Savannah Chapter #2 United Daughters of the Confederacy

09/29/2026

Confederate Memorial in Forsyth Park, Savannah, Georgia. Salute! (photo taken May 2022, RJ)

In the center of Forsyth Park in Savannah is this Confederate Monument, dedicated over 150 years ago on May 24, 1875.

The Ladies Memorial Association of Savannah raised the money directly after the war, beginning in 1868, to honor the local men who left home to defend their families, their city, and Georgia when the fighting came south.

Those southern men did what their fathers and grandfathers had done in the Revolution: they answered the call. Many never came back. A great number lie in unmarked graves. This monument is their memorial.

The cornerstone was laid June 16, 1874. The shaft of Nova Scotia sandstone rises 48 feet and has been topped since 1879 by a bronze Confederate soldier standing at rest.

The Ladies Association would not use Northern stone or Northern workmen; the pieces came by sea.

An inscription from Scripture still faces the park: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

Busts of Savannah’s own Francis Bartow, killed at First Manassas, and Lafayette McLaws were later placed beside it.

It is one of the oldest memorials not only in Georgia but the entire country.

This war memorial remembers men who unselfishly and courageously served. Thanks are due to everyone who has helped maintain, protect, and preserve this beautiful, historical monument. It certainly very fitting in this historic city. -RJ

09/27/2026

Ten-year-old Lucy McRae was a Vicksburg, Mississippi merchant’s daughter. In the summer of 1863 Grant’s batteries and the river fleet closed the city and pounded it for forty-seven days.

Families cut caves into the hills. Lucy’s family was in one of those holes when a Union shell burst above the slope and brought the arch down in a solid slide of earth. She was caught under it. Dr. Lord, himself pinned by the same fall, shouted that a child was buried. Her mother reached her first. Men pulled Lucy’s head free, then the rest of her. Blood ran from her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth.

She remembered it all her life: a little girl sealed under Union/Yankee fire in the ground of her own town. Another shell followed them into the street as they dragged her out. She was one of the “lucky” ones, many others didn’t make it out alive while being bombed in an American city.

What the Union did at Vicksburg was make war on a city packed with women and children who had nowhere to run. Night and day the shells fell around the town in scenes far worse than what Army troops endured in Iraq.

People ate mule, rat, and whatever they could find, then learned the next meal might be their own pet.

On July 4, 1863, the city surrendered. For decades Vicksburg would not keep the Fourth as a celebration. A town that had watched its children buried, starved, and dug out of the dirt did not feel obliged to cheer the flag that had waged war on them and killed their families and fellow Americans.

Lucy McRae is one of the many children from that famous Mississippi town that learned that the Union/north loved Vicksburg so much, that it was willing to kill them all to force them to stay. -RJ

09/26/2026

Father Ryan says: "A land without ruins is a land without memories; a land without memories is a land without history."

09/26/2026

09/25/2026

Lowndes County, Valdosta — With a large basket slung over his shoulder and a cane in hand, James Norman was a familiar figure on Valdosta’s streets. Known locally as “Blind Jim,” Norman made his rounds through town selling peanuts to residents, apparently becoming well enough known that newspapers could simply refer to him by his nickname. The Georgia Archives preserves this photograph of him but unfortunately does not assign it a precise date.

We do know that his business was active by at least 1912. That June, The Valdosta Times carried a small notice reading that “Blind Jim, the peanut man” wanted to buy 150 bushels of green peanuts—20 bushels a week—and would pay the highest price. That is a surprisingly large quantity and suggests that Norman was not merely selling the occasional basketful but was operating a steady little enterprise.
He seems to have remained part of local memory for years. A 1927 publication from Georgia State Woman’s College in Valdosta casually referred to “Blind Jim” and his peanuts, an indication of how recognizable the name had become around town.

Sometimes photographs like this preserve the people who rarely made the history books but were once instantly recognizable on the streets of their hometown.


Georgia on My Mind curated by Lisa Land Cooper - Author and Historian

© 2026 Lisa Land Cooper – Author and Historian

09/25/2026

What the Yankees did to southern blacks: Mary Woodward on the Swing

Mary Woodward was sitting in the front-yard swing when Union/Yankee soldiers rode up. She was a young enslaved girl in Fairfield County, South Carolina—born about 1854, later interviewed at 83 by the Federal Writers’ Project in Winnsboro. This is what she said.

“When de Yankees come, I was a settin’ in de swing in de front yard. They ride right up and say: ‘Where your mistress?’ I say: ‘I don’t know.’ They say: ‘You is lyin’. Give her a few lashes and us’ll find out.’ Another say: ‘No, us come to free ni***rs, not to whip them.’”

One soldier stopped the whipping, but the worst was yet to come. Yankees then ransacked the house, broke open the smokehouse, and loaded meat, ham, molasses, sugar, and meal into a wagon. They set fire to the house, gin house, and barn, then rode on toward Rocky Mount. That was the pattern across much of Sherman’s path through the Carolina midlands in February 1865. Just imagine police/military forces doing that again today in America!

As usual, Yankees stole from both white and black alike…

“When de Yankees come and find me a settin’ in dat swing, I had on a string of beads dat Miss Nellie give to me. Them rascals took my beads off my neck… one of them… put them ’round his horse’s neck and ride off wid them, leavin’ me sobbin’ my life out in dat swing.”

She never made peace with it. “They say you must love your enemies… but I never have pray for dat Yankee scamp to dis day.” When she told William Woodward, her husband’s old master, he called the soldier “de low dirty skunk.” 

Public schools always ignore these stories. They frame 1865 as liberation in blue and stop.

Mary probably only got lashed one time in her life and it wasn’t from a southerner but rather from a Yankee from a distant northern land or fresh off the boat.

Mary remembered how well she was treated in the south and how cruel those Yankees were.

Like many southern blacks, the worst day of their lives was when Yankees arrived. After all those years she still would not pray for those Yankees and would never forget what they did. -RJ