The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1915-12-03
Furnished About Fifteen Hundred Men, FlUe
Hundred of Whom Sleep on the Battlefield.
Men Soon Forget But Women Never. When
the Historian of Future Seeks for That
Wonanhood to Illustrate Heroism He
VIII Come to This Southland for
the Heroic Mould
(By Col. D. A. Dickert.)

(By Col D. A. Dickert)
The ordinance Of Secession Of South
Garolina" was passed December 20,
1860 To that convention was sent
the truest, most representative and
fair-finded men of the state. New
berry sent four of her foremost men
of that day, Robt. Moorman, John P.
Kinard, Joseph Caldwell and Simeon
Fair, the latter an attorney, the others
planters. No more did the men who
signed that innocent looking instru-
ment of writing, the Ordinance of
Secession" think of the saturnalia OF
bloodshed and ruin their acts would
bring about, not only in their own
state, but from the Potomac to the Rio
Grande, than did the assassins of the
Crown Prince of Austria know that
their acts would throw Europe into a
cataclasm of war.
Could those men nave foreseen all
that was before them, all but the final
results, would their actions have been
the same? l believe it would. They
had met, in the words of the president
of the convention, quoting Danton at
French revolution, ''to dare, and
again dare, and without end to dare"
They dared to do what they knew they
had a constitutional right to. do, and
they dared the consequences.
The time had come for revolution,
and no human power could have stayed
it. Slavery, as an institution, had
filled its place in the economy of ma
ture, and had to pass away, and the
path of its exit led through upheavals
and bloodshed There was no other
road that led to negro freedom. The
union had been formed in distrust and
ieaIousies and bitterness grew with the
passing of events. THE women, with
out exception, were with the men IN
every shade and standing in society
Fthe pampered daughters Of the slave
aristocracy," the overseers' daughters,
the women of the poor and struggling
peasantry; all were clamorous for the
dissolution of the union. Tne woman
hood of the South. wno in the event OF
war, would be the greatest sufferers
and losers. whether the South was
victor or the vanquished, were willing
to stake their fate upon the hazard,
let it be peace or war. The older OF
the women had not forgotten the fate
of San Domingo, when all was as fair
and peaceable as summer day, the
recently freed negroes rose in lnsur-
rection and massacred the white men,
women and children, till this fairest
isle of the Antilles was denuded OF
white population.
TIE acts of John Brown and his
allies. who only few years before had
been sent South by the very party
that was just coming into power to
raise insurrection and liberate the
slaves by force of arms, who in one
night butchered, in cold blood, whole
families of Virginia's best citizens. 1t
was not the loss of slaves, as prop
erty value, the South dreaded, but the
sudden liberation of four or five mil
lion of irresponsible and ignorant ne
groes, whose only idea of freedom was
license. 1t was a secret dread, an en-
envy ever present, but unseen.
On the secesson of the state, Gov
ernor Pickens made a call for regi-
ment of six-months troops, to report
in Charleston and be ready to meet
any potentiality The first company
organized was the "Rhett Guards" led
by Capt. Whit Walker. Through the
fortunes of war, Captains B. NJ. Blease,
Erskine Lyles and D. P. Goggans be-
came its commanders. This company
entered the state service January 5,
1851, as a part of the First regiment.
On the booming of the cannon
against the walls of Sumter, in April,
five more companies from Newberry
reported for duty, under an act Of the