Union At All Costs
A Review of Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation by John M. Taylor (Booklocker, 2016). Most of the time, finding historical gems requires a lot of work and often long hours of arduous… »
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… »
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,”… »
Lost Cause Myth or Yankee Propaganda
Whether it’s the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln’s War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years later. And with American Veterans… »
The Saints Are Marching On, and On, and On…
A review of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North by Jennifer L. Weber (Oxford University Press, 2007). They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case it… »
Colonel Baldwin Meets Mr. Lincoln
This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor’s Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only way to save the country,… »
The Late Unpleasantness: Memory, Meaning and Understanding
The War Between the States is called by many names, the most genteel being “The Late Unpleasantness.” The low country districts of South Carolina, including the environs of Charleston, is the geographic origin of this… »
Confederates in Mexico
A review of Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico by Mary Margaret McAllen (Trinity University Press, 2014). Leaving forever the land of your fathers is painful, yet many Southerners turned further south, contemplating… »
Bushwacking the Bill of Rights
Last November, when President Bush issued an executive order establishing a system of military commissions to punish non-citizens, I asked myself, as no doubt countless other Americans did, “But what about Ex Parte Milligan (1866)?”… »
