John Hennessy has an incredibly thought provoking post up over at Frederickburg Remembered, which addresses the challenges of “portraying violence” in public history. No one is better positioned to speak on such a subject: Having worked on or with battle sites for much of my career (which seems impossibly long these days), there is no [...]
John Hennessy
Congratulations to John Hennessy of the NPS and Sara Poore of the Fredericksburg Area Museum for organizing a wonderful event yesterday that included a rare opportunity to tour the grounds of Brompton as well as listen to historians George Rable and William Freehling. More than 600 people attended the event at the historic Fredericksburg Baptist [...]
If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read Andy Hall’s analysis of the DeWitt-Weeks saga. I tend to agree with Hall that there is no reason to believe that Ms. DeWitt’s goal is to intentionally mislead her young readers or distort the history covered in her book. However, as we now know [...]
Note: It looks like I did a poor job of reading Eric’s post. For some reason I was under the impression that there were plans to build a new VC. That said, I have heard talk about the possibility of a new location so let’s proceed with that in mind. The new group blog, Mysteries [...]
If you are not reading Mysteries and Conundrums than you are missing one of the most interesting new Civil War blogs to come down the pike in some time. The blog is maintained by the historical staff at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, which is led by John Hennessy. The gang has been [...]
It finally hit me early yesterday morning why I felt just a little uncomfortable about giving the commemorative talk on the Fredericksburg battlefield. I am used to addressing audiences – either in the form of an academic panel discussion or informal roundtable setting – about the past from a detached perspective. More specifically, I am [...]
Today I am giving the keynote address as part of a ceremony commemorating the 146th anniversary of the battle of Fredericksburg. Thanks to my friend and fellow historian John Hennessy for inviting me to take part on this important day. I can’t say this was the easiest presentation to write, but I am fairly comfortable [...]