1. The Confederate Who Lost in Africa
Command of the second Egyptian invasion of Ethiopia had initially been promised to William Wing Loring, but the assignment went instead to an Egyptian named Ratib Pasha, and Loring was appointed his chief of staff. In March 1876, an Egyptian army of 13,000 men, equipped with modern firearms and artillery, and an Ethiopian force of 50,000 armed mostly with swords and spears, drew near at the Plain of Gura, in today’s Eritrea. The Egyptian commander sought to fight a defensive battle from a fortified position. It was a sensible choice, but Loring taunted Ratib Pasham and accused him of cowardice for not marching out to meet the Ethiopian host in an open valley.
Stung, the Egyptian commander led his army out of its fortifications to offer battle in the surrounding plain. It got routed at the Battle of Gura, a disastrous defeat that ended Egypt’s ambitions to conquer Ethiopia. Loring, who rose to the rank of major general in the Egyptian army, was heavily criticized. In 1878, he and other American officers were dismissed. He returned to America, where he penned his experiences in Africa, A Confederate Soldier in Egypt, published in 1884.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
American Battlefield Trust – The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
American Battlefield Trust – The Reasons for Secession: A Documentary Study
Brown, Dee – Grierson’s Raid (1954)
Catton, Bruce – The Coming Fury (1961)
History Collection – The Life of a Slave in Thomas Jefferson’s House
Keesee, Dennis M. – Too Young to Die: Boy Soldiers of the Civil War (2001)
Library of Congress – Civil War Thanksgiving Foods
Loring, William Wing – A Confederate Soldier in Egypt (1884)
National Museum of the United States Navy – Powder Monkeys and the American Civil War
National Park Service – Fort Scott: Cooking Food Rations
Quartz – For the Last Time, the American Civil War Was Not About States’ Rights
Ranker – Unconventional Foods People Ate to Survive the Civil War
Sears, Stephen W. – To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (1992)
Spaulding, Lily May and John, Editors – Civil War Recipes (1999)
United States Navy Memorial – Aspinwall Fuller
Warfare History Network – Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas
Washington Post, February 26th, 2011 – Five Myths About Why the South Seceded
Wikipedia – Ethiopian-Egyptian War
