Page 23 - Fourth Division News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Our invocation will be given by dr. George w. C. Lions. He was pastor here in petersburg. Pray with me in your own tradition as i pray loud in mine. Gracious god, after 150 years of reflection and remembrance, we invoke your name so that you would prod our hearts to remember the lives lost in battle so that we might seek peace in our time. We acknowledge your reconciling presence always at work. Even through battles. Which has brought women and men together from all walks of life from every station and culture. 150 years later in harmony as community. Out of this place of sorrow, make this day...

Cohesion of a battlefront is lost on both sides, north and south. And so its unclear how many people are stuck in the crater. Theyre stuck in there well enough for one survivor to say that the men who were dead couldnt fall and the living were squirming beneath their feet and blood is running into the tops of their shoes. So i dont know how many that is, but most people on the outside trying to move forward but the problem is they didnt know that these honeycombed bombproofs were behind the battery or a whole other line of confederate earthworks there or that the confederates have just right p...

Runaway slaves and, of course, people come and look for them and take them back into their ownership. Some people dont come looking because they dont live in virginia. Theyre maryland runaways or delaware slaves. Of course, there are free blacks from the north who have enlisted. So theyll be kept in these slave pens right down here in shockoe bottom. And theyll be there if they survive until the war ends. Some of these people rejoin their regiments and they go from missing in action to, you know, what happened to you . So we get the details of what happened to them. Not very great details but ...

Said, quote, the whites retreated into the niggers. Others were called having to, quote, fix bayonets to stop them. This was a desperate moment for the men in the 4th division, but for the other three divisions, there was now an added element of an enraged enemy that was likely to treat them as accomplices in citing foreign slaves in selection. George kilmer noted, quote, it has been properly asserted that white men fell back into the greater in order to keep whites from confederate vengeance. The 36th massachusetts, quote, mix them up so they, the confederates, didnt show white men any mercy ...

Watching recalled, they made two attacks and they fell like autumn leaves. The georgians leave us some of our best accounts of their anger at the sight of armed black men, such as james verderi of the 48th georgia infantry sharing with his dear sister the day after the battle, the prisoners came leaping over our breastworks by 50 but our men took none, for they, he underlined this part, were niggers. Burnsides ninth army corps. As fast as they came over, the bayonet was plunged through their hearts. The muzzle of our gun was put on their temple and their brains blown out. Others are knocked in...