Robert Baskin Haynie

One Hundred Fifty years have passed since the beginning of the War between the States, more commonly known as the American Civil War. Since my early years I have have had a fondness for this period of United States History...beginning first with Abraham Lincoln, by the ens of 5th Grade I had read every book in the Library at Cherry Hill Elementary School. Then, being memorized by Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" ...her words of hope or delusion of "I can't think about today, I'll think about it tomorrow for tomorrow is another day!" Her finding strength in the red earth of Tara. She has been a Heroine.

The South has been calling to me since my youth, in a small town of Moultire, Georgia I found home for a season. It is there were my ties to the South strengthen...as is my life, I find myself torn between being for the Blue and the Grey. I would walk by the memorial "To our Glorious Dead", honoring those confederate soldiers who had died during the war, and would stop and think of Robert Baskin Haynie, my great great grandfather, who has a true Southern joined the Confederate Army and fought to save his 'country'.

Robert was born in Flat Rock, Anderson county in South Carolina, 12 May 1827, Married Emily Jane Hall, 9 December 1848, Great Grandfather Patrick Calhoun was their fourth child and was five when his father went of to war.

Robert enlisted 14 July 1861 into the Confederate Army as private into the Franklin County Tugalo Blues, Company B, in the Georgia Fifteenth Infantry Regiment; know during the war as the “Fighting Fifteenth”.

This regiment served throughout the war in the Army of Northern Virginia, which was under the command of General Robert E. Lee. The Fighting Fifteenth fought in many of the major battles of the war including, the second Bull Run or the Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Spotslvania Court House and members of the regiment were there at the end at Appomattox. (Rigdon) From 13 June 1864 to 29 June 1864, he was in the Jackson Hospital in Richmond Virgiania, due to illness, measles. Family tradition states this broke his health, and was not well enough to return to the battle flied and sleep in the cold rain. The final record of his regiment was that he was AWOL. The last prove of payment or "muster roll" that I have found was in January 1865, three months before Lee's surrender. The question remains, was he too ill to go on and fell behind, or seeing the war's end went home to find his wife and children?

During the war the family moved to Alabama where it was thought to be safer than Georgia. At war’s end the family stayed in Alabama then moved to Georgia and settled in Floyd County near Rome. There on 31 October 1876 Robert Baskin Haynie died at the age of 49. The following year his family heard the Mormon Missionary Elder John Morgan, were baptized and soon moved to Colorado and help settled the Mormon settlement Manassa.

I am sure it is this southern blood which runs through my veins, which causes my soul to stir in pride as see the rebel flag...again I am torn between what it once stood for that of honor, love for country and what it stands for today as a symbol of hate and intolerance. Because of Robert Baskin Haynie, the War between the States is REAL - I honor him, he might have been of the wrong side of history, yet like most, if not all Confederate Soldiers he fought for freedom, for a way of life, and prayed to the same God as the Union soldiers did. Both fought for what they thought was right.

May we remember the words of President Lincoln..."It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain..."

As a one who sees the war not between good and evil, but as one to preserve a Nation, with good and evil on both sides...my heart goes out to the Men and Women of the Blue AND the Grey for each prayed to God and saw Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, and built Him an alter in the evening dews and damps.