Thank you... BUT: This is a complicated subject, and from what I can see it appears that you have exposed some scholarly lapses where blanket statements were made apparently without adequate research and unbecoming biases in omission and treatment of facts that were or should have been well known appear as well... however, mayhaps t'would have better been done without quite so much heat and in the same venue that such indiscretions occurred. I would like to see if this rebuttal could pass muster for publication in the same journal as the aforesaid article, in which case I would think that those controlling it should also devote some consideration as to how that journal hands out awards. In other words, haven't you maybe jumped the gun a bit...? The USCT may not have been treated harshly by Confederates in those events at my birthplace, Fort Myers; your descriptions of friction of USCT with White Union troops seems pervasive and other documentation of it in Florida and elsewhere exists; but overall I believe that there is a pretty strong record of disparate treatment of Black Union troops by Confederate soldiers in combat in Florida... and maybe even particularly so, in Florida... at both Olustee and Natural Bridge, and even by Florida troops in Virginia. If that sort of particularly harsh treatment did not occur at Fort Myers, you may have made an especially strong statement by showing that event not to have been part and parcel of an all-encompassing pattern... yet I think, still, that there was such a pattern and that it was pretty pervasive. My own kin include a number of White Confederates who fought at Olustee and both White and Mixed-Race Confederates who fought at Natural Bridge. But I think that in the final analysis, it is to everyone's benefit to get the soundest possible understanding of how race actually played out in the events of those days... and since. I certainly don't think that sloughing inconvenient details is the way to accomplish that. If your facts are as sound as they appear to be the authors of the previous article probably should be ashamed of themselves... But I don't think that the expression of anger helps all that much either. There has been too much of that gone by already. Richard White Tallahassee http://pone.com/nb/index.htm http://pone.com/ts/index.htm http://www.tfn.net/~mpna/mp/index.htm dmbamford@hotmail.com wrote: > In his 1999 article "Race and Civil War in South Florida," which appeared in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Dr. Irvin Solomon defamed and smeared the Florida Special Cavalry, CSA, also known as the Cow Cavalry. In addition, he was rewarded for his sloppy writing with the "coveted" Arthur W. Thompson Award from the Florida Historical Society. To defend the honor and integrity of these soldiers, we have written a rebuttal. It is posted at: http://www.geocities.com/yes_album/Rebuttal.html