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Pinconning Rotary Club Hears Author Tell of Bay City's Birney Family

November 19, 2011       Leave a Comment
By: MyBayCity Staff

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Statue of Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney on Pennsylvania monument at Gettysburg battlefield.
 

The Northern Bay and Arenac Rotary Club heard a presentation Nov. 10 by D. Laurence (Dave) Rogers on his latest book, "Apostles of Equality: The Birneys, the Republicans and the Civil War."

The program was arranged by Mike Stoner, director of the Bay Metro Transit Service, a founding member of the Pinconning-Arenac Rotary Club.

Mr. Rogers said his interest in the Birney family began about 20 years ago when a local bookseller, Frank Walsh of Linwood, gave him a book about Mr. Birney, a once prominent individual who had slipped into history unnoticed during the years following the Civil War.

A footnote in the book stated that four sons and a grandson of Mr. Birney had served in the war, two of them becoming major generals.

Mr. Birney's father, also named James, had emigrated from Ireland to Kentucky about the time of the American Revolution. A reformed slaveholder, Mr. Birney ran unsuccessfully for President in 1840 and 1844 on the abolitionist Liberty Party platform.

After his first defeat, Birney moved to Lower Saginaw, now Bay City, where he was one of the most important pioneer settlers.

His papers, spanning 1831 to his death in 1857, were rescued from the basement of his grandson, George Birney Jennison, in 1936 by Dwight Lowell Dumond, a University of Michigan History professor.

That led to several books by Prof. Dumond and his associate, Betty Fladeland, about the role of the abolitionists leading to formation of the Republican Party and the Civil War.

"Dave discussed the role played by persons of Irish descent, including the Birneys, during the Civil War," Mr. Stoner wrote in a report of the Rotary meeting for the Pinconning Journal.

"He also discussed the importance of dueling as a means to settle disputes that was so prevalent in southern culture at the time. The dueling tradition made it virtually impossible for leaders in the South to compromise on the issues os slavery and States Rights.

"In fact, the issue of States Rights ultimately undermined the ability of the Confederacy to raise troops and the money needed to support them since each state was more concerned about its own security than that of their new confederated nation.

"As early as 1808 folks from Kentucky had been making raids into southern Michigan to try to recover escaped slaves, often meeting with armed resistance. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave laws were strengthened which made it unlawful for someone in the North not to return a suspect slave to the South. Such laws helped to precipitate the Civil War."

During the war, Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney, who had lived a short time in Bay City, was an important leader at Gettysburg, taking over command of III Corps for Daniel Sickles who had lost a leg when hit by a cannon ball. Also doing creditable duty at Gettysburg under Gen. George A. Custer was grandson James G. Birney IV.

David's brother, Gen. William Birney, led a troop of black soldiers into Florida for a five month campaign that captured cattle and destroyed railroads. His black units also trapped the remnants of Robert E. Lee's rebels at Farmville one day before the end of the war 9 April 1865.

Two of James G. Birney's sons are buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery, Bay City.

The book has recently been published by Michigan State University Press and is available through msupress.msu.edu and amazon.com. ###

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