HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pdunn@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Patrick L Dunn)
Subject: Re: Aiming.
Keywords: Aimed shots casualties
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 22:01:34 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.235139.2348@bnlux1.bnl.gov> COWAN@ANL.GOV writes:
>If every man was firing 60 aimed shots at a roughly
>equal number of opponants, why wasn't everybody killed? With an assumption of
>equal numbers on both sides, 25% casualties means only 1 of 4 soldiers (on
>average) hit any thing with his 60 shots. That is 1 hit per 240 shots! You cal
l
>that aiming? And this totally ignores all the casualties due to artillery fire
>and the fact that healthy prisoners were also included among the "casualties".
>Even accounting for the fact that not all units saw heavy fighting even in the
>biggest battles, and the fact that the armies stood far apart the accuracy rat
e
>seems amazingly low. After all they were shooting at errect targets standing i
n
>a (more or less) straight line. Do any re-enactors out there have a feel for
>where all those other shots went?

Soldiers in the war used to guess that it too a man's weight in lead to kill 
him.  An "expert" estimated that it took 240 lbs. of powder and 900 lbs. of
lead for a Confederate to be hit in a battle.

PDunn
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: morphy@cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy)
Subject: Re: Social perquisites of non-slaveholding whites
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 12:40:31 GMT

bjm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Bobbie J. Mann) writes:

>Are you African or American?

Yes.
Jones
-- 
Jones M Murphy Jr                                        (212) 602-4375
NatWest Investment Bancorp, National Westminster Bank PLC
100 Wall Street, New York, NY10005                   FAX (212) 269-0113
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: morphy@cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy)
Subject: Re: Mac
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 12:40:11 GMT

bjm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Bobbie J. Mann) writes:

>>..And neither am I. This is a demand, not a whine. Otherwhise I'll make the LA
>>riots look like a Sunday picnic.

>Ahh, a student of M.L. King.  Threaten with violence...

You must be even dumber than you sound, taking a statement like that seriously.

Your reading comprehension did not allow to to get as far as grasping:

>>I'll start off by giving myself, oh, $10 mil or so. After all, I have more
>>slavemaster blood than most white Americans.



>>>Yes.  But not the only aspect.  You almost seem to be admitting that the
>>>South was not fighting solely for slavery...I'm glad to see that you're
>>>beginning to concede the one point I was trying to make.  :-)

>>I never said that the South was fighting solely for slavery. They were fighting
>>for murder, robbery, and humiliation, the crimes they were able to commit
>>against AFricans with impunity. They were fighting for racial aristocracy.


>Well, I know why *my* ancestors fought in the CSA army.  It was not to preserve
>slavery or any of the other outrageous reasons you've mentioned.  My ancestor
>lived in an all-white county in AR., had no slaves, and and only ocassionally 
>ever seen a black person.  He was a poor farmer as were those around him.  He
>fought for the right to make his own decisions, and not have them made by
>someone in Washington...which then was the equivalent (or something similar,
>anyway) of someone in London making the decisions on how I live.  I'd fight
>for that right today.

Yeah, I don't doubt you'd fight for the right to put the niggers back in their
place for one second. Well dream on, fool.

It's pathetic how you keep spouting all this stuff about "right to make his
own decisions"! That collective "right" mean the suppression of the rights of
millions of people in a complete and dehumanizing way. What about the rights of
Africans in the South to make their own decisions?? That was in far greater
jeopardy.
Jones
-- 
Jones M Murphy Jr                                        (212) 602-4375
NatWest Investment Bancorp, National Westminster Bank PLC
100 Wall Street, New York, NY10005                   FAX (212) 269-0113
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: morphy@cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy)
Subject: Re: the late unpleasantness subsides (?)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 15:10:01 GMT

HADCRJAM@admin.uh.edu (MILLER, JIMMY A.) writes:

>In <1992Sep1.225740.13333@cco.caltech.edu> morphy@cco.caltech.edu writes:
>> casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE) writes:
>jones... 

>> >>The most seminal university in Western Civ was in Africa! It was in the city
>> >>later renamed Alexandria, and that was where the early Greek philosophers and
>> >>mathematicians studied.

>> >No argument here.  But they weren't really doing a lot of modern medicine and

>> I didn't say they were. But doctors still take the Hippocratic oath, I notice.

