by Oscar Williams Blacknall (Author)
The unreconstructed son of Col. Charles C. Blacknall, 23rd N.C. Regiment, delivers here a scathing critique of the Lincoln Administration for permitting W.T. Sherman's devastation of the helpless women and children of Georgia and South Carolina during his infamous "March to the Sea," and demonstrates that the war of 1861 was every bit one for liberty as that of 1776. Also included in the appendices are a further expos of the despotism of Lincoln's presidency and an examination of the fallacies of his celebrated Gettysburg Address.
Author Biography
Oscar William Blacknall was born on September 6, 1852 on his parents' farm near Kittrell, North Carolina. His father, Col. Charles C. Blacknall, served in the Granville Rifles, Co. G, 23rd N.C. Regiment until he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Winchester in November, 1864. Only a young lad when the War began in 1861, the junior Blacknall nevertheless was an unreconstructed defender of the Confederate cause until his death, defying even many of his fellow Southerners in his unvarnished post-bellum criticisms of the Lincoln Administration. Several of his non-polemical essays, written under the pseudonym "David Dodge," were published in the Atlantic Monthly in the latter years of the Nineteenth Century, such as "Domestic Economy of the Confederacy" and "Home Scenes at the Fall of the Confederacy." Blacknall also wrote a manual on berry cultivation, as well as numerous letters to journals and newspapers in his area. Having long suffered from poor physical and mental health, he committed suicide on July 6, 1918 and was buried in Kittrell Cemetery.