Kate Winkler Dawson

As President Donald Trump prepares to slash domestic spending, funding for public broadcasting is reportedly on his list — a horrible blow to rural, poverty-stricken communities.

In many rural areas, particularly in states that lean Republican, public broadcasting stations are the only option for information. Residents often have limited internet access or spotty cell service. Cable might not be a choice.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, provides millions of federal dollars each year to 1,500 radio and television stations in every state at a cost of $1.35 per taxpayer. Most of those stations depend heavily on federal funding for at least 22 percent of their budget, some more than 70 percent.

More than 20,000 jobs would be at risk. This is a bigger issue than the meme that Congress is threatening Big Bird. Eliminating the CPB could cost lives.

Rural communities are vulnerable without broadcasted information. Public stations send out AMBER alerts, the system that tracks missing children. They broadcast critical warnings about severe weather. Many stations in states like South Dakota and Alabama serve as Emergency Alert Service hubs, disseminating life-saving information.

During last year’s devastating floods, WLPB-TV in Baton Rouge was one of the Louisiana Public Broadcasting stations providing critical information that saved lives. Those stations later raised relief funds for damaged schools.

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Mississippi public stations, such as WMAW-FM in Meridian, advised people how to protect themselves. Those stations served as a lifeline for worried families across the state.

In West Texas, the public radio station in Marfa, KRTS, played a crucial role during the 2011 wildfires that burned more than 300,000 acres. The station saved lives by broadcasting where the fire was moving. Police and volunteers  called with updates. But KRTS depends on federal funds for more than 30 percent of its revenue. Without it, the station might disappear.

More than 95 percent of America now has access to crucial emergency information, partially thanks to the CPB.

By late January 1865, the death knell was tolling loudly for the Confederacy. It was a month after the fall of Savannah, Ga., the finale to Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea. On Jan. 21, as his army rested in Savannah, Sherman penned a letter to Gen. James H. Wilson, commander of the federal cavalry. Using his typically brash and cocksure language, Sherman congratulated Wilson and himself on the success of the march. “I Knocked daylight through Georgia, and in retreating to s[outh] like a sensible man I gathered up some plunder and walked into this beautiful City,” Sherman wrote, “whilst you & Thomas gave Hood & Forest (sic) a taste of what they have to Expect by trying to meddle with our Conquered Territory.”

The two Union generals were already preparing the second phase of their master plan: the Carolinas Campaign. Sherman would march north through North and South Carolina, while Wilson would sweep west across Alabama. They intended to combine forces with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s armies in Virginia and finally face Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Petersburg, Va. But while the Confederates were still staggering from their losses in Georgia and might have felt the noose tightening, they didn’t plan on acquiescing to Sherman. They had a few final tricks in mind.

If the Confederates couldn’t defeat the Union armies head to head, they still could fall back on the sort of fast-moving cavalry tactics at which they had so often excelled. Rebel commanders ordered Capt. Alexander May Shannon to gather an elite group of 20 to 30 men from a crack Texas cavalry regiment to go on high-risk scouting missions around Sherman’s forces – if not to defeat them, then at least to slow and weaken them before they got to Grant.

The Eighth Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry’s Texas Rangers, was already revered by the Confederacy and vilified by the Union. The Rangers were often referred to as a “shock troop,” an outfit designed to lead stealth attacks. The regiment went on secret missions, often cloaked in blue overcoats, destroyed railway and telegraph lines, dipped behind enemy lines and gunned down Yankees at close range. They often led at the front and then covered the rear of the main force, the first and last line of offense and defense.

The Rangers were frequently given the dirty work other soldiers couldn’t stomach — and they didn’t take many prisoners. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, often cited as one of the early founders of the Ku Klux Klan, once suggested that an outnumbered Union regiment surrender because “he had five hundred Texas Rangers he couldn’t control in a fight.”

Captain Shannon was the ideal commander to lead the Rangers’ scouting group, which was nicknamed “Shannon’s Scouts.” The 26-year-old was aggressive, shrewd and fearless. He also understood how to conduct covert reconnaissance assignments. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood often sent Shannon and his scouts inside enemy lines, collecting intelligence and attacking Yankees caught ransacking Southern homes.

