“… [they] went manfully into the field, with a courage worthy of a better cause, and for four years of bloody conflict, believing that their cause was just, fought the armies of the Union…” John Alexander Logan
I started this site to record the process of researching a book about my family and the American Civil War. I began to write the book unexpectedly through the receipt of my family Bible. It was printed in 1853 in Buffalo, NY. At some point it made its way South to be bought by my third great-grandfather Hiram Whitworth in Georgia. Hiram’s son, William Taylor, brought it to Mississippi and handed it down to his son William Taylor, Jr. It barely survived the great Mississippi flood of 1927 as the family home was moved quite a distance from its foundations by the flood. When the family returned they found it resting on the kitchen table. From there it was passed on to my grandfather, my father and me.
I looked at the pages in the center of the Bible where births, marriages, and deaths were recorded. Two men caught my interest – Hiram Edwin and John Henry Whitworth. These were two sons of Hiram Whitworth and their death years were 1863 and 1864, respectively. They were both old enough to have fought in the Civil War at the time of their deaths. I let this information sit for a while. Eventually, I decided the best way to be a custodian of this Bible was to know about the people in it.
After some years of research, I slowly pieced together the story of Hiram Whitworth and his two brothers Richard and John Claiborne. How they came to Gwinnett County, Georgia in the early 1800’s and settled there. I found the story of their sons who joined the Confederate army. Most never to come home.
I also found some of them were slaveholders. I was told growing up that the Whitworths did not own slaves. While this was true of my third great-grandfather, Hiram, it was not of his brothers. Neither of them owned plantations, but they did hold between 5 to 7 slaves each. I know some of the names of the enslaved people from estate inventories, and am in the process of tracing their descendants.
The current climate is an interesting one to be writing about the American Civil War. A tectonic shift is taking place in how we remember the war as a country. Often this discussion centers on the fate of the many Confederate monuments dotting the countryside, especially in the South. I want to be clear – I am not trying to build a Confederate monument. A memorial maybe, but not to the Confederacy. I have no nostalgia for the Confederacy, and unequivocally believe that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. I know that will not garner me any fans in some quarters, and that is perfectly fine. I believe you can remember your ancestors, and even honor them, but you also need to remember the truth about why they fought and died – all of it.
I am writing the book to answer the questions: Who were these people? How did they live? What did they experience? I have done this with the knowledge that, had I been born in the 1840’s, I would have probably been fighting in the place of one of these men. I have spent time standing on battlefields at places like Gaines’s Mill, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse. Frequently I am behind Confederate earthworks, looking out and trying to imagine what it must have been like for my ancestors. This site is where I will be sharing what I learn and experience during these trips.
– Steve Whitworth
Worthy of a Better Cause 