Author: Fred Ray
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Short Takes
In secession news, the latest candidate is Hawaii, or Hawai’i if you prefer. Even more so than Texas Hawaii has a unique state history, being the only state annexed by what some have termed an imperialist coup. Matt Welch takes a look at the prospects in Reason magazine. Shooting Times takes a nostalgic look at […]
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“Abraham Lincoln Did a Number On US”
The idea of secession is alive and well, with variations even I’d never heard of, like the Second Vermont Republic and Novacadia. Wikipedia even has a helpful list of various state secession movements, while noting that only two (West Virginia and Maine) were successful. Josh Levin at Slate is taking a look at various ways […]
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Reynolds Family Papers on line
Thanks to a recent grant Franklin & Marshall College has posted the Reynolds Family Papers on line. For Civil War students the ones of the most interest are those pertaining to Major General John F. Reynolds, killed on July 1 at Gettysburg. These are both facsimiles of the originals and transcriptions, and include both personal […]
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Glory and Tarheels
Blogger/journalist Jules Crittenden reminds us that today is the 146th anniversary of the doomed assault of the 54th Massachusetts on Fort Wagner, near Charleston. Although the attack was a failure it proved that Black soldiers would fight and led to their integration into the Union armies. By the end of the war some ten percent […]
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Sad Day in Blighty
In an end to three centuries of small arms leadership, Britain has announced that it will no longer make its own rifles. England has long been a leader in small arms development, both by the government Enfield factory and private manufacturers, with a storied past going back to the Brown Bess and including Civil War […]
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Missing Archives
* Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln. * Original signatures of Andrew Jackson. * Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. * NASA photographs from space and on the moon. * Presidential pardons. What do these all have in common? They were all in the National Archives at one time but now are not, or at […]