Grade this Great Harvest Campaign Cherrypick

@HawkeEye I hope you keep posting about the SMHs. It is one of, if not my most, favorite classic silver commemoratives (these classic commemoratives are like children and grandchildren, all different, all with their great points, and hard to choose a favorite).

Steve

 

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@HawkeEye I hope you keep posting about the SMHs. It is one of, if not my most, favorite classic silver commemoratives (these classic commemoratives are like children and grandchildren, all different, all with their great points, and hard to choose a favorite).

Steve

 

Rats, double post again.

Steve

 

Well I keep trying to buy some, but the owners/sellers are really proud of them no matter what the grade

 

Gotta say that I have really enjoyed reading this topic. I didn’t know these counterstamped varieties existed. Always something new to learn in this hobby.

 

If you're asking me (OP), I still haven't submitted it.

I still have the coin, and I have been asked by many if I would sell it. Nope, not yet.

 

Quite alright. As long as you’re not holding out on us. congrats again on the find.

 

Here is the cover page for the contest. Courtesy of MARBL (Emory University):

 

That was very interesting, @leeg. I don't want to get political on here, nor politically incorrect, but I am a "northern boy" from Minnesota with a great interest in the Civil War, North and South. I just finished reading Mike Shaara's book about Civil War battlefields's: what happened, why they matter, what to see, and the importance of preserving what is left of many of these sites of bravery and carnage.

I found myself repeatedly saddened to realize that Confederate dead were not allowed to be buried in these national cemeteries, with the exception of a very few. Thousands were buried in mass graves nearby. Young men, sometimes boys, on both sides experienced a horror I find difficult to imagine or comprehend.

I have no problem with what southern states did at Stone Mountain to memorialize the sacrifice of several hundred thousand of their own to battle wounds and disease, in the persons of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

Two years ago I was guiding a group of 42 from Norway from New Orleans to Nashville on a "music tour." Because of my interest in the Civil War, I included an overnight in Vicksburg, MS, with a tour of the battlefield the next morning. Our local step-on guide was an elderly woman who made a point of emphasizing that the Civil War was about "State's Rights," not slavery. Our black bus driver about came out of his seat. I vehemently disagreed with her, and in my translation of her dialogue made that plain (and since the local guide couldn't understand Norwegian she didn't know what I was saying).

Ok, I fear I'm getting political and will stop. If this post is over the line and it disappears I'll accept that. I just believe that we do a disservice to history when we use our 21st century lenses to view 19th century history. I will continue to treasure my SMHs, not for the effort of the South to preserve slavery, but for the memorialization of brave men and fine leaders who followed their consciences.

Steve

 

Right answer and probably the right perspective. I had over 300 relatives who were in the CSA that I can document and there were probably others. What is often overlooked is Congress eventually recognized all the soldiers on both sides as US veterans. Most in the South fought because they were drafted or out of a sense of loyalty to their State. We tend to forget that the US was less than 100 years old and State's rights superseded Federal rights on a number of fronts. It was not a foregone conclusion that our Country would make it.

I saw it summed up once this way and it helps bring it into perspective. Prior to the war the term for our Country was "These United States." After the war the term was "The United States." It took the Civil War to change a number of things, and decades after that to make things work.

My family lost a number of relatives in the Battle of Atlanta and I look on the monument as a tribute to them. I study the coin because it is really interesting and most stories around it just make you scratch your head in disbelief.

Our history is our history and it is often filled with missteps. But then that is true of every country on earth.