Sorry for yet another off topic post, but I am in a sharing mood. ;) You will not hear much about this here in the North, but plans are being made, hotels are already booked and hundreds of thousands of people will travel hundreds of miles to attend this funeral, including me. Genealogy got me interested in Confederate History as I traced my 4th Great Uncle, Elijah Gore. Born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania he found himself in Louisiana at the outbreak of the War in 1861 and signed up in one of the first regiments of Cavalry organized there - 1st LA CAV, Company C. His five brothers still in PA (one in Cameron County) pleaded with him to come home, but he stayed. He fought mostly in Tennessee and Kentucky and was captured in Tennessee in the weeks after the battle of Chickamauga. ( I got to stand in the field where he was captured and visited the graves of his comrades) He spent the next two years in Yankee prisons in Indianapolis and the dreaded Fort Delaware prison (with a higher percentage of deaths than Andersonville). Being from Pennsylvania, at any time he could have taken the Oath of Allegiance and gone home, but he never did. After his release in 1865 he made his way back to West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana where I found him in the 1880 Census. He never contacted his family after the War. They assumed he had been killed like three of his brothers who fought with Pennsylvania regiments. Why this guy from Pennsylvania fought for the South baffled me. He, along with several thousand Pennsylvanians, gave up their ties in the North and fought along side their Southern neighbors. It was a question that got me researching the real history of the War. The truth about the War is very different than what we have been taught! I understand why he may have chosen to fight for the South. I honor his memory by being an active member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and will further honor him by attending this funeral. Here is the info about the funeral. I did not write this, but would like to think I would have written it this way: I have April 17th, 2004 already marked on the calendar. It's a day I've looked forward to for years now, and to be sure, I will not be available for anything else that day. Just so you know, I've got a funeral I'll be attending, thank you. Yes, I know it's odd to already be planning on going to a funeral yet some five months down the road. But as you will see, this is one funeral that has been in the works for some time. April 17th, 2004 will be the day that the final crew of the Hunley will be laid to rest in Charleston. For those who may not be familiar with the Hunley, let me give you a little history lesson. Charleston, South Carolina, February 17, 1864. It was a cold night...bone chilling, in fact. Moonlight glinted off a restless sea just outside Charleston Harbor some four miles off Breach Inlet. A lookout aboard the Union Navy's largest ship was tired, cold. Talk of a Confederate secret weapon had made the rounds of late, and the idea of such passed in and out of his thoughts as he gazed upon the waters - watching, worrying. Did something just move out there? A dolphin, perhaps? Driftwood? The crew of the USS Housatonic indeed spotted something in the water. From a distance they were not able to make out exactly what it was. As the Hunley came closer, the crew of the ship began to fire at "it." Inside "it," Eight men sweated over hand cranks that powered a pulsating propeller beneath the surface. Their captain, James Dixon, an infantry soldier from Alabama, manned the dive planes, steering his men, iron, anxiety and raw courage towards its destination. Bullets bounced off, and the Yankee crew, startled, shaken, had no clue what the Hunley was. By the time they were able to make out the shape and size of the Hunley, it was too late. The Confederate sub rammed a 135-pound torpedo into the side of the warship. As the Hunley pulled away, a 150-foot detonation rope was attached and was also pulling out. Within a few seconds, there was a massive, fatal explosion. Thus, the Hunley became the first submarine to ever sink a ship in battle. Cheers came from the shores, and fires marked the way home for the sub. Rebel compatriots hoped to see the signal of a blue light, which meant the mission was completed successfully. After a few minutes, the men standing on the shore did see that blue light in the distance, meaning the Hunley was ready to come home. However, for reasons still unknown, it never did, and the brave men of the H. L. Hunley were never seen again. For 136 years the nine man crew of that final, fateful mission of the Hunley lay at the bottom of Charleston harbor, entombed inside their submarine. Then, on August 8, 2000, the Hunley was raised. Unbelievably, the remains of all the crewmen were remarkably intact, literally mummified by the silt and sand that filled the craft. After careful forensic examination, which includes a computerized recreation of the faces of each of these heroic men, they will finally be laid to rest on April 17. This isn't the first Hunley crew I have had the privilege of experiencing. In 1998, I assisted with an excavation beneath Johnson-Hagood Stadium at the Citadel in Charleston. The bones of the five members of the sub's first crew were recovered during a dig there. The men died during a freak accident in August 1863 when the wake of a passing ship flooded the sub's open hatches. When the sailors were recovered 10 days later, they were taken to an area on Charleston's outskirts and quietly buried in what was called The Confederate Mariner's Cemetery. Decades later, all the graves there "accidentally" were paved over and forgotten during construction of the stadium by a northern-based contractor in 1948. I say "accidentally" because all the headstones were later found in a pile in the Ashley River, which bordered the mariner's cemetery. As long as I live, I will never forget the experience of assisting in the removal of a southern soldier, known only to God - and by the North Carolina buttons resting in a perfect line lying on his breastbone where his jacket had been placed on him and since disappeared from when he was buried originally. His shoes were still on his feet. Here was a man who had paid the ultimate price in a brutal war, name lost to history as a result of some cold-hearted act of greed and malice, but who at least was now being reentered in a place of dignity and honor. It is a memory I will forever cherish. This will be, for all intensive purposes, the last great funeral of Confederate heroes. Over 200,000 people attended the raising of the Hunley - officials expect perhaps over a million to attend this funeral. Yes, that number was 1,000,000. You folks know my stance on things Confederate. I won't rehash that here. But I will say that regardless of your feelings about that nation and its reasons for existence, there is no denying the importance of what these men did. They paid the ultimate price for their country, and did so while blazing a trail in a metal can powered by their muscle underneath the waves. By the way - the next ship sunk by a submarine? In 1917 - nearly 60 years after the Housatonic. I am often asked if I am a reenactor. My answer is no. I love Confederate history, but it is just that - history. I don't care to reenact what has already occurred. However, in Charleston on April 17, 2004, I will don a Confederate uniform, and I will march the five miles from The Battery to Magnolia Cemetery, and I will pay my respects to these men along with what may be 10,000 others like me in the procession. It literally will be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I will not miss it. The dead deserve a proper burial, if nothing else. I - and a million others - will do what we can to see that much is done, here in a land where old times, thankfully, are still not forgotten. Mike Wennin Come Visit the Cameron County Genealogy Project! http://www.rootsweb.com/~pacamero