Post by IRONCLAD on Mar 24, 2004 9:36:30 GMT -5
Robert Cobb Kennedy
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Escaped from Johnson’s Island
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Robert C. kennedy was the eldest of the seven children born to South Carolinian Dr. James B. Kennedy and Georgian Liza Lydia Cobb. Robert was born in Georgia shortly before his family moved to Alabama, where the next four children were born. In 1846 the family moved to homer, La., in a county in the northwestern part of the state. The family prospered in Homer, and Dr. Kennedy amassed a 3,000-acre cotton plantation and eventually owned 49 slaves.
In 1854 Robert received an appointment to the military academy at West Point, N.Y. He was ranked 20th. in a class of 35 after his first year at the academy, but the next year his grades and conduct gad so deteriorated that he was dismissed in disgrace. Kennedy returned to Louisiana and managed his father’s plantation until the outbreak of the War of Southern Independents, when he joined the 1st. Louisiana Infantry Regiment on April 30, 1861. His two years of military training gained him a commission as a 1st. lieutenant in Company G, and he served the first year of the war in Florida. His unit was sent to Tennessee in time to participate in the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, where Kennedy received a serious wound in his thigh.
In May 1863 Kennedy was promoted to captain and joined the cavalry force of a West Point friend, Gen. Joseph Wheeler, as a staff officer. On October 16 he was captured near Trenton, Ga., while carrying reports to Chattanooga, Tenn., and was imprisoned at Johnson’s Island, Ohio, on Lake Erie. After 11 months of incarceration, Kennedy escaped over the fence and made his way to Canada.
He reached Toronto in the second week of October 1864 and joined Col. Jacob Thompson’s group of “rebels”, who were involved in clandestine operations on the northern border of the United States. He then joined a scheme to help Northern Copperheads seize a number of major cities on election day, November 8. While Copperheads took over federal buildings, Kennedy and his group would set a series of fires in the cities as diversions.
FASCINATING FACT: An editorial in an October 15, 1864, Richmond, Va., newspapers stated that since Union armies chose to “substitute the torch for the sword” and fought the war by burning homes and farms, the South would be justified in burning Northern cities.
Written by Stephen T. Foster
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Would you be as dedicated as this person was after being incarcerated?
What would you have done different?
How far would you go, for the Cause?
IRONCLAD
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Escaped from Johnson’s Island
------
Robert C. kennedy was the eldest of the seven children born to South Carolinian Dr. James B. Kennedy and Georgian Liza Lydia Cobb. Robert was born in Georgia shortly before his family moved to Alabama, where the next four children were born. In 1846 the family moved to homer, La., in a county in the northwestern part of the state. The family prospered in Homer, and Dr. Kennedy amassed a 3,000-acre cotton plantation and eventually owned 49 slaves.
In 1854 Robert received an appointment to the military academy at West Point, N.Y. He was ranked 20th. in a class of 35 after his first year at the academy, but the next year his grades and conduct gad so deteriorated that he was dismissed in disgrace. Kennedy returned to Louisiana and managed his father’s plantation until the outbreak of the War of Southern Independents, when he joined the 1st. Louisiana Infantry Regiment on April 30, 1861. His two years of military training gained him a commission as a 1st. lieutenant in Company G, and he served the first year of the war in Florida. His unit was sent to Tennessee in time to participate in the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, where Kennedy received a serious wound in his thigh.
In May 1863 Kennedy was promoted to captain and joined the cavalry force of a West Point friend, Gen. Joseph Wheeler, as a staff officer. On October 16 he was captured near Trenton, Ga., while carrying reports to Chattanooga, Tenn., and was imprisoned at Johnson’s Island, Ohio, on Lake Erie. After 11 months of incarceration, Kennedy escaped over the fence and made his way to Canada.
He reached Toronto in the second week of October 1864 and joined Col. Jacob Thompson’s group of “rebels”, who were involved in clandestine operations on the northern border of the United States. He then joined a scheme to help Northern Copperheads seize a number of major cities on election day, November 8. While Copperheads took over federal buildings, Kennedy and his group would set a series of fires in the cities as diversions.
FASCINATING FACT: An editorial in an October 15, 1864, Richmond, Va., newspapers stated that since Union armies chose to “substitute the torch for the sword” and fought the war by burning homes and farms, the South would be justified in burning Northern cities.
Written by Stephen T. Foster
---------------------------
Would you be as dedicated as this person was after being incarcerated?
What would you have done different?
How far would you go, for the Cause?
IRONCLAD
