Keith,

Quote:

Unless you have confined your reading and viewing to literature and videos approved and blessed by the League of the South,it is hard to believe that EVERYTHING you have encountered says otherwise.



I have no reason to lie about that Keith, especially since I totally reject the Confederate assertion that secession was about States Rights. It was because the Confederate leaders were trying to further spread the abomination of slavery.

It’s not like I’ve been studying the Civil War, so I hadn’t encountered the view that rape was rare in the CW until today. I googled “rape in the American Civil War” and sure enough there are those who are trying to perpetuate that idea, (although, ... with all due respect, it's a ridiculous idea).

I also ran across an interesting article in the New York Times entitled “Rape and the Civil War” from 3 years ago. I doubt if the NYT is approved by the “League Of The South”, but here’s an excerpt:

Quote:

In fact, the University of North Carolina historian writes, “hundreds, perhaps thousands of women suffered rape” during the war, with many assaults likely unreported. But her focus is less rape itself than the threat of sexual predation by northern troops. Did reality match the fear of assault felt by Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”?

Feimster explores an 1862 order by the Union Gen. Benjamin Butler, decreeing that any New Orleans woman showing contempt for his occupying troops “shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation” — i.e., the city’s outspokenly Confederate belles were to be treated as prostitutes. Feimster sifts evidence that the order was a green light for Union soldiers to threaten sexual violence if not commit rape itself.

After President Abraham Lincoln ignored calls to rescind the order and it was applied beyond the city, she concludes, its geographical reach “ensured that the threat of sexual violence and the fear of rape were common to southern women and central to how they experienced the Civil War.”



I had forgotten about the "Beast Butler", (aka Union Gen. Benjamin Butler), until reading the article this morning, but recalled it from a documentary on the History Channel.

Obviously we could both post opposing excerpts, but for me it comes down to the fact that I find it inconceivable that rape wasn’t widespread, especially during the Union’s implementation of the “Total War” strategy.

So I guess we need to agree to disagree.

Take care.

Bob
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http://soundcloud.com/bobcflatpicke/music-in-the-mountains