How Few Remain

SBC_Craig · Post by **SBC_Craig** » Wed Apr 17, 2002 5:34 pm

If anyone's read this book... the premise is quite similar... I love Harry Turtledove books... (side note: Blood and Iron looks to be interesting, i suppose... i like the WW2 continuation better... wonder what happens when USA/CSA reach WW2 though... will the Race invade again? ^_^)

Will Custer play a large role in the coming days? How about Jeb Stuart or Lee himself... I went right from 'Guns of the South' to the 'Great War' saga, so i don't remember much about 'How few remain'... all I remember is that Blaire was a bad president and lost half of Maine... eh :-

One final question: Will the Skiffys meet the men from Rivington? ^_^ that'd be crazy, i think... 'AWB' after all

Tom the Fanboy · Post by **Tom the Fanboy** » Wed Apr 17, 2002 5:53 pm

I don' know who the Rivington men are but I'm guessing their character's from Turtledove's books. T did say that there'd be a special guest in chapter four so I wouldn't count it out.

Scrwysqrl · Post by **Scrwysqrl** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 5:07 am

Wrong year for the AWB/Rivington Men handing AK-47s to the Confederacy...That book takes place 1864-68.

This is 1862. Most likely they have to make teh 3 Cigars and the plans and hand them over to a Union Soldier who is actually LITERATE.

Lordjulius · Post by **Lordjulius** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 5:32 am

The cigar tale is real, for anybody who doesn't know. One of the many Internet sites you can find more info on the whole thing is [url=http://"http://www.bhere.com/plugugly/"]here.[/url]

So I don't think the Professor and the skiffies are going to create the cigar-wrapped plans. My guess is they're there to keep the General from picking them up before the Union troops can get there.

So simple. Easy. No big deal. Except that something's going to go wrong. . .

Shatteredtower · Post by **Shatteredtower** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 10:48 pm

On 2002-04-18 06:07, scrwysqrl wrote:
Wrong year for the AWB/Rivington Men handing AK-47s to the Confederacy...That book takes place 1864-68.

This is 1862. Most likely they have to make the 3 Cigars and the plans and hand them over to a Union Soldier who is actually LITERATE.

Literacy rates in the United States of America were quite high before the US Civil War. A higher percentage of the population was literate then than there is at present - though, to be fair, certain groups were not counted in determining that figure.

However, most of those groups didn't have large roles to play in the army at the time either.

Scrwysqrl · Post by **Scrwysqrl** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 5:25 am

On 2002-04-18 23:48, Shatteredtower wrote:
On 2002-04-18 06:07, scrwysqrl wrote:
This is 1862. Most likely they have to make the 3 Cigars and the plans and hand them over to a Union Soldier who is actually LITERATE.

Literacy rates in the United States of America were quite high before the US Civil War. A higher percentage of the population was literate then than there is at present - though, to be fair, certain groups were not counted in determining that figure.

However, most of those groups didn't have large roles to play in the army at the time either.

Literacy rates were 'quite high'...but it was on the order of about 56-58% on teh Union Side and 50-54% on the Confederate side. A Sizable percentage there left who are illiterate or semi-literate.

With aboout a 4-in-10 chance that someone can't read, its still lucky. whoever found it could read.

A fairly standard practice was those who were literate would write letters home for the illiterate people.

BTW: the first army unit to report 100% literacy was a British Regiment in 1930...

Maccabee · Post by **Maccabee** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 6:24 am

Regional differences in literacy weren't necessarily north-south. Frontier areas had much lower rates than established areas. New England, with a well-established public school system, had very high literacy rates. Other areas, especially those with large immigrant populations, were lower.

Fun fact: Joseph Pulitzer was not literate in English when he joined the Union Army.

Blacks had it worse than whites, north or south. Oberlin College in Ohio admitted blacks, but few other institutions of higher learning did. Connecticut banned interracial schools.

In much of the south it was illegal to teach blacks to read -- there was a black school about a mile from my house that got shut down in 1845 and the school marm was briefly jailed.

South Carolina did not have a public school system for blacks or whites until the Reconstruction government established one, and that was one of the big "redeemer" complaints that brought the old ruling class back to power in the 1870s -- "They're wasting our tax dollars on teaching people who don't need it to read!"

Hmm. Sounds not too different than what you hear from some people today.

Maccabee

Lordjulius · Post by **Lordjulius** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 6:55 am

Maccabee said:

Fun fact: Joseph Pulitzer was not literate in English when he joined the Union Army.

Well, considering he was a 17-year-old Hungarian who was recruited in that country and brought here for the express purpose of serving, that's hardly surprising. He was literate in both Hungarian and German. Another fun fact: when Pulitzer was elected to the Missouri legislature in 1868, he was only 21 (born in 1847), although the Constitution said you had to be 25. Apparently, nobody noticed the discrepency, and he was sworn in the following year.

Blacks had it worse than whites, north or south. Oberlin College in Ohio admitted blacks, but few other institutions of higher learning did. Connecticut banned interracial schools.

In much of the south it was illegal to teach blacks to read -- there was a black school about a mile from my house that got shut down in 1845 and the school marm was briefly jailed.

South Carolina did not have a public school system for blacks or whites until the Reconstruction government established one, and that was one of the big "redeemer" complaints that brought the old ruling class back to power in the 1870s -- "They're wasting our tax dollars on teaching people who don't need it to read!"

Some of this was brought on by the tensions that led up to and extended after the war. Before about 1820, for instance, there were a large number of free blacks and "mulattoes" (a general term for what today might call "biracial," and which had sub-distincions such as "quadroon" and "octaroon" depending on how much "black blood" the person had) who did very well in certain Southern cities -- St. Louis and New Orleans, for instance. As the Abolition movement grew, however, it increased tensions not only between North and South but between "blacks" and "whites" (I've personally never seen either a black person nor a white person, but that's a topic for another time . . . ) both north and south, but especially in the latter.

Missouri, for instance, didn't pass its law forbidding the teaching of blacks until 1847 -- and it's interesting to note that the law did include free blacks, not just slaves. (Rev. John Berry Meachum responded by putting a black school on a steamboat in the middle of the river between Missouri and Illinois, which helped some.)

The history of public schooling in America is an interesting topic in its own right. Although many think of it as a basic right, it is not to be found anywhere in the Constitution. By Abe Lincoln's boyhood most areas did, in fact, have a public school, but it wasn't until well into the 20th century that the notion that everyone should go became prevalent.

_________________
Lord Julius
Grandlord of Palnu

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: lordjulius on 2002-04-19 08:09 ]</font>

Ray Radlein · Post by **Ray Radlein** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 8:32 pm

On 2002-04-19 06:25, scrwysqrl wrote:
Literacy rates were 'quite high'...but it was on the order of about 56-58% on teh Union Side and 50-54% on the Confederate side. A Sizable percentage there left who are illiterate or semi-literate.

My two favorite bits about the educational level present in the CSA Army:

(1) The Army of Northern Virginia, footsore, hungry, and bereft of supplies, used to refer to themselves as "Lee's Miserables." Heh.

(2) CSA Artillery Officres, at least, were expected to know an awful lot of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, if my copy of The Field Manual for The Use of The Officers on Ordnance Duty is to be believed (the manual also contains such infonuggets as the fact that spherical case shot was developed by a Colonel Schrapnell of Britain, or that the first wheellock handgun was made in the city of Pistoia, Italy -- so now we know where that word came from, as well).

With aboout a 4-in-10 chance that someone can't read, its still lucky. whoever found it could read.

I think that even an illiterate soldier would have recognized the importance of the papers, and shown them promptly to someone who could read.