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Unlikely he would have been named for Davis since the horse was 4 years old at the start of the war. Interestingly he was from a non-seceding county of VA, now part of WV.
Actually, Greenbrier County did vote to secede from the US on May 23, 1861. About half the counties of WV did so.
This talk of cross sided names reminded me of an episode found in General Sherman's memoirs. After Grant's forces captured Jackson, Mississippi during the Vicksburg campaign, Grant left Sherman's corps to destroy the railroad and everything of any military value. Sherman relates:
Quote:
Just as I was leaving Jackson, a very fat man came to see me, to inquire if his hotel, a large, frame building near the depot, were doomed to be burned. I told him we had no intention to burn it, or any other house, except the machine-shops, and such buildings as could easily be converted to hostile uses. He professed to be a law-abiding Union man, and I remember to have said that this fact was manifest from the sign of his hotel, which was the "Confederate Hotel;" the sign "United States" being faintly painted out, and "Confederate" painted over it!
So...was this "Union" man's hotel spared? Sherman continued:
Quote:
I remembered that hotel, as it was the supper-station for the New Orleans trains when I used to travel the road before the war. I had not the least purpose, however, of burning it, but, just as we were leaving the town, it burst out in flames and was burned to the ground. I never found out exactly who set it on fire, but was told that in one of our batteries were some officers and men who had been made prisoners at Shiloh, with Prentiss's division, and had been carried past Jackson in a railroad-train; they had been permitted by the guard to go to this very hotel for supper, and had nothing to pay but greenbacks, which were refused, with insult, by this same law-abiding landlord. These men, it was said, had quietly and stealthily applied the fire underneath the hotel just as we were leaving the town.
Okay all you Civil War and Virginia history buffs. What was the original name of General Lee's famous horse?
I thought the General Lee was a Dodge Charger. In that case I am voting for Hemi as the name.
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