Monthly Archives: September 2022
What the 1836 Project Leaves Out in Its Version of Texas History
Imitations rarely achieve the exposure the originals achieve, especially when they are poor imitations, like Gov. Greg Abbott’s silly “1836 Project.” This article gives us some of the weaknesses of that piece of propaganda. “A popular joke in the Soviet Union went like this: ‘The future is certain. Only the past is unpredictable.’ The quip poked […]
How white supremacy became part of nation’s fabric
I came across this article in the Harvard Gazette. It’s an excerpt from Dr. Donald Yacovone’s new book, Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. “Several years ago I began a study of the antislavery movement’s legacy. I focused on the century after 1865 to understand how the ‘collective’ […]
Seven Myths of the Civil War
This book, edited by Professor Wesley Moody, contains seven essays, each of which center on a specific myth surrounding the Civil War. The Introduction tells us, “One common and reasonable criticism of modern historians is that we overspecialize. In the case of the Civil War, we often over-sub-specialize, and this can lead to problems in […]
VICKSBURG: WHERE GRANT LEARNED HOW TO WIN THE WAR
This article contains an interview with Donald Miller concerning his book on the Vicksburg campaign. Regarding his research, Miller says, “I visited 62 archives and uncovered well over 1,000 letters from soldiers who were not abolitionists but were eager to liberate slaves in order to destroy the Confederacy’s military economy and punish the South for […]
The Decline of Historical Thinking
I came across this 2019 article in the New Yorker by Professor Eric Alterman. “Having ignored questions of economic inequality for decades, economists and other scholars have recently discovered a panoply of effects that go well beyond the fact that some people have too much money and many don’t have enough. Inequality affects our physical […]
A Finnish Scholar Wants to Change How We See American History
This article has been making the rounds among historians on Twitter the last couple days. “Americans may know the story of Crazy Horse, the Lakota warrior who led the rout of United States Army forces at Little Bighorn, or of Chief Joseph, the Nez Percé leader whose eloquent protest against his people’s forced removal to a reservation […]
Conference on slave rebellions offers in-depth way to teach history some don’t want in schools
This article tells us about the Slave Dwelling Project in South Carolina. “As the campaign to quash the teachings of America’s brutal history of slavery intensifies, Joseph McGill Jr. has waged a counterattack by way of a poignant three-day conference in this antebellum port town that was once responsible for the most sales and transports […]
Student of the American Civil War 
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