Update: “The board of the Patriots Point Development Authority on Tuesday split 3-3 on whether to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to place an 11 1/2-foot granite monument to the ordinance signers at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum. The tie vote meant the idea failed.” The Sons of Confederate Veterans is hoping Read more

One hundred and fifty years ago today the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry entered Charleston, South Carolina. Blain Roberts and Ethan Kytle offer a vivid description of this moment in the latest New York Times Disunion column. It’s an incredibly powerful scene and one that is beautifully captured in the pages of Harpers Weekly. Funny, but Read more

John Christopher Winsmith was what historian Jason Phillips refers to as a “diehard rebel.” Throughout the war, Winsmith never wavered in his enthusiasm for the cause.  He believed that it was incumbent on everyone in the Confederacy to make the necessary sacrifices in the army and on the home front.  In letters that routinely characterized Read more

Like many of you I am getting a real kick out of reading the secession petitions that are currently flooding the White Houses’s “We the People” website.  In fact, it’s actually downright cute.  Think about it.  Americans from every region of the country requesting that the federal government allow their state to secede.  The fire-eaters Read more

I am pleased to share the following comment that was left on the last post by Dwight T. Pitcaithley.  Dr. Pitcaithley worked for many years as the chief historian in the National Park Service and now teaches history at New Mexico State University.  He is also responsible for uncovering Florida’s unpublished declaration of causes.  He Read more

It should come as no surprise that a National Air and Space Museum exhibit centered around the Enola Gay and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb would cause controversy in the mid-1990s.  Many of the veterans of WWII were still alive and the issue itself tugged at how Americans saw themselves as moral leaders on Read more

Please don’t hold your breath for an answer to this question.  To be honest, I don’t really have any interest in debating it nor do I really care whether secession was/is constitutional.  I suspect that apart from law school classes our answers to this question as both a historical and present proposition is largely determined Read more

There are two Civil War Sesquicentennial memes that get bandied about without any reflection at all.  The first suggests that white Southerners are still fighting the Civil War or that they are holding onto a traditional narrative that is being threatened by various external forces.   Even a cursory glance at recent commemorative events in South Read more

First of all, apologies to South Carolina for the ridiculous national coverage of tonight’s Secession Gala in Charleston.  The coverage reinforces a number of assumptions about regional identification and race that are likely a thing of the past.  Tonight’s episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews is a perfect example of this coverage, which somehow managed Read more