Hayes Lowe
A guess.
Sat Mar 31 07:14:46 2001


Luverne is about 40 miles south of Selma, one of the Confederacy's larger cannon casting facilities. Selma was over-run by the Union Army in the Spring of 1865. The Confederate "retreat" was unorderly, at best. Pretty much everyman for himself. It is possible that an arillery unit made its escape on the road leading south out of Selma. (See the NOAA Civil War map website mentioned in a thread above this one.) With the Union Army close-at-hand, and with the artillery unit thinking it was in pursuit, they may have been taking risks with the cannon in order to move as fast as possible. The carriage could have overturned, and been left behind. This all comes to mind because of a scene in the History Channel's show about General George Washington. This exact scene was shown happening then. As valuable as a cannon would have been to the ragtag (this was early in the Revolutionary War) army, Washington said "leave it behind!". At least this is the producer's version of what happended. The scene rang true, as if it was taken from a real event.

At any rate, if you take Glenn's advise, I think that you may find that it was cast at Selma. Otherwise, I would still think it was probably lost there after the fall of Selma.

I don't think that it will be from any other time period. There are a couple of other possibilities, though. First is from Gen. Jackson's expedition against the Indians. And second is the Spanish expedition of DeSoto. If the cannon turns out to be Spanish, you have made an extremely important discovery (I can't stress that enough), and it should be reported and examined by those researching DeSoto's movements..

• cannon — cowdog, Mon Apr 2 12:27
• Cannon — Hayes Lowe, Mon Apr 2 20:23