“[T]he enemy of Civil War history is everything people think they know about the conflict.” — Ed Ayers. Thanks to everyone for the emails and comments about my most recent op-ed in the New York Times Disunion column. Yesterday I took some time to catch up on some old posts. What I value most about [...]
Slavery
It should come as no surprise that Representative Benton is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This past weekend an SCV camp in South Carolina honored a slave for his “service” to the Confederacy. Unfortunately, his personal history has no significance or meaning beyond the vague references that support the SCV’s narrow and [...]
Looks like the Virginia General Assembly has been busy with resolutions about the Civil War era. Last week I shared Sen. Henry Marsh’s resolution that would set aside a day to honor Abraham Lincoln and today I bring to you another resolution sponsored by Marsh that would honor black Virginians, who served in state government [...]
Yesterday Myra Chandler Sampson and I spent about 45 minutes with Voice of America radio host, Ric Young, to discuss our recent Civil War Times article about Silas Chandler and related topics. I thought the interview went well. It was nice to have the opportunity to talk for an extended period of time and I [...]
The last few posts on the important place that slavery occupied in the Deep South’s secession documents [and here] has been entertaining and informative, but as we all know it quickly gets old as both sides begin to rehash the same arguments. In the end, white southerners made it perfectly clear as to how slavery [...]
On this day in 1861 the state of Florida formally seceded from the Union. A number of the secession conventions issued “declarations of causes” to explain why they decided to sever ties with the United States, though at the time Florida chose not to publish its statement. The unpublished document was recently discovered in a [...]
I absolutely love this photo. Pictured below are two generations of the Chandler-Sampson family taking the time over the holidays to learn about their famous ancestor. The photo conveys the power of history and reinforces my firm belief that what we do as historians matters. I am sure my co-author, Myra Chandler Sampson, agrees. There [...]
After Virginia no other state has done more to commemorate the American Civil War than North Carolina. Their state commission has done an excellent job thus far of organizing activities that reflect an incredibly rich and complex past. They are doing their very best to make the war relevant to the state’s diverse population by [...]
