Because the Civil War is the American Iliad, it is constantly being refought in the public memory. Much is at stake, for myths make meaning, meaning makes politics, and politics make myths… Jesse Jackson made a remarkable run for the presidency in the early months of 1988—two decades before America would elect its first black [...]
Having grown up in the capital of the Confederacy in a family riddled with unreconstructed rebels, I was always sensitive to these imputations of inferiority directed at the South and Southerners: my section and my people. Although I felt in my heart that something must be wrong, that we could not have been that bad, [...]
As I watched a crowd of militant Leftists in Durham, North Carolina this week pull down a statue of a Confederate soldier, I was left not only angry but befuddled by the ignorance of it all: the vitriol of the mob focused on this seemingly inoffensive monument depicting a common soldier, seemingly war-weary and tired, [...]
Whether or not Mary Surratt participated in the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln will never be known with certainty. But we can judge definitively the manner in which federal authorities obtained her conviction, and ultimately her execution. “Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775.[1] Wise words from [...]
At dusk I was about going to hunt up my brother Morris, when he came to me. Thank God, we are both safe as yet. We laid all night among the dead Yankees, but they did not disturb our peaceful slumbers. July 1 We left camp at 6 A.M., passed through Heidelsburg and Middleton. At [...]
Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life! Covering all my lands—all my sea-shores lining! Flag of death! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing! How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!) Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled! Ah my silvery beauty—ah my woolly white and crimson! Ah to [...]
This remorseless drive to blast the greatest names from America’s past off public buildings, and to tear down their statues and monuments, is an egalitarian extremism rooted in envy and hate… On Sept. 1, 1864, Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, victorious at Jonesborough, burned Atlanta and began the March to the Sea where [...]
Did the Republicans centralize power in the federal government under Lincoln? No doubt. But perhaps the more important question is: Which policies did Lincoln tolerate in order to achieve his overarching goal? Among those who consider themselves "conservatives" and/or "libertarians," the issue of the role of government in a free society is one of the [...]
Abraham Lincoln was a conservative statesman on the intellectual model of Cicero. In his dignity there was no hubris; much, he knew, must be left to Providence. The Roman Republic was at the back of the minds of the framers of the American Constitution; it was their hope that the chief magistrate of these United [...]
The terribly fragile fabric of society has revealed itself all too frequently in recent months. Really, for a more than a year now, the social fabric of Western and American society has been rent by sporadic if not quite predictable violence at home and abroad. Whether it’s terrorists driving trucks into innocent crowds in the [...]
William Porcher DuBose of South Carolina is not well known today, but in the early twentieth century, he achieved fame in America and abroad as an Episcopal theologian and author. William Porcher DuBose of South Carolina is not well known today, but in the early twentieth century, he achieved fame in America and abroad as [...]
The lack of schooling in the formation of one of every four U.S. presidents underscores the paradox that even the most humble among them were often great champions of education in general and of the liberal arts in particular… Can the liberal arts prepare citizens for leadership? Most of us in higher education want the [...]
Over the years, countless thousands the New Yorkers have passed by monuments in their city that were dedicated to two eminent physicians who were related by marriage, but there is little doubt that few of them, until recently at least, had ever realized that the statues were erected in memory of former Southerners. The two [...]
Despite his own views on the matter of secession, Major Robert Anderson was full of vigor and fight in the immediate aftermath of the move of his troops into Fort Sumter. While President James Buchanan had received the news of Major Robert Anderson’s move to occupy Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Anderson had his own [...]