Carr Washing
Silent Sam was a Confederate statue that stood on the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill for 104 years after its 1913 dedication. A student mob toppled it in 2017 for being an… »
What Did 19th Century Black Americans Think About Confederate Monuments?
One argument used by those wanting to remove Confederate statues is that contemporary blacks had little chance to oppose them when they were erected. Aside from anecdotal evidence that blacks joined white crowds to observe the dedication ceremonies,… »
Nat Turner’s Massacre Apologists
The Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly announced that it will spend taxpayer money to erect a statue honoring Nat Turner who was the leader of a drunken slave rebellion that massacred fifty-five whites… »
Sins and Virtues of “Civil War” History
History is remembered as a narrative, not facts and figures. If the story is told from the viewpoint of past sins, the rendering condemns our ancestors and makes us ashamed of our legacy. If it… »
Leave Confederate Statues Alone
In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a… »
Rescuing Old Joe
Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. — William Inge Few realize that Florida was so committed to The War Between the States… »
Did Ulysses Grant Own and Rent Slaves?
Even among the most Grant-partial historians there’s no denying that Ulysses Grant and his wife owned slaves prior to the Civil War. In fact, “Ulysses Grant” is the correct answer to a crafty American history… »
The Washington Post March of Infamy
Yesterday The Washington Post published an Op-Ed by former General Stanley McChrystal in which he boasted of removing a long-displayed Robert E. Lee painting from his home to “send it on its way to a local landfill… »
When New Yorkers Cheered Dixie
On October 31, 1910—seven years after the Wright Brother’s first airplane flight of less than a minute—seventy-five thousand spectators gathered at Belmont Park to watch a day of competition among pioneering aviators. Events culminated with… »
Causes of the “Civil War”
In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery,”… »
