Which Side Were the Heirs of George Washington On?
Much controversy as emanated from the Confederates putting George Washington on the seal of the Confederacy. As historian Reid Mitchell notes, "The Civil War proved curiously filled with echoes of the American Revolution. The patriotic past and the Biblical past wer the two great historic memories by which Americans measured their present.... Southerners did not repudiate the Revolution in 1861; they did not renounce the legacy of 1776. Confederates saw themselves as true Americans. The sectional conflict and the Civil War were in some ways a conflict over the meaning of shared past." Northerners have disparaged the south's use of their noble Virginian George Washington, the First President of the United States, being placed on the seal of the Confederacy. To settle curiosity, which side were the Washington family on in the Civil War. "During a scout near Cheat Mountain, Virginia, in the fall of 1861," notes Mitchell, "a squad of federal calvary approached a group of mounted men. The men turn and fled. The Union soldiers fired and one man fell off his horse, struck by four balls. The Union soldiers rushed toward him—in accordance with his 'brutish instincts'—pulled his revolver but was too weak too fire. With his last words, he begged for water. The Union soldiers tended him but he soon died. Examining his corpse, the soldiers learned he was Lt. Col. John A. Washington, 'the great-nephew of George Washington,' shot in the back by Union soldiers." A little ironic that a Washington was shot in the back? Sort of like how the idea of being governed by consent and taxation by consent were shot in the back?
George Washington's nephew John had received his sword passed down to him as an inheritance.
