The largest massacre of Black soldiers by Confederate soldiers was in the Battle of the Crater:
The biggest massacre of Black soldiers in the war was in the Battle of the Crater. Part of the Siege of Petersburg, the war's longest campaign and the one where it really did start to foreshadow the war of 1914 (and ironically the one campaign of which the least is written about in spite of being both the longest and the most modern for a variety of reasons), it was the most ill-starred battle of the campaign. It saw a plan that could have worked bungled by Burnside, Mead, and Grant.
The plan was to do a very medieval method of breaking a siege and a very unsubtle one. Blow a hole in the line, advance around the hole, roll the line up. The plan was assigned to Black soldiers, then Mead got cold feet, talked Grant and Burnside into changing this, and the plan that unfolded was a prime example of how to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time for no gain. The troops originally assigned were drawn into the killing field in the Crater because the white troops that replaced them forced the battle there.
General William Mahone, a future pro-civil rights 'Readjustor' orchestrated accordingly the largest massacre of Black soldiers in the entire war, one done by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and one noted at the time. Leading to the grim irony that General Mead's racism brought about the very thing he claimed he didn't want.
2 notes
·
View notes
Apparently they confirmed that rebirth ends at the forgotten city so I'm putting my delulu hat on and saying for sure that scene isn't happening like in the og. If aerith was just dying there was no reason not to go through to the northern crater, let you sit with the death and despair, if you're not going there then something is different. Like, that's the end of disc 1 on the og 3 discs game and now it's at the end of game 2
1 note
·
View note
Last #SaturdayMotivation was climbing Mt Lassen in #Northern #California. This week Mt McLoughlin near #crater #lake #Oregon. 10 #mile #hike round trip, and 4,000 feet elevation change… #BIG #DAY I #think Deanna Grimstead’s alter ego is punishing the other #ego 🤣 https://www.instagram.com/p/CiTtUsTLORv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
0 notes
Thinking about Sephiroth's motivations in Rebirth and getting super emotional because fuck, man, I get it. I get it. It doesn't excuse anything, but I get it in a way I can't even describe.
The Gi establish that those who aren't native to Gaia can't join the Lifestream basically at all, they're held separate entirely; the Gi have never been in it directly, their ghosts wander in a little liminal space they crafted for themselves. This is because they're entirely foreign—the Gi appear to be interdimensional travelers that were somehow marooned on Gaia at some point in ancient history, where they died and were left as ghosts, lingering forever unable to move on.
Sephiroth is slightly different in that he was born on Gaia and he does have human parents as well as Jenova, so he can force his way into the Lifestream as we saw in Lifestream Black and Advent Children, but he can't disseminate into it. He's still conscious and cognizant in some capacity even as the Lifestream fights to strip away the parts of him that belong on the planet, the parts of him that were human. This is, presumably, why his memory is all fucked up postcanon, whether we're talking novels or spinoffs; the Lifestream has been trying to take him but it can't, because there's too much Jenova in him, so the parts of him that have survived are just the parts that are the son of Jenova. He hasn't been fully worn down by the time the Crisis rolls around, likely because his body is still partially intact in the Northern Crater. (Again, see Lifestream Black, as well as the OG.)
And here's where everything starts to hurt.
He's alone. No matter what Sephiroth does, he's entirely, completely alone. There is nothing in the world like him, the planet won't accept him—it's not death, it's a homecoming, and Sephiroth has nowhere to go home to.
And he's done this before, this is a repeating timeline, he's been through this before over and over and over. And he's always alone in the end. He's always there at the edge of creation, the end of all things, the kindling of a new universe, and he's still there. All alone.
So this time he's calling for the ultimate Reunion. He's not just calling his Clones home, he's pulling all of time and space together into a single planet, bolstered with the lingering Lifestream of hundreds, thousands of others, timelines where things fell apart and Gaia sat on the precipice of death before Sephiroth found her and tore the Lifestream loose to feed the timeline he's chosen as the most likely to survive.
Three friends go into battle. One is captured (Genesis, in Deepground), one flies away (Angeal, who chose his own death), and the one who remains becomes a hero.
Heroes save the world.
But it doesn't matter, does it? Because he's going to be alone. Zack asks how he could turn his back on everything, and he says "Easily." Aerith asks how he could possibly want an eternity alone—because she doesn't understand, that's what Sephiroth has waiting for him anyway. That's all he's ever had waiting for him.
Sephiroth is going to save a world that will never accept him, because that's what heroes do, and then he's going to be alone forever. But this time, for the first time in every timeline he's experienced, he's going to do it on his own terms. He knows what he is, he knows how this ends, he has no questions of that. But for once in his existence—and it's a long existence, unending, eternal in a way that neither human nor Cetra could never even comprehend—he's going to control exactly how that happens.
Sephiroth knows he can't control whether or not he ends up alone, but he can choose how it happens. He can do things right this time. Maybe if he saves the world it will be different. Maybe the planet will accept him. Maybe he won't be alone.
And if he is (and he knows he will be), at least it was on his own terms.
At least, for once in the whole of creation, Sephiroth had a single flicker of control over his own existence. For once in the entirety of existence, Sephiroth made a decision for himself.
He'll have to live with that decision, alone, for eternity—but it was his.
454 notes
·
View notes