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MILITARY SERVICE
Age: 0, credited to Franklin County, VT
Unit(s): Civilian
Service: Planter, Louisiana (CSA)
See Legend for expansion of abbreviations
VITALS
Birth: Unknown, Franklin County, VT
Death: unknown
MORE INFORMATION
Alias?: None noted
Pension?: Not found
Portrait?: Unknown
College?: Not Found
Veterans Home?: Not Found
(If there are state digraphs above, this soldier spent some time in a state or national soldiers' home in that state after the war)
Remarks: None
DESCENDANTS
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George W. Green
Vidalia, LA, May 25th 1861
Dear Father
I have a few moments time today,---, and as the mails no doubt will soon be suspended, I avail myself of what I fear will be the last opportunity for a long time to come, of writing you.
Myself & children are all well, & we are now at home on the plantation. I got back from Memphis only a day or two since which place I wrote you.
I have read no letters or papers from either you or any of my brothers for a long time. I regret this silence--for in all probability, it must be a long time now before I shall have that pleasure.
It was my intention Dear Father to have paid you & my friend a visit this summer. This cannot now be, and God only knows whether you and I are ever to meet again in this world. Should we not, I am determined to live such a life as may impart a hope of meeting here after in another existence. The trials that oppose themselves are serious, but I hope for their final success.
The state of war which now exists is an unholy and unjust one. My everything is identified here, and you could not expect me to abandon the land of my adoption after a residence of over a quarter of a century, where fortune & friends have smiled on me.
The North are waging a war of aggression, of conquest and we would be less than men, not to defend his family's firesides, our country & freedom.
From this contest you may be sure we shall emerge with victory or almost national extermination.
We begged & entreated to be left alone - This is our dearest wish, and if it had been accorded no southern hand would have ever been raised against our northern friends. We could have lived in peace & friendship. But you cannot expect us to submit to the domination of a party founded on an avowed hostility to us and our institutions- Our very existence depends on successful resistance - and now in a final ?letter? I fear, let me solemnly assure you we are all united as one man in this contest. There is no union party here now.
With the spirit of prophecy let me predict that if your armies should prove victorious & we are crushed out of national existence - made to acknowledge submission to a maddened majority - are reduced to the condition of a conquered province - You will have blotted from existence all traces of a free and representative republic--and long before this present generations shall have passed away, you will find you have bequeathed to your children a despair which will make them mourn in sack cloth & ashes over their lost freedom - You are overturning the very principles of a republican form of government - and the consent of the governed to their government unions.
The Northern people must have been made mad preparatory to some awful national chastisement - God grant it may yet be averted-
The telegraph this morning advises that Virginia has been invaded. A defenseless light house near Pass Christian was burned by Your Navy a day or two ago - Shame on such cowardly warfare- If this invasion is to be pursued, how long think you before our proud capitol will be laid in ashes? But enough- my heart sickens over the horrors of a fratricidal war.
To you, to mother, and to my brothers, I cannot say farewell. I hope reason may yet raise suppression to passion, and we may all yet live to enjoy many many years of pleasant social intercourse. -- If Providence should order otherwise - I feel that my skirts are clean from the blood of brothers and friends - that if dissolution is to walk over our fair and happy land, and all are to be reduced to misery and mourning and woe - my conscience acquits me from all guilt.
God avert such calamities ---Truly your son --
George W. Green
Source: Photocopy of original letter, Swanton Historical Society.Return to Confederate Vermonters Homepage