by laelan51 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:26 pm
The war over slavery had been going on in the west for a generation already. Most of my people had already evacuated the South and were busy in Washington growing wheat and recording the conflict with the Spokane, Palouse, and Coeur D'Alene( "B.F.Manring, Prof. of history, UC Berkely) or instigating the third Californian war for independence from Mexico(the one that succeeded), Nicholas Carriger, founder of the University of Cal at Berkeley Library, owner of the first American owned winery and gold mine and leading member of the combined Californio/American vigilance committee that started the Rebellion. My Smiths in Missouri (2 of them) and the Whittington from North Carolina spent most of the war in Yankee prison camps in Ohio. Whittington returned home to find his wife and daughter hiding in stumpholes in the fields while his son was being hidden by the free blacks who worked the farm after they stopped the carpetbaggers from hanging him while they took all the property, cattle and land. You seem to know the story, if from a different angle; for my family(those who care) it's personal.