I’ve written a number of posts on this blog as well as in my new book about Dr. Henry Louis Gates’s confusion about the black Confederate myth. In this webinar sponsored by PBS Education he managed to confuse it even further. Dr. Gates is still referencing his colleague John Stauffer’s piece in The Root, which Read more

This past Tuesday a House Committee in Nashville, Tennessee debated a resolution to remove a bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from the State Capitol. In addition to serving in the Confederate army, Forrest sold slaves in Memphis before the war and held a leadership position in the Klan for a time during the Read more

February is Black History Month. Started by Carter G. Woodson in the early twentieth century as Black History Week the month is popularly viewed as an opportunity to highlight the rich history of African Americans. This is certainly true, but for organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans it is an opportunity to spread the Read more

Back in October I spent some time with C-SPAN to talk about my new book, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth and the current controversy about Confederate monuments on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I really enjoyed this interview and the opportunity to talk about Read more

One of my goals when I started this blog back in 2005 was to find ways to use it as an extension of my teaching. Over the years I have shared teaching resources, including primary and secondary sources and lesson plans. It’s forced me to think carefully about what it is that I am trying Read more

Stephen V. Ash, Rebel Richmond: Life and Death in the Confederate Capital (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver, An Environmental History of the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). Jo Ann Daly Carr, Such Anxious Hours: Wisconsin Women’s Voices From the Civil War (The University of Wisconsin Press Read more

You’ve head it before. The vast majority of Confederate monuments and memorials were dedicated at the height of the Jim Crow-era. The Southern Poverty Law Center released this helpful graph to help visualize this spike in monument dedications between roughly 1890 and 1940. What made this possible was the disfranchisement of African Americans throughout the Read more

Update: Thanks again to my friends at the Civil War Monitor for sending along copies of their latest issue to help me promote my book. They are SOLD OUT, but I still have plenty of books available. Hope all of you enjoyed your Thanksgiving feats. Today, it’s Black Friday folks and here at Civil War Read more

I’ve always been just a little jealous of those of you whose connection to the Civil War  can be traced back to a family visit to a Civil War battlefield or through reading a book such as the American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. For me it was a random visit to the Read more