succor to the Union soldiers, imprisoned down south. Just your typically dedicated politically active freedom loving, money raising American bishop. Whatever. The paperwork for Bishop Lynch's recently revived future sainthood is pending somewhere in committee at the USCCB as I understand things.

The Charleton cathedral eventually got rebuilt by the beginning of the twentieth century, a pale reflection of its past. The Irish Saint Finbar got dropped from the name to a simple St. John the Baptist. 

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Happy Belated Birthday Jefferson Davis

I missed it.  Jefferson Davis’ birthday.  Yesterday?

Yesterday was an excuse for lazy state workers in Alabama and Florida to cheat taxpayers out of a day’s work in favor of a fake Monday, three day weekend holiday. 

He was actually born on June 3 which was Friday.  Tennessee has its official state holiday on June 3 and Mississippi celebrates Jeff’s birthday on the last Monday of May – Last Monday of May?  Memorial Day?  I thought Memorial Day was for all the dead of the Civil War.  And don’t give me the revisionist title “war between the states” bullshit. 

I have stopped trying to research this fake messiah birthday item state by state in the old southern states of the Confederacy.  Why bother?

I, did while researching, run into a blatant lie in of all places a government web site on the U.S. Senate.

January 21, 1861 Jefferson Davis' Farewell

“Tall, slender, and gaunt at the age of 52, Davis had been confined to his bed for more than a week….”

Tall?  Tall?  He was a shrimp! (Sorry)

Forty years ago I saw the “dress” he was captured in, in a display case at the Civil War Museum in Philadelphia.  It was not a dress but a silk paisley dressing gown.  How metrosexual for the times guys!  Did I mention how small this article of clothing was?  Like when I first saw it.  I thought it was for a child, the gown was so petite.

 (click on photo to enlarge image)

I researched it.  He was five foot four inches tall (162 cm).  I guess he was tall in the Senate and compared to the other senators?  Perhaps if he were alive today, Jeff would be driving or have one of his slaves driving him in a Hummer to offset psychological physical short comings if you know what I mean etc.

As I have stated before in this or some other blog, Jefferson Davis, as one time Secretary of War had the blueprints and plans for a southern route of a national transcontinental railroad, the projected moon shot space project of its day, to be financed by the federal government.

The lawyer for the northern railroads and the northern railroad transcontinental route lobby groups in the form of Abraham Lincoln signaled the end of the expansion of slavery on the continent.  Davis’ plans to build the southern route with cheap slave labor would have given him a shot at becoming the nation’s first billionaire.

 

How many dead darkies per mile would it have taken to make Jeff and his cronies’ multi multi millionaires building this dream of a southern railroad cash cow to the Pacific? Who would care?

Strange thing is that most “Christians” don’t really know their neighbors let alone love them as commanded by one long forgotten mystic and seer. 

Odd thing was that Jeff was educated in a Catholic school along the way, even though not catholic.  Which is why I think Pope Pius IX had such a fondness for Jeff, and his brave stance defending the honorable age old institution of slavery. Whatever.

With the Gadsden Purchase in hand for a southern railroad Pacific route, the business men of the old south went their way into their brave new world of the Confederacy. With lots and lots of nut cases running around the planet like pro-slavery southern freebooter William Walker taking over countries like Nicaragua, funded by Vanderbilt types, the future seemed bright to fuel the future slave republics of Mexico and Central America in league with the Confederacy.

All Jeff Davis had to do was build the south’s railroad to the Pacific Ocean to be king of the world. 

I am not exaggerating these facts.  Greedy men with ego problems like Jeff Davis have and continue to plague and ruin the world to this day for the rest of humanity, slave or not. 

If you want to have cake with slave master dictators in the old south y’all, go right ahead.  Enjoy.

Have a nice day.

Slavery Entitlement Month in Virginia

April is Slavery Entitlement Month in Virginia. So proclaimed by the Governor Ronald McDonald ? – Robert McDonnell there. Actually it is not about Slave Entitlement to the Plantation Owners who were traitors to the United States for something like four and one half years 1861-1865. It is Confederate History Month???

In line with some tourist magnet historic date in the next year or two, Virginia needs to save Civil War Battlefields that keep in the name of free market capitalism (bow your Head) becoming industrial parks and shopping malls. If you cannot make hallowed ground the battlefieds of that traitor’s war, then maybe you can Disney-fy reality about the horrors of a war that killed six hundred thousand Americans on both sides of that tragic disagreement.

The two previous Democratic governors had refused to issue the mostly symbolic proclamation honoring the soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. McDonnell (R) revived a practice started by Republican governor George Allen in 1997. McDonnell left out anti-slavery language that Allen's successor, James S. Gilmore III (R), had included in his proclamation. WASHINGTON POST

Honoring the soldiers who fought for the south? What about the soldiers that were guilty of war crimes. My great grandfather was a POW in a shithole of a POW camp in Virginia after he helped Sherman liberate Georgia. Oral history in my family speaks of starvation, beatings and torture. Are we honoring the men who did that Governor McDonnell?

No doubt both sides did that, the war crimes thing. They had to do that because Robert E. Lee turned down Lincoln’s offer of General the Armies of the North. Had Robert E. Lee been a man of conscience and taken that job, perhaps half a million Americans would not have died and the Civil War would have lasted less than a year. Instead he had to fight for southern honor, the approval of his country club, plantation slave owning peers.

His effigy above near his grave is spread out like that of a dead king in Westminster Abbey in London. Indeed his ambitions to be a king were dashed with the loss of the south. He was married to the step-great granddaughter of George Washington.

Washington was a true man of both honor and conscience who refused to become king or sieze power in his day. Washington also freed his slaves in his last will and testament. Washington saw the future and did not want to be judged on the wrong side of moral history.

Perhaps Lee’s imcompetant entitled blood royal line and role as head of the Southern Army is what made his family so dysfunctional. None of his four daughters married and ony two of his three sons had any children. But that is another story.

It was indeed fitting that Lincoln decided to bury the dead of that war in the front yard of Lee's Plantation, present day Arlington National Cemetery.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda month in Virginia. Virginia used to be for lovers. I will avoid it in any further travels through the south. I will wait to pee at the gas station in North Carolina.

Nostalgia for the wrong things, for delusional glory in the past is not a healthy thing. Enjoy Confederate Fantasy month in Virginia.