Not too long ago I received an email from a public historian who works at a plantation site in South Carolina asking whether he should accept a speaking invitation from the Sons of Confederate Veterans:
Sons of Confederate Veterans
While I am much more interested in how many t-shirts H.K. Edgerton sold, I would remiss if I didn’t note for the record that the City Council of Lexington voted last night to maintain the ordinance preventing the display of the Confederate flag on city street poles. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have made a [...]
Today the city council in Lexington, Virginia will vote on a controversial ordinance that would ban display of Confederate flags on Main Street. As many of you know, Lexington is the burial place of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and the home of the Virginia Military Institute. The city is steeped in Confederate history. [...]
Quick Thought: I think what this shows is that the black Confederate myth is a response to a shift in popular culture rather than a response to developments in scholarship. That should not be a surprise. After all, proponents of this myth don’t read scholarly books; rather, they talk to one another on Facebook pages [...]
I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women of the National Park Service, who help to preserve and interpret our nation’s historic sites. They include some of the most passionate and talented historians. For those focused on Civil War related sites their jobs come with increased attention and scrutiny by the [...]
An official count showed about 21,015 people stood in lines with waits ranging from 3 to 7 hours to see the Emancipation Proclamation, which was on display at the The Henry Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan, for 36 straight hours. Meanwhile, the Sons of Confederate Veterans continue their quest for vanity plates in former Confederate states [...]
I’ve suggested before that how Americans remember their Civil War can no longer be so easily drawn along strict regional boundaries. Consider the video below. On May 15th, 2011, members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Archibald Gracie Camp and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, as well as other members of New York City’s [...]
The PBS show, History Detectives, has completed filming an episode on Silas Chandler in West Point, Mississippi. A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would be taking part in this show, but I recently learned that producers decided to take the story in a different direction and would not need my assistance. I was [...]
