Is the Richard Kirkland Story True?

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The following guest post by Michael Schaffner examines the wartime evidence for the Kirkland story.  It is a thoroughly researched essay and is well worth your time.  I should point out that Mr. Schaffner did not set out to write a piece debunking this particular story.  Like many of us he was curious about the [...]

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A Child’s Richard Kirkland

Some of you are familiar with 10-year old Richard Warren’s earlier portrayal of Richard Kirkland that was filmed at Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg last year.  He is slated to play a young Kirkland in the upcoming film that was mentioned in yesterday’s post.  There are no surprises in young Richard’s narration; than again we shouldn’t [...]

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Sgt. Richard Kirkland For All Of Us

I‘ve been thinking quite a bit about Sgt. Richard Kirkland lately.  Last week Peter Carmichael referenced Kirkland in his speech marking the anniversary of the battle of Fredericksburg.  Carmichael used the Kirkland story and his monument on the Fredericksburg battlefield to point out our tendency to glamorize the Civil War and ignore the more horrific [...]

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Stonewall Jackson: Black Man’s Friend (Continued)

Update: Is Jackson’s dark complexion just an accident or is this an attempt to blur the racial line? If you didn’t know any better one might think that Confederate leaders were at the forefront of the civil rights movement.  Case in point is the popular and misunderstood story of Stonewall Jackson’s black Sunday School which [...]

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Who Was “Ten Cent Bill” Yopp?

One of my biggest complaints about the many stories about so-called “black Confederates” is that the authors in question have almost no interest in doing serious research.  Most of the stories that you will find on the Internet are simply cut and pasted from one site to another.  Essentially, these men are treated as a [...]

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History Channel Does Reconstruction Right

Our tendency to distinguish between the Civil War and Reconstruction obscures the fact that fundamental questions of freedom, national identity, and citizenship were left unanswered. According to historian, Vernon Burton: At stake during the Civil War was the very existence of the United States. The bloodiest war in our history, the Civil War posed in [...]

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“He My Boss, Not My Massa”

This is a deleted scene from the movie, “Gods and Generals”.

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My You Have a Pretty Toe

Some of you know that the cover story for the April issue of Civil War Times will feature my article on Confederate military executions.  This is a project that I’ve had in the works for a couple of years, and although I am not finished thinking about the subject, I thought it might be worthwhile [...]

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