M.M Brown when writing to Lt. Goodlett said this, "I am in hope that time is not ere long when our dear brave heroes can prove to this tyrannical invader that we are an independent people, who can never be subjugated only by our equals and they have never yet existed." She was to be sadly disappointed, as was the entire south.

Sergeant James Hunt said this, "A great (many) are out of heart of ever gaining our independence but I hope for the better." Sergeant Hunt would not live to see his disappointment bear fruit.

Others like Captain Holtzclaw had ideas that were lofty but still center around the concept of self-determination. In searching for an answer to this question, especially for the men of the Sixteenth, we find a total lack of clarity, which reflects a truly democratic notion of life. It was a war of millions of causes, because so many served and were touched by it. Today even this is hard to understand when we are approaching our Brave New World of the Twenty-first Century.

In the Upper end of Greenville County the division brought on by these democratic notions is especially sad. Many of these men were avowed Unionist and it was especially hard for them to break with their love of a united group of states and many did not. The brother of Jackson Burrell of Company H simply refused to go. He said this, "I spent the war running the mountains with my little 'fiest' dog, they got the dog but they never got me." Yet we find his brother serving faithfully with the Sixteenth. Both returned to the mountains to live and die in peace after the war. Many left with the intent of reluctantly serving and died of measles, camp fever, and a host of illnesses, long before seeing battle. Some went to war and deserted to come home only to be hunted down and shot like Wm. Peahuff. Others met more brutal ends in quiet mountain coves and the still meadows of the dark corner.

By the end of the war, the mountains were in flames. "Outliars," "Tories," and deserters rode the high narrows, living in caves and fighting openly with Confederate authorities. At one point in 1864, we find the Confederate Military Authorities in Greenville petitioning for cannon to drive deserters and outlaws from a Revolutionary War blockhouse they had occupied. Union prisoners of war who escaped and passed through the mountains spoke of men wearing bearskins with head and teeth intact and claws extended while living on wine and silver, under the eyes of stolen portraits, plundered from the summer homes of the wealthy at Flat Rock. We have men on medical leave deployed under Lt. Kendrick and others moving into the Gowansville area and across the mountains to suppress these outlaws. One of the Dill boys was shot down and killed, virtually in his own back yard, while on medical leave for wounds suffered in the fighting for Atlanta in the service of Lt. Kendrick. We have incidents like the one where Wm. Peahuff was hunted down and shot. Other incidents even more brutal in nature were carried out by the command that killed Peahuff. In the Garrison family letters, we find mention of great fear about the "Tories" from the mountains and Wat's concern that Eppy Hightower has gone over the hill and to ground in the mountains. So the question remains, Why did they fight?

For me, that answer is clear and simple and resonates throughout American and English history and I have never seen it better expressed than in the photograph that it is my pleasure to present here. They fought for one reason! To preserve what you see pictured here. William Perry Middleton (Seated Center) fought for this and this alone. He fought for the children you see in this picture and for the ladies around him. He fought for the split rail fence and the right to build it as he pleased without government regulation telling him how high, or wide, or long the fence could be. He fought for the right to display his flag and determine how he would live and how he would die. It is that simple, always has been, and always will be. There is nothing more to be said, save this, he and those like him will not be forgotten as long as one man, woman, or child, with the spirit of freedom that South Carolina embodies, lives, walks, and breathes. You can burn your flag and tear down his, but you cannot dishonor his honest, innocent, and simple service or the service of my family members who were just like him, and neither will I.