Category: Social History
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Civil War News from NC
The subject of Black Confederates is a divisive one that often comes up in surprising ways: Gregory Perry, of Monroe, who learned recently that an ancestor was awarded a pension for Confederate service, says it’s hard to reconcile that fact with what he knows firsthand about being a black man in the South. “I grew […]
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News from Carolina
Rebel or loyalist? Sometimes it was hard to tell. On the surface, wealthy Lincolnton businessman and slaveholder John Phifer may have appeared loyal to Dixie. His textile mill on the South Fork River cranked out products much needed in the embattled South. His three sons were officers in the Confederate Army, and two died fighting […]
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Civil War Book Review: Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd
Editor’s Note: This review originally appeared at The Siege of Petersburg Online: Beyond the Crater earlier today. Jordan, Mary & Hatch, Joyce. Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd. Six Mile Creek Press (January 2011). 176 pp., 100+ illustrations, notes. ISBN: 978-1-57003-922-5 $34.95 (Cloth). Reading a collection of wartime soldier letters […]
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Assassination, Blame, and Gun Control
In the wake of the recent shootings in Arizona, Wired magazine looks at at a Secret Service study on the motivations of assassins. Although they vary, politics plays a surprisingly small role. Contrary to popular assumptions about public killings, the attackers didn’t conform to any particular demographic profile. But when Fein reconstructed their patterns of […]
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Lincoln Quote Genuine?
Any Lincoln experts out there? I am looking to verify a quote attributed to him that’s been floating around the internet lately. The government, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary […]
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Short Takes
I’ve been extremely busy with several projects which hasn’t left much time to blog, even though I have a lot of material. Thanks to co-bloggers for keeping the flame burning here at TOCWOC. Talked to an FSU history professor at a party over the holidays, a woman of about thirty. What was most interesting was […]
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Miscellaneous Ramblings
In spite of having a lot of Civil War related material I have been missing in action for the last few weeks or so writing an article on the battle of Fort Mahone and updating a rescue book. However, I hope to have a bit more time to blog. Some time ago I posted on […]