“Shannon’s Scouts” followed Sherman across Georgia and through the Carolinas in January 1865. They ran raids on his units and gathered valuable troop information. One of their main goals was to unhinge Sherman’s “bummers” — a nickname given to the general’s foraging teams that requisitioned food from Southern homes. They became notorious for looting and vandalizing. Shannon’s Scouts sought revenge.

Shannon was to attack any federal troops they encountered; if the scouts were overpowered and couldn’t retreat, they would separate and hide. They would even try to go on the offensive and capture any federal stragglers.

They were frequently outgunned and outnumbered, but astonishingly successful. They captured scores of Yankees; at one point a group of 15 guarded more than 100 Union prisoners. They would arm citizens with the prisoners’ weapons so the scouts could move on. Once, they even handed over guns to schoolboys and asked them to take the prisoners to Macon, Ga., which remained in rebel territory.

One scout, Robert Leander Dunman, later described how he and 17 others ran across a brigade of hundreds of federals. “We were quite as much surprised as they were,” Dunman wrote in a letter to his family, “but rather than let them discover our weakness in number, we began yelling and shooting as we came, making enough noise and bedlam for several times our number … they evidently thought the entire Confederate army was after them, for they started to run.”

As the Union thundered through the Carolinas, the Scouts became increasingly aggressive. Federal soldiers frequently accused Shannon’s Scouts of murdering prisoners after they had surrendered. General Sherman went into a fury when more than two dozen of his men were slaughtered, with a message left on their bodies. “It is officially reported to me that our foraging parties are murdered after capture and labeled ‘Death to all foragers,’” Sherman wrote in a letter to Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton. “One instance of a lieutenant and seven men near Chesterville; I have ordered a similar number of prisoners in our hands to be disposed of in like manner.”

General Hampton assured Sherman that if he dared execute any rebel prisoners that the Confederacy would kill twice as many federal men. Union Gen. Judson Kilpatrick blamed Shannon’s Scouts for the murders. Kilpatrick even offered $5,000 for Shannon’s capture, a reward that was never collected.

No one knows exactly how many soldiers Shannon’s men killed or captured, though he claimed his team assassinated almost 500 men during the March to the Sea.

When Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, orders to surrender went out to all Confederate troops. But Shannon’s Scouts refused; instead, they scattered. Shannon himself stayed loyal to the Confederate government, and was assigned to escort the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, on his escape from Richmond, Va. Davis was caught before Shannon could reach him.

The war over, Shannon returned to Texas, where he became a successful businessman. He died in 1906 in Galveston, Tex.

It had been just one month since the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, launching the Civil War. Texas and ten other states seceded from the Union and then formed the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as president. Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation for 75,000 militiamen, readying the Federals for war while the South began to recruit.

Davis authorized Benjamin Franklin Terry, a local celebrated figure in Texas, to raise a regiment. The 40-year-old wealthy businessman had made a name for himself during the First Battle of Bull Run in Fairfax, Virginia, by shooting down a United States flag from atop a courthouse after the Rebel victory. It sealed his reputation with Confederate leaders as a brazen patriot. He would soon become the patriarch of the 8th Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry’s Texas Rangers.

On September 9, 1861, roughly 1,200 men from all walks of life were mustered into service in Houston as the war began. They were college boys, white-collar workers and men raised in the saddle. They were experts with lariats, six-shooters and in bareback riding.

The Rangers were required to bring their own clothes, supplies and any weapons they could carry, usually double barrel shotguns, pistols and Bowie knives. Most chose to don Mexican ponchos and slough hats pinned with the five-point star of the original Texas Rangers. The Confederacy could only afford to outfit them with horses.

The enrolling officer asked the newly formed regiment: “Do you men wish to be sworn into service for twelve months or for three years or for the duration the war?” With loud unanimity, the men shouted, “For the war, for the war!” with most not expecting to return home until it was over.

Terry selected commanders with solid combat skills; the majority were former Texas Rangers and military leaders. Many had fought Indians all over the state and learned how to take control during a battle.

Even before they stepped onto a battlefield southerners knew who they were, mostly because of their name not their skills. During a stop in Tennessee the ladies of Nashville, upon hearing that the Texas Rangers were setting up a temporary camp, expected a Wild West Show. The men hopped on horses and raced to see who could pick up silver coins off the ground the fastest. They were not Texas Rangers, the legendary lawmen from the rough frontier, but they were expected to uphold that image. It was a reputation they never earned but were expected to fulfill, and they did.

