While a cadet at West Point, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson kept a notebook that included a list of inspirational maxims. One of those included was the headline above. It’s often quoted during discussions about Jackson, buy why? More specifically, why do we bother at all to prop up Jackson as some kind of moral standard Read more
I had no idea that after all these years I am still living rent free in Susan Lee’s (formerly known as Susan Hathaway) head. I guess Susan Bedford Forrest was already taken [h/t KN]. During a recent presentation to the Sons of Confederate Veterans at the Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum Lee referenced me as Read more
Update: Here are some details about yesterday’s vote. Earlier this evening the Dallas City Council voted 11 to 4 in favor of removing a large Confederate War Memorial located in the Convention Center District. The decision is a reminder that this debate about Confederate monuments is far from over. This is a large memorial. The Read more
Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has stayed out of the media spotlight since photographs of him posing in blackface or a Klan robe surfaced. In the past few days, however, he has agreed to a couple of interviews including one with CBS anchor Gayle King. At the outset of the interview the governor references the Read more
Update On Current Book Project: This past week my co-editor and I sent off a revised proposal for our Confederate Monuments Reader. This latest draft includes a separate chapter on the African American response to monument dedications and one on college campus controversies. Sara Georgini, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of The Adams Family (Oxford Read more
There really is nothing quite like looking at the dust jacket design for a forthcoming book for the first time. It’s the first real indication that all of the years of research and writing will soon result in something tangible that you can share with the rest of the world and that will hopefully spark Read more
This week it was reported that the Confederate flag, which was removed following the 2015 murder of nine parishioners during Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, went on display at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum. This would be good news, but for the fact that the display makes no Read more
For some of my colleagues in the field of public history this week’s news on the Confederate monument debate front highlights the tension between education and racial justice. First, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill removed the pedestal on which Silent Sam once stood before it was removed last August. In Alabama a Read more
As I mentioned the other day, Searching For Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (UNC Press) will hit the shelves late August/early September. I know it might seem early, but I am already thinking ahead to planning a book tour. Over the past two weeks I have received a couple of inquiries about Read more
Elliott J. Gorn, Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till (Oxford University Press, 2018). David K. Graham, Loyalty on the Line: Civil War Maryland in American Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2018). Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic (Liveright, 2019). Kevin M. Kruse Read more