St Albans by Hera7

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St Albans

POSTED BY: HERA7
UPDATED: Saturday, January 21, 2006 03:22
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Friday, January 20, 2006 12:31 PM

St Albans may be a town in southern England, but it is also a small town in northern Vermont. Joss again uses a tiny bit of US Civil War history for his stories.

The northernmost land action of the American Civil War took place in Vermont on October 19, 1864. In this incident, one of the most unusual in American history, Bennett H. Young led Confederate forces. Young had been captured in John Hunt Morgan's 1863 raid in Ohio, but escaped to Canada in the fall of that year. Morgan went to the south, where he proposed Canada-based raids on the Union as a means of building the Confederate treasury and forcing the Union army to protect their northern border as a diversion. Young was commissioned as a Lieutenant and returned to Canada, where he recruited other escaped rebels to participate in the October 19, 1864 raid on St. Albans, Vermont, a quiet town 15 miles from the Canadian border.

Young and two others checked into a local hotel on October 10, saying that they had come from St. John's in Canada for a "sporting vacation." Every day, two or three more young men arrived. By October 19, there was 21 men. Just before 3:00 p.m., the group simultaneously staged an armed robbery of the three banks in the town. They announced that they were Confederate soldiers and stole a total of $208,000. As the banks were being robbed, eight or nine of the Confederates held the townspeople prisoner on the village green as their horses were stolen. One townsperson was killed and another wounded. Young ordered his troops to burn the town down, but the four-ounce bottles of Greek fire they had brought failed to work.

The fact that in Firefly, St Albans is a cold planet, links it with Vermont winters.

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Saturday, January 21, 2006 3:22 AM

RELFEXIVE

Clever.

"My God - you're like a trained ape. Without the training."
"Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all..."
"SUMMER!!"
http://www.theshadowdepository.co.uk/index.htm

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