>  Was this university founded before or after Alexander conquered the area?

Of course. His tutor(Plato) studied there, as did Plato's teacher Socrates.

>And if before, what effect (if any) did his conquest have on the university 
>besides changing the name of the city?

Not much, as far as I know.
Jones
-- 
Jones M Murphy Jr                                        (212) 602-4375
NatWest Investment Bancorp, National Westminster Bank PLC
100 Wall Street, New York, NY10005                   FAX (212) 269-0113
From: jsanders@phys.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Re: Plantation Population
Date: 31 Aug 1992 13:00:27 GMT
Organization: Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: bohr.phys.ksu.edu

In article <17sg0gINN3hv@agate.berkeley.edu> 
turrell@violet.berkeley.edu (David Turrell) writes:

[a great majority of a very informative post deleted]

>However, if the number of Planter families was a small minority, the
>majority of slaves did live on plantations. This concentration of
>slaves greatly influenced the institution of slavery. Control was more
>difficult, and therefore more harsh, the more slaves there were in
>relation to masters.
>

Thanks, Dave, for an interesting post.

A recent analysis of slavery in Texas, Randolph B.
Campbell, "An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas,
1821-1865" (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1989), has the following
table:

Table 15. Distribution of Slaves according to Size of Slaveholding,
          1850 and 1860

Size of Slave Holding      1-4      5-9   10-19   20-49 50-99 100+

1850
percentage of slaveholders  54.5    24.0   14.1    6.4    0.9  0.1
percentage of slaves        15.8    22.4   26.3   25.3    8.0  2.2

1860
percentage of slaveholders  47.6    23.7   17.5    9.3    1.5  0.4
percentage of slaves        11.5    17.1   25.8   29.6   10.6  5.4

I would expect that the 1860 figures would be similar to those of other
states where slaves made up about 25%-30% of the population. 

The observation that I would like to make is that (in 1860) 28.6% 
of the slaves lived in groups less than 10, 54.4% lived in groups 
less than 20 (i.e. "non-planter" by the "20+ slaves = planter" arbitrary 
criterion), and 44.6% of slaves lived in groups of 20 or more.  So 
there was a substantial proportion of the slave population in a 
classic plantation environment, but there was also a substantial 
proportion in a non-plantation environment.

Another interesting table in Campbell's book compares the age distribution
of the slave and the white populations.  The distributions are almost
identical, which indicates that the slaves had a life expectancy that was
just a little less than that of the white population.
--
Justin M. Sanders    "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance"
Dept. of Physics        --last words of Gen. John Sedgwick
Kansas State Univ.
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: jeromema@cc.uvcc.edu
Subject: Re: Jones M. Murphy and the charter of this group
Organization: Utah Valley Community College
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:10:47 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.130948.1@cc.uvcc.edu>, jeromema@cc.uvcc.edu writes:

Let me say, like Jeff Zurschmeide, that, although I accept Jones Murphy's posts,
I don't necessarily go along with his presentation of them in all cases.  I don't
think that slamming is appropriate, and that the discussion needs to remain civil.
In the same vain, I don't appreciate the responses of individuals like Dave Casper,
who appears to have taken it upon himself to lash back at Jones Murphy.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, this will get us nowhere, or at least nowhere we wanted to go.
Let's try to keep personalities out of the discussion on slavery.  I don't really
don't care who has a better handle on the English language, etc.

Anybody who wants to involves themselves with bashing, get involved with a demolition
derby in your local neighborhood.
From: daggs@l42bb.jsc.nasa.gov (Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Thanks for the poem
Date: 27 Aug 1992 18:39:22 GMT
Organization: Houston Civil War Roundtable

Dear Mr. Warf

	Thanks for the poem. I'd love to see more.

Clark J. Daggs
1864 El Mar Ln.
Seabrook, Texas 77586
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 13:29:01 -0400 
From: "Joshua M. Sabloff" <jsa5+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: ANOTHER fresh start, please

(Please excuse the spelling, I'm doing this from home instead of the X
stations in the cluster)

Will this newsgroup please *CALM DOWN*?  Over the past couple of weeks,
this has changed from a nice little Civil War buff's discussion group to
a legal arguement over the details of the Constitution to a debate over
the role of slavery in the Civil WWar and the USA at large to an
incredibly UGLY flame war in which people are daily accused of racism,
reverse racism, narrow-mindedness, blindness, stupidity, ... well,,
let's just say the list goes on and on and on (just like that damn
rabbit).

