I received this thoughtful comment on the old Typepad site from NPS historian, Mike Gorman and decided to feature it as its own post. Mike works at the Richmond National Battlefield Park; his comment is a response to a recent guest post by John Hennessy on battlefield interpretation.
November 2008
I just finished perusing through McFarland’s catalog which arrived today in the mail. As I was going through the Civil War section I came across this gem of a title, Did Lincoln and the Republican Party Create the Civil War? Can someone please tell me how a publisher can release a book with such a [...]
Looks like Brag Bowling and the SCV are going to look elsewhere for a home for their statue of Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber. I reported on this story a few days ago. He is rightfully concerned that, given the lack of preconditions attached to the donation of the statue to the American Civil War [...]
The other day I briefly referenced the decision of Johns Hopkins University to deny a Maryland chapter of the SCV use of their facilities for an upcoming Lee-Jackson Day celebration. The only information available at that point was an SCV blog post which reported that they had been denied access to school facilities simply because [...]
The second of my two Civil War sections just finished their final exams. They had 90 minutes to write about the evolution of the conflict from limited to hard war. Students analyzed how and why the war evolved, the relationship between the battlefield and home front, national politics, and ultimately the redefining of freedom and [...]
Plans for a new “Freedom Park” were unveiled yesterday in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, which will include a number of new exhibits and statues related to the civil rights movement. The site is home to a Confederate monument erected in 1895 by the Women’s Confederate Monument Association. The project is being led by local city officers [...]
Just sitting here thinking about what I might say in my keynote address marking the 145th anniversary of the battle of Fredericksburg. I am going to center my remarks on how I use the battlefield to teach. I’ve brought my students to the Chancellorsville/Fredericksburg battlefields for the past 5 years. It’s always a new experience [...]
Looks like the stand-off between the Virginia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans and the American Civil War Center at Tredegar will continue over the statue of Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber. You may remember that the SCV spent $100,000 on a new statue of Davis holding hands with his “adopted black son” Jim Limber to [...]