August 2016

KN, p. 55 “Murder During the Civil War.”

It’s Summer and for us that means road trips to nearby American battlefields to learn about our military history or to watch a reenactment. New Jersey has plenty of battlegrounds because of the Revolutionary War, but since I have more time on my hands these days, we decided to drive to rural Pennsylvania, to the area where the bloodiest battle of the Civil War was fought over 150 years ago – Gettysburg.

We discovered at the Visitor’s Center that there were over 50,000 casualties in the three days of Gettysburg, more than the entire population of our hometown in New Jersey. The records also show that of the 600,000 + who died during the four years of the Civil War, 520 were murdered. The totals are staggering, but the fact that murders were counted separately tells me that someone was trying to follow the law during the war, even though standards for justice were not the same in the 1860s as they are now.


Motives for murder have not changed: greed, love, revenge. But, what would be considered murder now, might have been accepted as ‘he had it coming,’ back then. Tons of western movies (and history books) tell us that if a man caught a thief stealing his horse in the mid 19th c., nobody would have blamed him for shooting the culprit dead in his tracks.


Keeping that in mind, after looking at a couple of pamphlets from the Visitor Center gift shop, I’m suspicious about that official Civil War murder count. I read:


*The Union and Confederacy viewed acts of war differently. The North considered Sherman’s burning of Atlanta acceptable. Southerners thought it criminal.


*Officers needed in battle, got away with killing fellow officers. Confederate Gen. Marmaduke killed Gen. Walker in an illegal duel, but only spent a few hours in jail.


*The side holding the upper hand wrote, interpreted, and enforced the law. Henry Wirz was convicted of crimes/murders committed at Andersonville, but similar offenses at a Northern prison were ignored at the end of the war.


Setting aside the appalling conditions at the P.O.W. camps that caused the deaths of thousands, the murder count is probably off.


*Source: www.civilwarhome.com

*Source: Buhk, Tobin T., “True Crime in the Civil War” Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2012.

*Photo by Patti Phillips

 

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KNR, p. 84 “Creole Chicken Salad for lunch, please!”

 

 

Creole Chicken Salad

It’s hot and humid and that means salad weather has arrived. But, I need more than a  lightweight veggie-only salad for lunch, so Sheila makes a great chicken salad with some real zip for us. We didn’t want to heat up the kitchen, so we picked up a cooked chicken from the grocery store. The deli counter sells garlic & herb, barbecue, and plain roasted chickens. We like the garlic & herb the best because the chicken already has a great flavor before we add any other ingredients. And, it can also work as a stand-alone roasted chicken for dinner.

 

As always, Sheila and I work as a team. She directs me toward the chopping board to make quick work of the veggies while she chunks the chicken. When all mixed together, the chicken salad can be served warm right away in a sandwich roll, or chilled for two hours in the refrigerator to be placed in the center of a salad platter later on. Depends on how hungry we are as to whether we can wait to eat, but we’ve had it both ways and liked it.

Creole Chicken Salad
Author: 
Recipe type: Entree
Prep time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4-6
 
Ingredients
  • 3 cups cooked chicken
  • 1/2 cup onions, finely chopped (preferably purple onions)
  • 1 cup tomatoes, diced
  • 1/2 cup celery, diced
  • 1/2 cup red bell peppers, chopped
  • 1/2 cup yellow (or green) bell peppers, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder (Hot Mexican)
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
Instructions
  1. Pull the meat off the cooked chicken while it’s still warm from the store.
  2. Then cube into 1 inch chunks and dump into a large bowl.
  3. Add onions, tomatoes, celery, yellow bell peppers, and red bell peppers, but do not mix.
  4. Add mayonnaise – still no mixing.
  5. Add garlic powder, chili powder, sea salt, black pepper, and cayenne powder.
  6. Time to mix it all together.
  7. Taste and adjust seasonings or other ingredients as desired.
  8. Serve on toasted roll while still warm.
  9. Chill the rest of the chicken salad for two hours if you can wait to serve it as part of a salad platter.
  10. The recipe gets spicier overnight, so keep that in mind if you are making it the day before an event.

*Photo by Patti Phillips

 

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