I do not lament the first two transitions.  I would hope that these do
noot become permanent trransitions; *ALL* aspects off the Civil War
should be open for discussion, from Lee's tactics at Gettysburg to the
CSA's right or lack thereof to secede, to the role of slavery (<-
presenteed in the order that these topics werre introduced to the group,
not in terms of importrance).  Obviously, people will have differing
opinions as to which of these are the most important; let us trty to
limit (if not eliminate) arguements over this point.  

What I hope will be banished from this newsgroup is the flame war that
has developed due to intollerance on all sides, the horribly
self-righteous tone of many messages, and the unwillingness to see the
other side of the arguement AT ALL.  If this is to be a productive -- or
even INTERESTING -- group, let's all try to be more (for lack of  a
better word) civilized.  

One thing I have learned through the years of history I have taken
formally and through what I have read on my own is that assigning a
single cause, a single purpose, a single reason, etc. to a significant
historical event is just plain wrong.  (See, there I go off, being
narrowminded in my openmindedness.  Great.) To think that economics is
the sole drivinng force behind hhistory is absurd; to think colonialism
and slavery were the sole forces behind industrialization is just as
absurd; to think the South (OK, Jones, the white South) fought for their
political freedoms is just as absurd.

To discuss the relative merits of each factor will inevitably lead to
another flame war.  Therefore, I wold like to humbly suggest that we
take each factor individually and examine its impact within its scope
(at least until we get calmed down enough again to engage in a flameless
discussion of the relative impacts).

Flame this all you want; I  have the feeling that I ripped on most of
the newsgroup in this post.  For the good of the newsgroup, please limit
your flames to e-mail.  This message was meant to cut down on the
content-to-noise ratio here, not to increase it further.  Besides, I'll
be going off to college soon, leaving THIS account behind.  I don't
think I'll have the time for the newsgroups for a while!

Is everyone listening???


-Josh Sabloff (jsa5@andrew.cmu.edu)
"Now go away before I taunt you a second time-a!"
From: zursch@whizkid.wpd.sgi.com (Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Re: Aiming.
Date: 31 Aug 92 16:59:35 GMT
Reply-To: zursch@whizkid.wpd.sgi.com (Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide)
Organization: SGI TechPubs

In article <1992Aug30.225754.6360@iscsvax.uni.edu>, dargan@iscsvax.uni.edu writes:
>I'm skeptical about significant numbers of either side carrying smoothbores or
>flintlocks after the winter of '61.

daveu@sco.com has a flintlock smooth-bore pistol recovered from the retreating
Confederates after Gettysburg. While this doesn't prove significant numbers, 
consider it a data point. 

+++

In general on the discussion of aiming and the number of shots required to hit
something, I was put to mind of the scene in Glory when the man is asked to 
fire accurately with a gun going off by his head. I'm sure it isn't easy. 

Also, I wonder if P.L. Cowan (I would use your first name if I knew it...) has 
ever fired a black powder rifle? They're kind of heavy and not real accurate.
Mine is a target rifle with a heavy barrel....modern made and everything and
I still can't hit an elephant at 50 paces. (This, I'm sure, has more to do with me
than with the rifle...) But I can make a tin can dance quite nicely with my 
friend's .22 with a scope.... 

In response to Jones' question about the makeup of the army, at the outset,
the U.S. Army regulars were about 15,000 men. I'm sure this number increased
somewhat, but out of a 300,000+ man force, I don't think the regulars were 
ever more than about 50-60,00. (This is just off the top of my head, so if others
have hard stats, I'd welcome correction...) 

Clerks with guns, farmers with rifles, how do you expect them to hit things?
I'd be lucky to not soil my trousers in a fire fight, I wouldn't expect to actually
hit anything.... 

