One hundred and fifty years ago George B. McClellan made his way up the Virginia Peninsula in what many anticipated would be the final campaign of the war. With the largest army ever assembled on the American continent he would seize the Confederate capital of Richmond and reunite the nation. As we commemorate the campaign [...]
Civil War Sesquicentennial
A statue of Dred and Harriet Scott is scheduled to unveiled at the Old Courthouse in Downtown St. Louis on June 8, but organizers are still $140,000 shy of its fundraising goal. “The memory of Dred Scott and the important shift he helped to bring about in American society is a story that deserves to [...]
Update: I just wanted to take a second to encourage all of you to read Pete Carmichael’s presentation in its entirety. The last thing I want is for you to read this post as some kind of hatchet job. His thoughts regarding battlefield interpretation deserve a careful read and perhaps in the next few days [...]
To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Emancipation, the Gilder Lehrman Center’s 2012 David Brion Davis Lectures on the History of Slavery, Race, and Their Legacies features a roundtable discussion with five major historians and writers, moderated by GLC Director, David W. Blight. The group takes up questions of the changing character and [...]
[H/T to Jubilo! The Emancipation Century] This popular Currier & Ives print from 1865, depicting the evacuation of Richmond, Virginia, is one of the most popular images of the city in April 1865. It is impossible not to drive north toward the city on I-95 without it entering your mind’s eye. Now it is being [...]
In yesterday’s post I linked to an article about the impending opening of the Museum of the Confederacy’s Appomattox branch this coming weekend. The article included a quote from King Salim Khalfani, who is the Executive Director of the State Conference NAACP. Asked if he planned to attend the opening, Khalfani had this to say: [...]
This is the second video that I’ve posted from the Virginia Historical Society’s traveling exhibit, “An American Turning Point”. This one addresses the issue of conscription, but it also introduces visitors to women as political agents. It’s always nice to see an exhibit move past the traditional and one-dimensional image of Civil War era women [...]