James J. Broomall, Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (Metropolitan Books, 2019). Hampton Newsome, The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War Read more

Spend enough time among historians in twitter land and you will eventually come across a thread about the Conservative commentator, Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza comments on a wide range of issues, but he is one of the most vocal proponents of a narrative that seeks to challenge how we think about the evolution of the Republican Read more

This blog post title pretty much says it all. This morning the city of Winston-Salem removed a Confederate statue that had been sitting on the courthouse square since 1905. It will be relocated to a local cemetery. I don’t know if this is exhaustive, but here is a list of monuments/memorials, flags and other Confederate Read more

Over the years the neo-Confederate community has relied on a short list of narratives purporting to demonstrate the existence of significant numbers of loyal black Confederate soldiers. One of them centers on an interview Nathan Bedford Forrest gave in 1868. When I entered the army I took forty-seven Negroes into the army with me, and Read more

Update: The book will be available for pre-order on or about May 1. At that point you should be able to order from your preferred online retailer. Of course, I will keep you up to date. Other than holding the actual book there is nothing quite like seeing your manuscript set for the final printing Read more

Last night in a resolution passed unanimously (47-0), the Ole Miss Associated Student Body Senate recommended that the Confederate statue be moved from its current location to a less visible one in the Confederate cemetery on campus. First, let’s recap where we are: The resolution is now one step closer to reaching Chancellor Larry Sparks’s Read more

The contextualization of Confederate monuments can take many forms. For public historians the preferred method is the addition of historical markers that help visitors better understand the individuals/organizations responsible for the monument and time in which it was dedicated. The goal here is education and often an unstated assumption that their placement will somehow defuse Read more

Update: The book blurbs are beginning to come in for Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. I am honored to have Professor Brundage write in support of this project: “When parents discover that their school children are learning about black Confederates, when history buffs read a display at a historic site Read more

Yesterday a small rally of pro-Confederate white supremacist supporters rallied around the Confederate statue on the campus of the University of Mississippi. H.K. Edgerton even made an appearance. His presence could have easily overshadowed the media’s coverage of this event, but for what took place just a few steps away inside the sports arena, where Read more