JZ
From: daggs@l42bb.jsc.nasa.gov (Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Re: State vs. US Regiments (was Black Troops)
Date: 28 Aug 1992 13:15:29 GMT
Organization: Houston Civil War Roundtable

In article <1992Aug27.140825.13096@bnlux1.bnl.gov> KARLIN@BNLCL6.BNL.GOV (P.L.
Cowan) writes:
>In <a750288.12@pan.mc.ti.com> a750288@pan.mc.ti.com writes:
>
>: In article <1992Aug25.163221.24332@odin.corp.sgi.com>
zursch@whizkid.wpd.sgi.com (Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide) writes:
>: 
>: >Addressing the point about State-mustered troops being less thought of
>: >than regular army troops, there was a clue to the truth of this in the
>: >book "Private Elisha Stockwell Jr. Sees the Civil War." - He describes
being
>: >in camp near a regiment of regular army infantry and notes that they did
>: >not care for the volunteers and that the volunteers eventually made life so
hot
>: >for them that they had to move. 
>: 
>: >Just another data point,
>: 
>: >JZ
>: 
>: 
>: I didn't realize there was this sort of rivalry between regulars and 
>: volunteers.  Thanks for the info!  Somehow I don't think the volunteers
>: would have thought themselves less than the regulars!
>: 
>: John Brennan 
>: 
>
>I observed a re-enactment at Harper's Ferry were a "US Infantry Colonel"
>chewed-out a "state Colonel" for giving orders to "a regular army" regiment.
>The state colonel was nominally in command at Harper's Ferry. I must say that
>the acting (or re-enacting) was extremely effective. The state colonel 
>blanched under the on-slaught. In all my reading I had seen nothing to suggest
>such friction, but that one re-enactment convinced my it must have been true.
>
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>P. L. Cowan	Please send replies, comments etc. (no flames thank you) to 
>COWAN@ANL.GOV 	(I'm posting this from a friend's account)
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>


	There is at least one vague reference to that somewhere in 
Vol. I of "Battles and Leaders..." Where some US general points 
out to the readers that HE was a Regular Army general while his
rival was ONLY a General of Volunteers. Without the quote in front
of me I cannot say with authority who it was, but it reminds me
of the sort of thing Buell would have said about Grant.

	I'll check into it.

Clark J. Daggs
1864 El Mar Ln.
Seabrook, Texas 77586 
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa,alt.appalachian
From: gmclucki@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Gemma McLuckie)
Subject: Re: civil war connections
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 15:08:46 GMT

In article <1862i4INN9lq@cs.utexas.edu> russw@cs.utexas.edu (Russ Williams) wri
tes:
>So what was your ancestor's poetry like?

Russ Williams asks what Peyton Burns poetry is like.

(If Russ's original post shows up, excuse me for restating the obvious. But for
some reason my follow-up posts lately have swallowed the references, so my
replies don't make a whole heck of a lot of sense! It's like starting a
conversation in the middle -- a disconcerting habit of my mother's.)

It's been a while since I read the poem. But as I recall it's rather long, full
of longing for the Old South (what ever that was supposed to be), and not very
good.  It seems that somewhere along the line someone published it (probably
self-published, I would imagine) because my mom has a printed copy.

My mother is coming up this weekend from Cincinnati, so I'll pump her for more
details of why and how Peyton Burns chopped that wood.

Gemma
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: smoothbores, foriegn soldiers and enlistments
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 22:16:32 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.201436.8170@odin.corp.sgi.com> root@whizkid.wpd.sgi.com (Super-User) writes:
>
>
>They revoked CMHs After WWI?!?! 
>
>I can scarcely believe that people would do that. (only the fact that Congress
>did it renders it believable.) 
>
>To think they'd revoke medals over 50 years after the fact is astonishing. 
>
   A lot of CMHs were handed out very freely, as political favors, to
shut up squeaky wheels, and to honor old vets in a congressman's
district. Some vets just sent a letter to their congressman asking for
one and recieved it!  I'll bet that after WWI, in order to make the CMH
a more prestigious award, they cleared out the rolls.
   Actually, I don't think that the US army had a whole lot of medals to
hand out. Brevet or permanent promotions were fairly common, but after a
while became so common that they lost their appeal. Soldiers referred to
horses as "brevetted mules". That left the CMH and the Purple Heart
(create by George Washington) as the only two official medals that could
be given out, to recognize heroism. (I believe that unofficial campaign
medals and the like were struck, during and after the war).
   The PH could only be given out for wounds. The CMH was probably given
out for the sort of thing that nowdays a soldier or sailor might get
anything from the Military Medal (for non-combat heroism) to the CMH
for.                                                              a

