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Just days after the firing on Fort Sumter, John Christopher Winsmith of Spartanburg, South Carolina wrote the following: I think it the duty of the whole South to make common cause against the hordes of abolitionists who are swarming Southwards." He went on to anticipate that...
"If they are successful against the border States, of course they will be upon us, and in order to prevent this we must annihilate them at the outset." (April 24, 1861).
Winsmith enlisted in the Confederate army and rose to the rank of major before being wounded in Sept. 1864.
Winsmith enlisted in the Confederate army and rose to the rank of major before being wounded in Sept. 1864.
In 1876 Winsmith addressed a Republican convention in SC: "For four long and bloody years, on more than a score of battle fields, did I strive to strike down the flag of my country, there it floats still, the star spangled banner, over the land of the free and the home of the ...
...brave, and I thank God that I am here to-day to declare to you, my countrymen, that never again will I essay to strike with uplifted hand the noble ensign of freedom."
On the issue of race: "My countrymen, the great question presented by the two political parties in the...
On the issue of race: "My countrymen, the great question presented by the two political parties in the...
...United States to-day is whether our fellow-citizens of the dark class have rights which the light class is bound to respect. The republican party of the nation says they have. The democratic party, by its entire course since the war ended, says they have not. Let us show...
...how unfounded is this democratic prejudice against our fellow-citizens of the dark class."
It's a fascinating puzzle. How did a diehard Confederate from a wealthy slaveholding family in SC become a stalwart Republican, who called for black civil rights? Stay tuned.
It's a fascinating puzzle. How did a diehard Confederate from a wealthy slaveholding family in SC become a stalwart Republican, who called for black civil rights? Stay tuned.
Let's complicate the story even more:
On Nov. 9, 1860 Dr. John Winsmith (JC's father) introduced the following resolution to the General Assembly: "That this General Assembly is satisfied that Abram Lincoln has already been elected President of the United States, and...
On Nov. 9, 1860 Dr. John Winsmith (JC's father) introduced the following resolution to the General Assembly: "That this General Assembly is satisfied that Abram Lincoln has already been elected President of the United States, and...
...that said election has been based upon principles of open and avowed hostility to the social organization and peculiar interests of the slave holding states of this Confederacy."
After the war Winsmith opposed the state's Black Codes and joined the Republican Party in 1870.
After the war Winsmith opposed the state's Black Codes and joined the Republican Party in 1870.
Winsmith was later attacked and seriously wounded (shot 7 times) by the Ku Klux Klan owing to his support of newly freed slaves that farmed part of his property and cooperation with the "Radical" government.
This is every bit a father-son story.
This is every bit a father-son story.
This is the Confederate monument in Spartanburg, SC that was dedicated in 1911. So much of the current public discussion has been about the extent to which these monuments distorted the history of the Confederacy and erased that of African Americans from the public landscape.
While all true, we also need to come to terms with the ways in which these monuments distorted the very history of the men who fought in Confederate ranks. These monuments freeze their stories around vague platitudes of bravery and "heroic deeds."
Confederate monuments were intended to obliterate the postwar stories of veterans like John Christopher Winsmith for the sake of controlling public memory and the maintenance of white supremacy. Winsmith's postwar betrayal was a threat to white unity during Reconstruction.
As far as Spartanburg's monument is concerned, white residents were as loyal and committed to the Confederate cause in 1911 as they had been between 1861 and 1865.