Their first real engagement was the Battle of Woodsonville three months later. Ranger leaders had drilled them on combat tactics but they were mostly ordered to do whatever it took to win. While the Union soldiers formed an orderly square formation, Terry’s Boys wildly charged them, firing their shotguns and bellowing the Texas Yell. While the outcome of the battle was inconclusive, they quickly became a type of a “shock troop,” a regiment reared to lead an attack.

The Rangers went on secret missions, often donning blue overcoats for maximum deception; they destroyed railway and telegraph lines, sneaked behind enemy lines and gunned down Yankees at close range with no regard for their own lives. They often led the front as well as covered the rear, the first and last line of offense and defense.

They were street-wise cowboys, often reckless, most of the time untrained, but always committed to their mission. Rangers usually did the dirty work other soldiers didn’t stomach. Because they rarely took prisoners under the order of their commanders, Terry’s Texas Rangers were known for ruthlessly ridding themselves of Union threats. A Confederate colonel once suggested that an outnumbered Union regiment surrender because “he had five hundred Texas Rangers he couldn’t control in a fight.”

Their reputation for misbehavior, ranging from rowdiness to lawlessness, preceded them. During the first few months of the war, the Rangers left Tennessee because more Rebels were needed in Kentucky, a Union state — at least that was the official story. One Ranger revealed a more pressing reason.

One night in Nashville, three or four Rangers slipped out of their barracks, got drunk and went to a theatrical performance about Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. When the actress playing Pocahontas was roughed up on stage for preventing Smith’s execution, one Ranger took offense to the mistreatment of the lady and fired his six-shooter at the offending actor. The soldier missed Pocahontas’ father, but he managed to kill two police officers and wound another. The governor of Tennessee furiously demanded that that the Texas Rangers leave his state immediately.

This gusto for a fight served them well in battle. A captured Union officer wrote in a letter: “The Rangers are as quick as lightning. They ride like Arabs, shoot like archers at the mark, and fight like devils. They rode upon bayonets as if they were charging a commissary department, are wholly without fear themselves, and no respecter of a wish to surrender.”

They were initially bound for the Eastern Theater where the Battle of Gettysburg was eventually fought but were redirected to the Western Theater to join General Albert Sydney Johnston’s army. In four years the Rangers participated in almost 300 engagements including some of the bloodiest battles of the war including Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga as well as the Atlanta Campaign.

Their tenure with the Rebels was not without controversy. They participated in the Battle of Fort Pillow where Union soldiers, both black and white, were gunned down after surrendering. One unnamed Ranger was credited with saving the life of a black Federal, but it’s clear from letters and diaries that the regiment’s overall attitude towards black soldiers was negative.

Near the end of the war, Ranger Alexander Shannon created a scouting group that infiltrated Sherman’s lines during the Atlanta Campaign. “Shannon’s Scouts” made raids and went on reconnaissance missions, killing and capturing Federals along the way. Though their attempts at slowing Sherman’s March to the Sea were futile, their disruptions caused the Union to put up a $5000 reward for Shannon’s capture.

Terry’s Texas Rangers left the war as legends—one of the most effective cavalry units in the Confederacy. Of the more than 1,000 men who were mustered in, less than 300 returned home.

In 1907, more than forty years after the war, some of the surviving Rangers gathered in Austin for the dedication of a monument on the Texas Capitol grounds. It is a bronze statue depicting a Terry’s Texas Ranger wearing a poncho, a slouch hat and carrying a shotgun astride a spirited horse. One of the inscriptions is, “There is no danger of a surprise when the Rangers are between us and the enemy.”

http://www.civilwarmonitor.com/front-line/terrys-texas-rangers

LONDON — A crowd huddles around a towering pyre on a cold November night, waiting in anticipation. Out of the darkness, a figure steps forward with a blazing torch and ignites the pile, sending the crowd into a frenzy of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ as the flames leap skyward. As they have for nearly 400 years, thousands of spectators watch the bonfire consume the effigy of a failed 17th-century terrorist.

