Prattville Dragoons SCV

10/31/2025

PRATTVILLE DRAGOONS NOVEMBER CAMP MEETING

Our guest speaker will be Jayson A. Altieri and the topic for 13 November 2025, is The Raid of St. Albans, Vermont: The Northern Most Land Battle of the Civil War, October 19, 1864. Fellowship begins at 6:30 and the meeting will begin at 6:45. As always, we will meet at the Prattville Masonic Lodge.

The St. Albans Raid was executed by a group of 21 Confederate soldiers led by Lieutenant Bennett Young. The raid aimed to rob banks to fund the Confederate war effort and to create panic in the North, potentially diverting Union troops from the front lines. The raiders successfully robbed three banks in St. Albans, Vermont, stealing over $200,000, a significant sum at the time. They also killed one local resident and attempted to set fire to parts of the town before retreating back to Canada.

Col (Ret) Jayson A. Altieri, US Army, served for 33 years before retiring as the Chief of Staff of the Army's Chair, National War College, Washington, D.C. Jayson is an award winning-author of several aerospace and military history publications. He was the 2020 Best Air and Space Power History Foundation Article winner for his essay "Government Girls: Crowdsourcing Combat Aircraft in World War Two" and received the United Daughters of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis Award for his writings on Civil War Confederate Prisoners and the First White House of the Confederacy. Jayson is an active member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and regularly gives lectures on the life of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

10/31/2025

“We quit the Union, but not the Constitution—this we have preserved. Secession from the old Union on the part of the Confederate States was founded upon the conviction that the time-honored Constitution of our fathers was about to be utterly undermined and destroyed. and that if the present administration at Washington had been permitted to rule over us, in less than four years, perhaps, this inestimable inheritance of liberty, regulated and protected by fundamental law, would have been forever lost...We have rescued the Constitution from utter annihilation. This is our conviction, and we believe history will so record the fact”

(Alexander H. Stephens Speech to the Virginia Secession Convention, April 23, 1861)

10/30/2025

The Tallassee SCV and OCR does a great job putting this event on. The SCVRD is looking forward to this event.

10/30/2025

Patrick Cleburne fully understood the politics behind the war.

"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; learn from Northern school books THEIR version of the war, and taught to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects of derision."

~ Major General Patrick R. Cleburne

10/30/2025

Comments like this define the sectional divide in 1860.

“We are bound to the tail of a paper kite called the Constitution. A written Constitution is dangerous to us in the North. The South is using it as a shield.”

~ William Seward to Union General Donn Piatt of Ohio
[George Edmunds, Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South, (Memphis, Tenn., A. R. Taylor & Co., 1904) p. 23]

10/29/2025

Prattville Dragoons Blog Spot
October 2025

Friends and family and members of the SCV Camp 1524 Prattville Dragoons gathered on Saturday morning October 25th for their annual fall must...

10/29/2025

The Articles of Confederation were “perpetual,” yet they came to an end when the States left and formed a new Union based on the new Constitution. Perpetuity obviously did not mean indivisibility just as “a more perfect” union did not mean insoluble. The new Constitution was considered a better solution to the Articles of Confederation. Only nine of the existing thirteen states were needed to ratify the new Constitution, so the Union obviously did not require every State in the country to join in order to exist. On June 21, 1788, the Constitution went into effect. The first Congress convened on March 4, 1789, nearly seven months before North Carolina ratified and more than a year before Rhode Island would be the final state to ratify. North Carolina and Rhode Island were sovereign, independent, States that existed outside of the Union. Three of the original thirteen States were particularly skeptical of the government that the newly-drafted Constitution created and so they ratified it only conditionally. These three States were Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. In their ratification documents, adopted at their Ratification Conventions, they specifically and carefully reserved the right of secession. These are referred to as the “Resumption Clause.”

10/28/2025

The U. S. Constitution was never meant to be “interpreted.”

The Constitution was written in plain language to be taken at face value. Those who “interpret” the document, do so to circumvent the meaning.

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

~ Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:450

10/27/2025

The South argued that the States had ratified the Constitution through individual conventions, so they could reassert their sovereignty by taking the same steps. When the Southern States seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861, not one State was absent in discharging this legal obligation. Every seceding State properly utilized the convention process, rather than a legislative means to secede. Therefore, not only did the Southern States possess the right to secede from the Union, they exercised that right in the correct manner. Each and every State ratification convention asserted that the delegates who were meeting to ratify the new Constitution did so on behalf of the people of their States. Each one asserted that all power originated from the people, but also asserted that this power was being exercised by the people of their several States through the conventions of their States. The states, as bodies formed from their separate populations and existing prior to the Constitution, were the parties to the Constitution – not the body of citizens of the United States as a whole. The States entered a partnership for the common good and loyalty to the Constitution, not the Union. The Union was to act as an agent for the States, not the opposite.

10/26/2025

For those who criticize Jefferson Davis for his decisions concerning generals, this gives us insight as to what motivated his actions.

For Jefferson Davis, disagreement, questioning, any hint of egotism became for him a challenge to the cause, a sign of limited commitment, a signal that personal interest was primary. Individuals who disagreed, questioned, or boasted did not deserve friendly, forbearing handshakes, or persuasion. Instead, they merited chastisement and belittlement.

(Cooper, Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era, p. 16)

10/25/2025

An example of why the South did not trust the Republicans to act within their constitutional authority.

"I don't give a damn whether they are guilty or innocent. I saved Maryland by similar arrests, and so I mean to hold Kentucky."

~ William Seward, Secretary of State, 10/1861, (Stahr, Seward, p.288)

10/24/2025

Slavery was an issue, but it wasn’t about “preserving and extending” the institution. It was over control and State vs. Federal responsibilities, along with defense from domestic terrorism.

Defending slavery against irresponsible and unconstitutional demands is not synonymous with “protecting and extending” slavery.

The defense of slavery against demands for “immediate, uncompensated emancipation,” which would have surely led to an economic and social disaster, not to mention a humanitarian crises for the freed slaves, should not be confused with a desire to preserve slavery.