Have fun,

Tom

>I don't blame her for not surrendering it. 
>
>If I were her, I'd be tempted to stuff it up the fundamental aperture of my Congressman. 
>
>JZ


Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: jeromema@cc.uvcc.edu
Subject: Re: Mac
Organization: Utah Valley Community College
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 20:20:46 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.221217.21835@hubcap.clemson.edu>, trev@hubcap.clemson.edu (Trevor Bauknight) writes:
> morphy@cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:
> 
> some (you conveniently left of them treated their slaves as human
> beings, IN SPITE OF THE FACT that they had been enculturated to believe 
> that their slaves were NOT human beings.

How can a person make a slave out of another person and then claim that he
is treating the slave like a human beings?  To enslave a human being is a
deporable act of taking away that individuals dignity as a human being.

For a slave-holder to begin to treat a slave like a human being would require
the slave-holder to first set the slave free.  
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: jeromema@cc.uvcc.edu
Subject: Re: smoothbores, foriegn soldiers and enlistments
Organization: Utah Valley Community College
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 19:00:09 GMT

In article <Bu28K4.AMp@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes) writes:
> In article <1992Sep3.223457.23529@leland.Stanford.EDU> whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:
> 
> I have looked in a book that gave the regimental rosters, commanders,
> and battle history of each regiment raised in Ohio. It believe it was
> called something like "The unit histories of Ohio Regiments, it was
> published around the turn of the century (+/-20 years) and was very
> interesting. It gave the muster date of each man listed with a regiment,
> the location where he joined up, and some word as to his final fate.

Is that the 10 volume work?  They have a copy up at the L.D.S. Family
History Library in Salt Lake City.  When I browsed through it several
years ago it was in book form, but they have been trying to microfilm
their book collection, and may have already done so.  If that's the
case, then that microfilm can be rented from them for a small fee
through local L.D.S. Church Genealogical Branch libraries around
the country.  Just look under "Churches" in the phone book and
make contact with any Ward or Branch Church building.

Marc
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt)
Subject: Re: Black Troops
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 17:27:22 GMT

The reason I made the distinction between state and Federal colored
regiments is that the question at hand was whether the Emancipation
Proclamation had authorized the recruiting of former slaves into
military service. Since the EP could only affect Federal troops, I
wanted to point out that existing regiments were state-recruited,
hence their recruitment was not related to the EP, a Federal document.
I had nothing more than that in mind.
-- 
Steve Schmidt			<><		   whale@leland.stanford.edu

"We have met the enemy and he is us" - Walt Kelly
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
From: jmb@oclc.org (James Blight)
Subject: Re: Diplomatic help by Russia?
Organization: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 21:22:57 GMT

In article <1684D757B.M20614@mwvm.mitre.org> M20614@mwvm.mitre.org (Hugh Pritchard) writes:
> 
>Russia, under Nicholas I (?), freed their serfs (= slaves) in 1861.
>After the EP was promulgated, Russia leaned on Britain to not help the
>CSA; Britain remained "neutral" 'til the end of the war.  Supposedly,
>this was at the instigation of the U.S. State Department.  Can anyone
>shed more light on this?
> 

If I remember correctly, many in England (the aristocracy) were for the CSA and
were for outright recognition until the Emancipation Proclamation.  After that,
the fact that the union was fighting to destroy slavery made the idea of
supporting the CSA reprehensible and the british stepped up thier attempts to
stop the construction of commerce raiders for the CSA.  Interesting that
Napolean III followed Queen Elizabeth's neutrality proclamation with his own.

A russian fleet sailed into New York in late autumn 1862.  It was originally
thought that the act was a show of support for the union.  Later it was
realized that tensions were high between Russia and England (or France?) and
the russian fleet was wintering in New York to avoid either being blockaded in
the North Sea or being stuck in the ice around St. Petersburg (or both!) 

France did take the advantage of installing Maximillian to the Mexican throne
until the end of the war when troops were sent to the Rio Grande. The french
pulled out and left Maximillian to the mercies (execution) of the mexican
people.

       -Jim (Hi Kevin) B


Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa