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One of the most frustratingly neglected chapters of the Second American Revolution was the story of the Richmond Underground, the hundreds of active Unionists in the Confederate capital, black and white, who did everything they could to sabotage the war effort. Before and after Fredericksburg, Lee's army was badly nobbled by not getting supplies on schedule. The railroad operators and suppliers regularly misdirected that kind of freight. Elizabeth Van Lew organized a circle of informants that reached into the War Department and Mary Bowser, a former slave in her parents household--all manumitted years before--came back to take a position working for Jefferson Davis in the Confederate White House. She smuggled information out through the baker who made daily deliveries, Thomas McNiven. What's particularly significant about these people is that they were on the winning side and we know so little about them. After the war, the government brought Van Lew (and surely others) to Washington to remove the documentation on their activities from the records, because of fear of reprisals. Meanwhile, they were putting up statues to the idols of the master class that tried to destroy a nation when they couldn't rule it anywhere. It puts a whole new light on what "Reconstruction" meant and never meant. ML _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
