Disinterred

Chapter Nine- Blood Crops and Blood Oaths

    The sound of a sqeaky wheel attached to an oversized cart is pushed down the airplane isle by a flight attendant who is serving beverages.  Miss....Miss, I'll have another coke please.  Another coke Dan?  Yeah, you know I quit drinking alcohol years ago.  Besides I need to stay sharp between the ears if we are going to keep doing all this reading and research.  Miss, excuse me, but  I'll have another double whiskey.

    That's a lot of drinking you've done dad, you better slow it down are you are going to be sick by the time we land.  I hate flying.  Besides if this investigation takes us were I think it is going to take us it's not going to matter anyway. Look at what I just found about blood crops.

   Hmm....this is interesting it says, "blood crops are a natural fertilizer that are extremely rich in nitrogen. This provides a consistent source of minerals and nutrients for plants. Water and sunshine aren't the only factors to a healthy, vibrant plants. You'll need good, mineral filled soil as well." 

   The slave population on Gentry's farm was believed to have been sold off before the war started or pinned up in the devil's punch bowl where they were left to die.  What if we got that totally wrong?  What do you mean dad?

    Well, we know that the oldest son wouldn't take the oath, we also know that the Gentry plantation was one of the largest cotton plantations in Mississippi producing well over half of all the cotton in the state.  

    However, Gentry did not raise any cattle, any chickens, any pigs, in fact he didn't produce any livestock at all.  The Gentry's were said to be vegetarians.  Only their oldest ate meat and when he did had to buy that in town.  What are you thinking old man?  

    What if....what if, I don't even want to say it.  What if the Gentry's were killing their slaves and then fertilizing the cotton crops with their blood.  You're right I wish you didn't say anything.  You know we found some sort of alter down there in those tunnels when we were down there.

    We need to research more about this practice and find out if  this was believed to keep people alive longer or gave them some sort of super human strength.  That's a stretch dad.  I work for the Brookshire police department not the monster squad!  I know, but how else do you explain the strange occurrences around here. Or the soldiers that never seem to die no matter how grievance their wounds were?

    Miss information, bad record keeping you heard the librarian!  I don't think so son.  This has been going on for years around these parts and if you even mention blood crop people get very hush, hush.  So what could it hurt to do a little more research and check this out?

    Okay, then where to next?  As soon as we land I want to go to Corinth.  How fast to you think you can drive us there in your police cruiser?  Fast? Fast?  Yesterday you said I was driving to fast and you were scared to death we were going to wreck and now your not?  Son if I'm right about what I think it's not going to matter anyway. 

     What is really strange is that the land which was so fertile throughout the 1800's became almost completely worthless for growing cotton after the Civil War.  Every sharecropper that tried to produce cotton on this land after the war failed.  

     Although, his farm that produced vegetables for the town still continued to produce crop, but that was owned by one of his former slaves that worked in his house.  Apparently he was the only slave that stayed on the land and Gentry gave that particular piece of land, as well as plantation house.

     You do realize I am Irish pop.  I know son, but what does that have to do with anything?  Well, all this talk of slavery and sharecropping is starting to hurt my ears.  I detest slavery because anyone who judges a group of people is a peawit you have to take men one at a time as individuals.  No man should be judged for his fathers mistakes only his own.  To enslave a group of people is disgusting. 

     However, we do know a little about what went on here during the American Civil War.  We know that the Gentry plantation was one of the last plantation to be looted by federal troops and that the reason the union army left it alone for so long was that it was believed to carry with it a curse.  

     The slaves that were still left here on the plantation by the time the north invaded were still working the cotton fields, but they were not getting enough food.  Why is that?  They were not getting enough food because the area that produces the vegetables was to far away and the remaining confederate army was held up in the fort.  All the food went to them.  The union surrounded the area for a few months to siege the last standing confederate fort in this area. 

     The confederate troops started to starve to death and the slipped a note under there commanding officer's door that read, "We are starving to death, feed us or surrender us now, signed many soldiers."  The commander realized he would have a mutiny on his hands and he surrendered the fort the next day. 

     There were stories of wounded confederate soldiers whose wounds glowed a bright green color.  Nobody knew what it was, but the doctors all thought it was an infection.  The strange thing is that the same area the wounds were in seemed to heal within days leaving no visible scars.  

     So it could not have been an infection.  This scared the union soldiers and it was believed that it is one of the many reasons the slaves were pinned up to die with confederate soldiers in the devils punch bowl. 

     We know that the union army could not sustain itself if they allowed freed slaves to follow them for very long and that was also why they were pinned up, but historians have argued for years why the union pinned them up with confederate soldiers.  Maybe, it was the fact that some of the slaves had the same strange green glow to their wounds?

     So you see son? See what dad?  The history of this place is very rich in not just pain and suffering, but folklore and legend as well.  Did you know that during the American Civil War that every commander that Lincoln put in charge of the Army of the Potomac had failed up until this point.  

     General Mcclellan felt that he did not want to kill off all the confederates, but give them a decisive blow making them quit their fight and go back into the union.  This is why he didn't pursue them after the battle of Antietam and was fired shortly after that. 

     During the battle of Gettysburg General George Meade was in command of the Army of the Potomac.  General Grant and General Sherman had a different plan to win the war.  It was called, "total war."

     Remember that to conduct a war it is all about logistics.  Grant and Sherman put an end to this by cutting off confederate supply lines and making sure they could no longer conduct war.  Grant fought in the Mexican-American war with General Winfield Scott in which they cut themselves off from their own supply line.  

     Grant remembered this and that it was a success.  He did the same thing during the American Civil War.  He not only conducted a campaign to cut the southern army off from their supply lines, but he also cut himself off from his own supply lines to march through the south.  They foraged off the land in the south and this kept the confederate army guessing as to where the union army was and since there were no supply lines to track the confederates couldn't locate them.   

     The union army's diet up until that point had been beef and wheat which provided  the Army of the Potomac with more protein then the confederate diet.  However, the confederates posted in this area mostly ate the vegetables grown by the Gentry's, as well as some hardtack. 

    In an old book published in 1896 I read about how the confederate troops stationed in the area around Brookshire were described as being, "full of fight with fire in eye's."  They were described as having an abundance of energy.  

     The slaves that worked the Gentry plantation also had a lot of energy.  They were worked seventeen hour shifts and would often stay up all night praying and singing tunes.  They also ate the vegetables off of the Gentry plantation.

     The union army sieged this area for months and it was not until the confederates started to run out of food that they started to take heavy casualties.  Maybe, there is a  correlation here between the food, blood crops, and the soldiers who ate it.