Many Thousands Gone
A review of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard, 1998) by Ira Berlin For an understanding of the Atlantic-African slave trades and the origins of the peculiar institution… »
Contested Ground: Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment. … »
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… »
A Black Sugar Planter in the Old South
A review of Andrew Durnford, A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South by David O. Whitten, (Transaction Publishers, 1995). I In the year 1800 the Viceroyalty of New Spain was still intact, and Louisiana still… »
Securing the Blessings: Today the South, Tomorrow….
We are threatened by a powerful, dangerous, conspiracy of evil men. The conspiracy is the enemy of free institutions and civil liberties, of democracy and free speech; it is the enemy of religion. It is… »
Justice Kavanaugh and the Triumph of Symbol over Reality
“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Attributed to Mark Twain Americans at their best are a pragmatic “can do” folk, be it “Yankee ingenuity” or good old fashioned “get ‘r done.” We… »
Rhetoric, Reality, and the Late Unpleasantness
The 1850s is viewed by most scholars as the crucial decade of the sectional crisis that resulted in the War Between the States. The Great Triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster… »
Calhoun and Modern Economics
Much of John C. Calhoun’s criticism stems from his 1837 speech in the Senate where he stated slavery was “a positive good.” This quote is often paraded as evidence of Southern racism and is used… »
Revisiting the “Cornerstone Speech”
Most mainstream historians point to the “Cornerstone” speech by Alexander Stephens as the clearest piece of evidence that slavery and white supremacy alone were the reasons for Southern secession. After all, most transcriptions show Stephens… »
Lincoln on Mars
There is a 1909 “Lincoln penny” attached to the probe arm of Curiosity, a unit of currency, as it were, stuck to its palm. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem such a remarkable… »
