Don Anderson held up his hand and the members of the Roses for
Moses Society gave him their full attention.
Don Anderson held up his hand and the members of the Roses for Moses Society gave him their full attention.
“As you all know,” Anderson said, “we are committed to presenting historical perspectives of our society as well as initiating cultural enterprises that we believe will improve it. That being said, tonight’s program will focus on Jan. 19 – Robert E. Lee Day in the South – honoring both his birthday and that of the cause he served.”
Musician Franz Schneider unslung his banjo and picked out the strains of “Dixie.”
“My own great-great granddaddy, Beauregard J. Anderson, was a junior aide-de-camp when the general commissioned him to harass the enemy in lightning raids,” Anderson recounted. “However, in his eagerness to be off, Beauregard neglected to take any soldiers with him and his effectiveness was thereby reduced. He was mentioned frequently in enemy dispatches in which he appeared at numerous confrontations and brandished his saber before he was forced to retreat before a fusillade of bullets, and all the Yankees saw of him after that was the small of his back, anonymous and diminishing. Jim? You have something to contribute?”
James Sleznick arose. “Yes, Mr. Chairman. My great-great-granddaddy was Captain John Paul Sleznick of the Confederate Navy. At the outbreak of hostilities, he emulated John Paul Jones, for whom he had been named, and sent a telegraph to the Confederate War Office: ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ He sent the same message on the first of every month for the duration of the war.”
“A truly inspiring account. Dave, you wanted to speak on this topic.”
“Yes, I did,” Dave Moseley said. “My great-great-granddaddy was Poindexter M. Moseley, the Gray Ghost of the Confederacy. Poindexter was an early-day James Bond, occasionally stirred but never shaken. He organized a secret service so covert that neither Jefferson Davis nor Robert E. Lee knew of it.”
“Wait a minute,” Gary Young put in. “I’m quite a student of Civil War history and I never read a single line about him.”
Moseley nodded smartly. “The legend continues.”
“I wish Sid Moses was here,” Anderson said. “He would have loved this.”
“As a matter of fact, I called Sid today to tell him of the theme of tonight’s meeting,” Pablo Balancio said. “He replied that if the members of the Society had fought for the Union, we’d all be talking hound-dog now.”
Paul Wattis’s hand shot up. “Mr. Chairman, my great-great-granddaddy was Major George Armstrong Wattis. It was his lot to be in the same class at West Point as George Armstrong Custer, and the two found themselves on opposite sides during the great conflict. They opposed each other in battle four times and if George Armstrong Wattis had won just two more of the fights, he would have been the victor in a third of them.
“At any rate, after the war George Armstrong Wattis entered the United States Army. I have always found it ironic that he was sent to relieve his former opponent at the Little Big Horn. However, there was some mistake in communication and he arrived instead at the Big Little Horn, 150 miles to the southeast. When they realized their error, he and his entire command rode off and were never heard from again.”
“Very interesting. Mac Mota?”
“My great-great-granddaddy was Private Bubba Mota, who was drafted into the Alabama militia just a month or so before Appomattox, so he never saw any action. But he invented cotton gin.”
Anderson frowned. “Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.”
“No, sir; I said ‘cotton gin.’ Bubba found a way to distill the plant so it produced a truly potent beverage. The recipe has since been lost, but I have the only two remaining jugs of it with me tonight.”
Refreshments were served.
