Category: Social History

  • Short Takes

    They still probably won’t take your Confederate money, but Richmond seems to be on the rise again, this time as “Startup South” and perhaps the next silicon valley. In hearing from dozens of Richmond startups, two institutions stick out as important nodes in the local innovation system. The first is Virginia Commonwealth University. As Richard […]

  • Lincoln’s Bullet, Sickles’ Leg

    And many other “morbid” things, are going to a new home. The $12 million relocation established a permanent home for an institution that has had 10 addresses since 1862. That’s when Surgeon General William Hammond directed medical officers in the field to collect “specimens of morbid anatomy” for study at the newly founded museum along […]

  • Review: An Iowa Soldier Writes Home

    An Iowa Soldier Writes Home: The Civil War Letters of Union Private Daniel J. Parvin Edited by: Phillip A. Hubbart Carolina Academic Press 2011 Paper 196 pages $25.00 ISBN: 978-1-59460-978-7 • LCCN 2011002478 Phillip Hubbart, a retired Florida appellate judge, transcribed 117 letters of his great-great-grandfather Daniel J. Parvin, an infantryman who fought with the […]

  • Cherokees, Slavery, and Masters

    There’s a legal battle brewing in Oklahoma about the tribal status of the descendants of the former slaves of the Cherokee. As it stands now they are getting the boot and Great White Father is not happy about it. The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned black slaves who worked on […]

  • Around The Web

    First we had Vance the governor, now it’s Vance the play. For a man who’s been dead 117 years, Zebulon Vance continues to cast a long shadow on Western North Carolina. The Civil War hero and lawmaker’s name is all over the place, on a big monument in downtown Asheville, at his old home place […]

  • Civil War on the Web

    A day or two late, but here’s something about Tarheels at Manassas. About 300 Forsyth County men gathered 150 years ago today to fight in the Battle of Bull Run, when Confederate forces defeated Union troops in the first major engagement of the Civil War. But most of those local soldiers didn’t see much action, […]

  • Civil War on the Web

    An AP article on women re-enactors: With her breasts tightly bound, shoulder-length red hair tucked under a shaggy auburn wig and upper lip hidden by a drooping mustache, Henry impersonates Lt. Harry T. Buford, a real-life Confederate soldier. The impression could hardly be more accurate since Buford, too, was a woman. He was invented by […]