Showing results for "Revolutionary War"
The Black Brigade and the Defense of Cincinnati
Panic seized citizens of Cincinnati during the first days of September, as the potential consequences of the recent Confederate victory at Richmond, Kentucky became apparent. As defeated Federal soldiers retreated north toward Louisville, Queen City residents worried that Confederate general Kirby Smith might march his troops 75 miles north from his base in Lexington, Kentucky, […]
Read more...History, Heritage, and Hate: The Fate of Confederate Monuments in my Ancestral Home
Last week, a statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was taken down by city commissioners in Rome, Georgia. The monument, erected in 1909 by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, had stood in Myrtle Grove Cemetery since 1952, where it had been relocated from a busy intersection to ease traffic […]
Read more...On Monuments, America Must Never Surrender to Confederates, Old or New (part three)
part three of four ECW is pleased to welcome guest author Frank J. Scaturro. Frank is president of the Grant Monument Association and the author of President Grant Reconsidered and The Supreme Court’s Retreat from Reconstruction. He is currently writing a book about New York City’s largely forgotten sites from the founding era. The views expressed are […]
Read more...Treüe der Union: A German Union Man Cheats Death in Texas
Three days after the attack on August 10, 1862, Ernst Cramer returned to the battlefield near the Nueces River to search for his wounded friends. Nineteen dead German Americans, bloated, blackened, and putrid in the unrelenting west Texas heat lay naked in a heap near the freshly-dug graves of Confederate soldiers. Entering a nearby cedar […]
Read more...Suggested Readings for Our Troubled Times
Crazy times. We seem to be living through ’em right now. The temperature is running hot. People feel anxious, confused, hopeful and hateful. How do we make sense of it all? Well, in an effort to offer our readers some context for these crazy times, we’ve compiled a “Suggested Readings” list. We asked our historians: […]
Read more...John Wolcott Phelps’ Emancipation Proclamation
The voyage of the U.S. Frigate Constitution ended at Ship island, a barrier island off the Gulf coast of Mississippi in December, 1861. Prior to disembarking, Brigadier General John Wolcott Phelps gathered all passengers on deck and recited one of the most extraordinary speeches given by any officer during the Civil War. The so-called “Phelps’ […]
Read more...A Doctor, His Enslaved Man, and Georgia’s Union Circle (part two)
The devastation and upheaval created in the neighborhood near the Battle at Resaca gave people like Dr. Gideon’s enslaved man, Owen, their first viable opportunity to aid the Union cause. Owen Gideon was born into slavery about 1834 in Hall County, Georgia. Owen was five feet, eight inches tall, a cobbler by trade, and a […]
Read more...BookChat with Lucas Morel, author of Lincoln and the American Founding
I was pleased to spend some time with a recently released book by historian Lucas E. Morel, author of Lincoln and the American Founding, part of the Concise Lincoln Library from Southern Illinois University Press (find out more about it here). Morel is Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and […]
Read more...Home Libraries: “I Cannot Live Without Books”
I cannot live without books, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his old Revolutionary colleague John Adams. The two were famously well read, and they loved to talk about books with each other and with many of the people they each corresponded with. Adams was always encouraging his sons, from an early age, to read. “You will […]
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