Our Patron Saints OUR MOTTO: Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice MINIE John Ford Shelby Foote NOVEMBER 2013. NUMBER 461 Official Newsletter of theNEWS American Civil War Round Table of Australia Inc. In this MN From the Editors 2 Gettysburg Address 3 Crompton’s Rave 4 CSS Shenandoah 6 The Hour of Peril 8 Our Next Meeting WEdNESdAy 27Th NOvEMbER Meeting to be held at the Retreat Hotel 226 Nicholson Street Abbotsford. Drinks and congenial talk at the bar with meals 6.30 to 8.00. Formal proceedings kick off at around 7.30pm sharp (approx) thereabouts! Upstairs in the still magnificent CSS Shenandoah CSS Carringbush Room. Our meetings are scheduled for the 4th Wednesday of each month except December. THE CLUB NOW PROVIDES FREE Lecture: – CO ff EE AND T EA T O MEMBERS A T T HE IN T ERVAL EACH MEE T ING . a Byard Sheppard Special !! QuotablE QuOTES Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. John Fitzgerald Kennedy http://acwrta.tripod.com As Frank would sing…One for my baby The and one more for the road… American Civil War Round Table of Australia from the editors President: Dale Blair Warren & Ross P.O. box 59, Emerald, vic, 3782 Ph 5968 4547 Email: [email protected] Vice-President: Chris Hookey 2 burnside Avenue, Canterbury, vic, 3126 Ph 9888 5744 Email: [email protected] Secretary: Ian Caldwell 47 Pavo Street belmont, vic, 3216 [email protected] Welcome to the November 2013 edition of MN. Treasurer: Jeff Yuille The month of November tolls the bell for the final meeting of the year for theACWRTA. byard 41 hampstead drive Sheppard will be officiating at this meeting. We have absolutely no idea of the content of his hoppers Crossing, 3029 presentation but going on past results we should be in for a good evening. Ph 9748 7996 Mob 0412 523 199 your editors made it back to the land of Oz from the vibrant Southwest uSA with wonderful Email: [email protected] memories and enough photos to reconstruct the trip almost hour by hour! digital photography Public Officer & has taken the cost out of holiday snaps and our digital devices today are clogged with thousands Correspondence Secretary: of very poor photos that we somehow feel the world needs. It is only the bravest of us who barry Crompton actually ditch our dodgy photos. PO box 4017, November sees the 150th anniversary of lincoln’s Gettysburg Speech and the 50th anniversary Patterson, vic, 3204 Ph 9557 7872 of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Editor Warren has no idea what he was doing Email: [email protected] for the former but has indelible memories of that fateful day on November 22nd 1963. back in lincoln’s day with less media, fewer people would have been present to hear the Newsletter Editors: Warren Davey oration and it would have been days later that the full text of the short speech would have spread 85 yarra St, Williamstown, 3016 across the country. lincoln’s speech took time to create a head of steam until it arrived at its Ph 9391 6146 iconic status we accept today. but with JFK, the act, and its repercussions were pretty much [email protected] instantaneous with a massive worldwide coverage. Ross Schnioffsky Garry Wills book on the Gettysburg Speech is a revelatory piece of non fiction writing and a 104 River St, Newport, 3015 wonderful explication of the context and background to the famous speech. As Far as Kennedy Ph 9391 0106 is concerned there is a whole host of books of varying quality analyzing his life in ways not [email protected] to dissimilar to that of lincoln and also a good deal of forensic tomes trying to sort out what actually happened in dealy Plaza, dallas and the roller coaster days that followed. Secretary/Treasurer A big thanks to our “President’s Eleven” who took the floor at the October meeting.y our editors (Sydney Organisation) were sorry to have missed the presentations but according to the venerable view of our barry Brendan O’Connell P O box 200 they were all successful and well worth the attention. St. Ives, Sydney here’s hoping for a good roll up at the Retreat to finish the year in fine style and we wish byard NSW 2075 all the very best on his cagey approach to his November presentation. Cheers. Tel: 2 9449 3720 Fax: 2 9988 4067 Email: [email protected] DUES $AUS 25.00 FOR D IGIT A L NEWS - LETTER OR $AUS 30.00 FOR A SN A IL M A IL NEWSLETTER P A Y A BLE TO 50 Years... ACWRTA, C/O TRE A SURER , JEFF YUILLE John Fitzgerald Kennedy henry Fonda as young Mr lincoln (1938) 1917-1963 NOvEMbER MINIE NEWS 2013 2 ABRAHAM GETTYSBURG LINCOLN ADDRESS Delivered on 19th November 1863 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they Attention did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated all here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for Round Table us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining Members before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave The Round Table has now joined the 21st century with the creation of our own Face the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly Book page. To join log on to Facebook resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the Byard Sheppard Face Book Moderator people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. 3 NOvEMbER MINIE NEWS 2013 Prime Minister was jubilant and scenes of Aussies at home celebrating were broadcast on the local Tv. A week later I Nights at the arrived in America to begin a tour of the battlefields and Round Tables, one of my first jobs was to give a talk at the CWRT Round Table of San Francisco at the Presidio. On my arrival, the president of the Round With Table and her husband (Margaret and Ken Fitzgibbons) had put together a sign “Aussie Go home” in jest. Fortunately Barry Crompton the talk went down a treat, I enjoyed a few days in San Francisco and went on my way after that to the eastern states Two days to go and we get to commemorate the one hundred and and more Round Table meetings, fondly fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. remembering the time that the Aussies Curiously, the United States Postal Service didn’t commemorate the came to the fore. centennial and have not organised one for this year either although the did get to issue a stamp for the eighty-fifth anniversary in 1948. However our friends in the Capital District Round Table of New From: “leisa lees” <outbackart67@ gmail.com> York will be issuing a commemorative postmark to be cancelled at Subject: civil war veterans beechworth Gettysburg on the day. date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 11:36:16 +1000 The week after this will also see the one hundred and fiftieth hi barry thought you might like this, anniversary of Lincoln issuing the first Thanksgiving proclamation have you come across anything on the to hold a special day of thanks on the fourth Thursday of November. men I sent you? Although Melbourne (nor Australia itself) will be officially allowing hope all is well leisa lees us to sit down to turkey and the trimmings, I’m sure that I shall Ovens and Murray Advertiser remember our good deeds for the year. Wednesday 16 June 1915: According to the Civil War Book of Days from the Vermont dEAThS AT ThE OvENS Humanities Council – he actually started work on his address two days bENEvOlENT ASyluM. - On earlier so as I type this up, November 17 was the day he started to pen Wednesday last there died at the Ovens those famous words. benevolent Asylum one of the few remaining veterans of the Crimean A good meeting in September with was then owned by a syndicate under war in the person of William Nicholes. Mike Kaltenbaugh speaking on Civil Commodore John Cox Stevens of the The old chap had been for 17 years an War supply and then last month at the New york yacht Club.