I’ve caught bits and pieces of the Museum of the Confederacy’s “Person of the Year: 1862″ symposium on CSPAN-3. It’s an entertaining event for the children of the Civil War Centennial. The historians in charge of nominating this year include Robert K. Krick, David Blight, James McPherson, Jack Mountcastle, and Emory Thomas. The historians selected [...]
Stonewall Jackson
[H/T to W.D. Carlson, who emailed this video with the subject line: "God Bless Lee and Jackson and God Bless Dixie"] I am ashamed to admit that in my ten years as a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia I never made the time to attend a Lee-Jackson Day parade. Lexington is a beautiful city with an [...]
ATTENTION: COMMENTS ON THIS POST ARE CLOSED. NO ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WILL BE APPROVED. I came across a playful, but thoughtful comment this morning from one of Ta-Nahesi Coates’s readers, who goes by the name, Alabama_Girl. Here is an excerpt from the comment: The other day I went through the last books left on the shelves [...]
Once again, it is my job to bring to your attention various interpretations of the past that reflect how Americans have remembered the Civil War. They take many forms and, yes, some are truly bizarre. Consider the following documentary. Stonewall creates a revisionist / historical parallel between Civil War hero Thomas Stonewall Jackson and the [...]
This guest post is by Adam Arenson, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War, about the Civil War Era as a battle of three competing visions — that of the North, South, and West. [...]
I’ve taken a great deal of heat for much of my commentary on how Civil War battlefield preservation is typically framed for public consumption. The most recent example can be found here. This morning I read John Hennessy’s description of a recent NPS event that marked the anniversary of Stonewall Jackson’s wounding at Chancellorsville on [...]
Today in Virginia is Lee-Jackson Day, but according to the The News Leader in Staunton you are going to have to look hard to find anyone celebrating it. State offices are closed, but it looks like most government offices are open as well as public schools. I will be in my classroom today as well. [...]
Update: My request has been passed on to Dr. Robertson by the Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission. Update #2: Thanks to Tom Perry for providing the following link, which includes an interview with Robertson in a Virginia newspaper: The claim is rejected by most historians, including local history expert James Robertson. “It’s blatantly false.” Robertson is a [...]
James I. Robertson had this to say about “Stonewall” Jackson in a recent interview: “I don’t think an atheist would get to first base writing a biography about Jackson.” “He was a very, very simple man.” I have to admit that I’ve never met a simple man.