In preparing the previous four stories about U.S. Civil War sites and their histories, I gathered and posted a number of related photographs. And I was left with dozens more to choose from. If you’re one who believes the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and that photographs as well as […]
Fort Sumter Through the Peninsula Campaign
Posted May 20th, 2011 at 9:51 am (UTC-4)
As I told you when I first started this written adventure, I’d be asking you to put up with occasional sorties into American history as a backdrop to what our nation has become today. So pack your imaginary bags! I promised last time that I’d take you on a two- or three-part written and visual […]
A Poor Man’s Fight
Posted May 18th, 2011 at 12:19 pm (UTC-4)
The transcendent U.S. Civil War historian Shelby Foote came across a slogan used by southern opponents of secession and war — of which there weren’t many in a region that romanticized the rectitude of the cause. Poking the mighty northern bear, they warned, would lead to “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” […]
Lessons from Long Ago
Posted January 24th, 2011 at 4:10 pm (UTC-4)
If you’re into the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, this is your year in heaven. It’s the 150th anniversary of the beginning of that brother-against-brother conflict in which more than 600,000 Americans died, many quite miserably in hand-to-hand battle. For the sesquicentennial year, a number of Civil War scholars are trotting out new books […]
Tinnissee, Y’all
Posted January 17th, 2011 at 5:01 pm (UTC-4)
I haven’t written much about my father. That’s because I didn’t know him very well. He split when I was four. That’s a whole story for another time. But I spent a little time with him late in his life, after he had remarried, to a lovely retired schoolteacher whom Carol and I liked very […]
