This story just keeps getting more bizarre by the hour. Earlier today it looked like the Memphis City Council was going to vote to change the name of Forrest Park to Forrest – Wells Park, in honor of Ida B. Wells. Of course, local heritage organizers decided to shuttle in H.K. Edgerton to speak on [...]
Slavery
I am putting the finishing touches on my Crisis at Fort Sumter simulation, which my students will work on throughout this week and present next Tuesday. Thanks to those of you who offered suggestions on primary and secondary sources. One of the documents that I am including comes from William Freehling and Craig Simpson’s edited [...]
David Barton and Glenn may be able to continue broadcasting their silly and misinformed shows about American history, but at least we can be guaranteed of a certain number of critical reviews that expose their shortcomings. Barton’s most recent book about Thomas Jefferson was pulled from store shelves after serious problems with his research methods [...]
John Christopher Winsmith was what historian Jason Phillips refers to as a “diehard rebel.” Throughout the war, Winsmith never wavered in his enthusiasm for the cause. He believed that it was incumbent on everyone in the Confederacy to make the necessary sacrifices in the army and on the home front. In letters that routinely characterized [...]
The comment thread following the last post reflects the difficulty of coming to terms with the way in which slavery united white slaveholders and non-slaveholders of the South by the end of the antebellum period. It is commonly assumed that because the majority of white southerners did not own slaves they had no interest in [...]
We are all familiar with Alexander Stephens’s famous “Cornerstone Speech” which he delievered on March 21, 1861 in Savannah, Georgia. In it he lays out the purpose of the new Confederate government and the proper status of black people: The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar [...]
Seriously, I am all for an honest debate about gun control and the Second Amendment, but this isn’t it. There is something incredibly disturbing behind the assumption that Martin Luther King, who gave his life advocating for peace and non-violence, would support something called Gun Appreciation Day. What is even more ridiculous, however, is the [...]
I’ve been thinking about the gulf between the public’s response to Spielberg’s Lincoln and Tarrantino’s Django Unchained and the overall commentary coming from professional historians and other public intellectuals. I’ve commented on this before, but this morning I was pleased to read Christian McWhirter’s review of both movies in The Civil War Monitor. Actually, it’s [...]