It’s Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, annually and faithfully held in memory of the notorious conspirator who, along with a dozen other plotters, tried to blow up Parliament and King James I in 1605. As British traditions go, it’s a far cry from the nostalgic repertoire of royal pageantry, the ceremony of Parliament or the quaint black cabs and red double-decker buses of London. But every fifth of November, millions of Britons gather round bonfires — sometimes with a scarecrow figure representing Guy Fawkes at the very top — while fireworks crackle in the background. These days it’s little more than a family event, an excuse for a party.

For weeks in advance, children with stuffed dummies perched in wagons collect pennies for the ‘guy’ so they can buy candy and fireworks. The night has its origins in a fiendish underground plot that is far from the minds of young children collecting money around the neighborhood. Fawkes’s and his radical band of Roman Catholics (the practice of Catholicism at the time was illegal in Britain) planned to assassinate the king at his ceremonial opening of Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605, in protest over government persecution of Catholics.

In what is now known as the Gunpowder Plot, the conspirators hid 36 barrels of gunpowder in a vault directly below the House of Lords. They planned to blow up the king (who would have been in attendance with his wife the queen and son, his heir) and members of Parliament. An insider, however, blew the whistle on the plotters just two days before the king’s opening address. Fawkes, today sometimes portrayed as a roguish Robin Hood-type hero, was tortured and executed as a traitor. The present-day ritual may seem odd to outsiders, but over the centuries Britons have turned the event from the ritual burning of a traitor’s effigy into an autumn party.

‘I don’t think about Guy Fawkes when I think of Bonfire Night,’ said Richard Bacon, 20, a regular bonfire party-goer. ‘At Christmas I don’t necessarily think about Jesus Christ, but more about getting presents.’ ‘So that’s how I see Guy Fawkes Day — as an excuse to celebrate without having to think about it,’ Bacon said. There is no shortage of large-scale public bonfires, most of which are free of charge but do not allow alcohol. One of the largest pulls in a crowd of about 80,000 people every year. But although the number of private bonfires is declining, it’s not unusual to see families lighting their own fires in their back gardens. Sometimes these turn into huge parties where neighborhood groups organize the fire and a cookout in a resident’s back yard.

Nona Quested, who helps organize north London’s Finchley Road Bonfire Night Party, said the ritual has changed since she was a child after the war. ‘Guy Fawkes Day has lost a lot of its meaning since I was young,’ said 44-year-old Quested. ‘Now it’s just an excuse to have a party during the dreary winter.’ Although it is in decline, the tradition of children parading their scarecrow-like effigies and begging for ‘pennies for the guy’ has just about survived. ‘Remember, Remember the 5th of November,’ children chant as the big night approaches. ‘Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.’

Like most parties, festive food is a part of the fun: roast potatoes cooked, appropriately enough, in the same fire as the unfortunate ‘guy, ‘ rock-hard ‘cinder’ toffee and parkin, a dense, sticky ginger cake. Not surprisingly, the partying also centers around explosions — the colorful type caused by thousands of fireworks at both public displays and private backyard parties. Only in strife-torn Northern Ireland is the sale of fireworks banned for fear that the gunpowder might be abused by modern-day plotters, but even in the rest of Britain there are calls to outlaw them because of the 1,500 injuries caused by fireworks every year. The tradition sustains a healthy seasonal business for fireworks makers, who estimate that 85 percent of their sales are made on the weekend before Bonfire Night. Dave Sayers, manager of Standard Fireworks, a small company in the northern town of Huddersfield, said Guy Fawkes Day means either champagne or bread and water. ‘All my business for the year will happen in the next two days,’ he said.

The rituals of Guy Fawkes Day reach from the back yards of the British public right up to the rarefied ceremony of government — tradition dictates that Queen Elizabeth II’s official opening of Parliament must not fall on the fateful date of Nov. 5. In addition, before the queen enters the Houses of Parliament, the royal Beefeater guards search the vaults below the House of Lords, armed only with lanterns, to be certain there is no hidden gunpowder. It is testimony to the popularity of Bonfire Night that even London’s trendy Time Out entertainment guide features appropriate clothing for Guy Fawkes Day, with a fashion designer choosing ‘scarves to keep you toasty on Bonfire Night.’

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Archives/1990-1999/text/1996/11/04/A-crowd-huddles-around-a-towering-pyre-on-a/1389847083600/#ixzz3V84B1kas