It was hot and muggy. Historians declare it was steamy . Such is Mississippi in the summertime. From the banks of the swollen Tishomingo River on June 10, 1864, Union soldiers jumped by the thousands to escape the fire of a burning, raging battle in the Northeastern corner of the Sovereign State of Mississippi, in a little community known as Brice's Cross Roads. Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest pulled out all the stops to pull off one of the fiercest and most strategic battles of the Civil War. He won that battle, hands down. Late spring rains caused the narrow stream of water to overflow its banks. Union troops by the thousands, under the command of Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis slogged the gently sloping hills, their wagon trains pulled by mules dotting the landscape like flies on molasses, covering miles and miles of muddy terrain, until that day, untouched except by a few farm houses, a Reformed Presbyterian church, and an old log house, all set beneat...

. . . a thousand words I will not be able to adequately describe the scene in the photo above. And my words cannot express what took place in the last late night moments of the 2011 Bennett Family Vacation. It's a personal moment, but deserves top billing on my blog tonight. I'm sure you have the same kind of bonding with your family. I hope so. After Mother and Daddy went home to be with the Lord, we determined to keep the home fires burning, to stay close, to watch out for each other, and to meet up at least once a year, face to face. Well, this year was my turn to host, and when I was appointed last year at Petit Jean Mountain near Little Rock, Arkansas, I was asked to have it in my corner of the world. Knowing me, as most of you do, I'm a North-of-Florida kind of girl, desiring to head for the Great Smokey Mountains or the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I reluctantly settled on Orlando. I thought we could use Disney as the main attraction. Only six o...

John Adams wrote this to his wife, Abigail— "The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." Well, that was a little special to me, since my mother was due to have me on July 4, 1940. I came early. I was born on July 2. John Adams was ingenious in so many ways! "Solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." Hmmm! He had the intestinal fortitude (courage and perseverance) to invoke the name of God Almighty. My kind of guy! INDEPENDENCE DAY! We should more often refer to this special holiday as such. Somehow Fourth of July just doesn't take it out far enough. What a great country, ours! With all its ills and woes, we are still the greatest on planet earth! But we come short of celebrating all that is tr...

... After All These Years! My brother was born on May 28, 1945, the year World War II ended. In August of that same year, the Japanese had surrendered unconditionally. Unknown to my brother, who was less than three months old, the winds of war blew fiercely somewhere else on the far side of the earth as the Japanese occupied a spot north of the sixteenth parallel after the War had ended. In September of that year, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of some 500,000 in Hanoi. But the major allied victors of World War II— the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union—all agreed the area belonged to the French. As the French had not the wherewithal to retake Vietnam at the time, the major powers agreed that British troops would occupy the South and the Nationalist Chinese, the North. On September 14, 1945, Chinese forces disarmed the Japanese troops north of the sixteenth parallel and the British landed i...

The Hornets' Nest was stirred at Shiloh and the blood filled the pond that day. It was not long before the North had control of Missouri and northern Arkansas. And Grant was still after the South's waterways. New Orleans was seized, closing the Mississippi River to southern commerce, Grant's best hopes becoming reality. The Confederacy was slowly deprived of manufacturing capacity. And men. They scrapped for food, clothing, and ammunition. Slowly but surely, they became the ragtags. April 12, 1862 ". . . You watch, Henry, but stay close. I love you, son." "And I love you, Papa." With those sentiments expressed, T.G.'s emotions were stirred again. He was gripped by homesickness to an indescribable degree. He turned his back on his son and went inside the tent. His father had said to stay close, Henry mused. A comforting thought expressed by a faithful father. Henry added some logs to the fire, stoked it good to keep his father warm, and pa...

John 14:6 I am the way … Jesus sat with his disciples, giving them the most pleasant of instructions—instructions that concerned the state of the heart, though the human heart, apart from Christ, cannot be trusted.  Jeremiah described it as “… deceitful above all things and desperately wicked …” (17:9). But Jesus told the disciples in John 14:1: “Let not your heart be troubled …” He had spent the better part of three years with these men, and for some reason when He began that day to linger on going away and heaven and things prepared, Thomas just didn’t get it. He doubted and wondered and pondered and questioned:              “How will we get to the Father’s House?” and              “How on earth are we going to know the way?”             Imagine being there yourself as Jesus arrested thoughts...

Southerners were devoted to The Cause during the War years, for the most part. The aftermath was a different story, albeit the South was faithful to that Cause long after it was dead. The Union tried in futile effort to manage a country diametrically opposed to its political orientation, a country as stubborn and proud as its hanging moss that clings and blows in the winds of time. Gray in the gloom, caught up in pink shafts of the sun on a day not so gloomy. The South, ripped to shreds by the War, faced an ideology that challenged its principles and wherewithal, mocked its gentility, and found great pleasure in attempting to clean the carcass of the southern dog.             In the era of Isaac’s House , the South was still outside the Union, still trying to pick up the pieces to recover from four long years of death and destruction. Hope in 1866 and 1867 was that the North would soon tire of stirring in the ashes of the ...