Next month President Obama will be renominated by the Democratic Party in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte lays claim as the last Confederate capital in April 1865. It is here that Jefferson Davis learned of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. At first glance these two events may seem unrelated but not to the folks interviewed in [...]
Memory
This is the story behind the creation of the Black Brigade Monument in Smale Riverfront Park. The monument honors the 718 black men who—after being brutally rounded up by provost guards and then set free—volunteered to build fortifications that eventually thwarted a Confederate attack on Cincinnati during the Civil War.
It’s a good question and one that I’ve touched on here at Civil War Memory. Our battlefield monuments fit into a broader celebratory landscape that is pervasive throughout our memory of the Civil War. Gettysburg is a place where we can feel good about ourselves as Americans and our history. It is almost impossible for [...]
Like many of you I was saddened and outraged to hear that the Shaw Memorial here in Boston had been vandalized. The alleged perpetrator is a 38 yr. old black woman from nearby Quincy. While she admitted to having an interpretive issue with the memorial, following her arraignment yesterday it was learned that she will [...]
Listening to these two knuckleheads talk Civil War history on a recent show is both entertaining and disturbing at the same time. By the way, David Barton’s new book on Thomas Jefferson was recently voted “Least Credible Book in Print” at the History News Network. I have no doubt that the recognition is well deserved.
This is the first I’ve heard of this story. What follows is a story that was published in the 1969 issue of Yankee magazine:
Update: A must read post by Robert Moore at Cenantua’s Blog. This morning one of my readers asked me to clarify my thoughts about a recent post on Sherman and those who claim to be victims of his army’s actions in Georgia and the Carolinas. This reader’s email reflects not only the post itself but [...]
As a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on Sherman and Civil War memory I thought it might be helpful to cite a passage from William G. Thomas’s new book, The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America. No image of Georgia in 1864 is more iconic than that of Sherman’s [...]
In addition to giving a talk on how to teach Civil War monuments in Charleston for the Civil War Trust, I also took part in a panel discussion in which participants could ask anything that was on their mind. Some of the participants submitted their questions beforehand. One participant asked what war crimes William Tecumseh [...]