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Tonnage and undersized propulsion, combined with the strength of the Savannah River's currents and tides, pigeonholed the vessel into becoming a floating battery across from Old Fort Jackson, where it guarded against a Union naval advance into Savannah.

The title of this engaging analysis of the cause of the American Civil War comes from James Buchanan’s reaction to John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, which the president claimed stemmed from “an incurable disease in the public mind.” Historian Thomas Fleming agrees with Buchanan that it was hysteria over the issue of slavery, generated by wild-eyed, intolerant, and impractical Yankee abolitionists, that sparked the tragic conflict between North and South. Pointing to the peaceful end of slavery in the British West Indies, Cuba, and Brazil, Mr. Fleming seeks to explain why America did not find a more reasonable way...

In 1865, toward the end of the Civil War, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman promised slaves that they’d receive 40 acres and a mule. Land was even set aside, but the promise was recanted by President Andrew Johnson. Ever since, the issue of reparations has come up many times, often fiercely debated. Although most Americans generally don’t support reparations, according to University of Connecticut researcher Thomas Craemer, it matters greatly how the question is worded, who would get reparations and in what form. For example, the idea of reparations paid in educational benefits are more popular than others, Craemer...

Walter Wilmore is a member of the Stonewall Brigade of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Last month, he applied to hold a ceremony on Lee-Jackson Day here at the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. A few weeks later, he received a notice in the mail rejecting the organization's request to use the chapel. Wilmore says the group has been holding the ceremony there for 14 years and he's shocked the request was denied.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) is looking for a way to block attempts to remove historical statues–statues of Confederate leaders in this instance–from their current positions in New Orleans. Jindal’s presidential campaign described efforts to remove the Confederate statues as “political correctness run amok.” The statues marked for removal include one of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard. Breitbart News previously reported that New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu was spearheading the effort to have the statues removed. According to Buzzfeed, Jindal spokesperson Shannon Dirmann said: The Governor opposes tearing down these historical statues...

They're the ultra-Nationalist swastika-loving battalion which is openly against the ceasefire agreed with pro-Russian separatists. Now extremists from the Azov unit, a far-right neo-Nazi militia defending the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, are teaching children as young as six how to fire guns in an attempt to entice them into the country's bloody conflict. Disturbing pictures have emerged from a military summer camp held on the outskirts of Kiev which show members of the voluntary group teaching so-called 'Azovets' how to behave as young fighters. The children - which include girls and boys, some as young as six...

A Ukrainian website has created a comprehensive list of Ukraine's supposed 'enemies'. The eclectic list naturally includes a slew of Ukrainian and Russian statesmen and public personalities, but also, more surprisingly, nearly two dozen foreign figures, from Xi Jinping and Nicolas Sarkozy to Steven Seagal and even Donald Trump. After quickly gaining widespread media attention in Ukraine, the highly stylized website, which had a kyiv.ua domain, was quietly taken down, but not before internet archive Wayback Machine managed to index some of its content. Ukrainian media reported that the comprehensive list was prepared on the basis of an anonymous survey...

What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery. But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and...

Very cool then & now photo shoot. The women who dug the graves, the kids who watched the largest battle in US history – and the slaves forced to help fighters at the front. 150 years after the last shots were fired, Guardian photographer David Levene travelled across the US photographing the sites scarred by the American civil war. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2015/jun/22/american-civil-war-photography-interactive

Initially seen as the Army's answer to how to settle the frontier, the camels eventually became a literal beast of burden, with no home on the range. In the 1880s, a wild menace haunted the Arizona territory. It was known as the Red Ghost, and its legend grew as it roamed the high country. It trampled a woman to death in 1883. It was rumored to stand 30 feet tall. A cowboy once tried to rope the Ghost, but it turned and charged his mount, nearly killing them both. One man chased it, then claimed it disappeared right before his...

Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union. “Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.” The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus...

"What I see appears to be a vengeful elimination of any memory or dignity in the South, a dignity the peace after the Civil War thought it wise to allow"

The actions God took to end slavery in North America provide an example of the truth of the religious phrase “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform

On Friday, we checked in on the Pentagon’s ongoing effort to recruit, vet, and train ambitious "freedom fighters" to join the battle against ISIS in Syria. It goes without saying that covert US efforts to aid the multifarious groups vying for control of the country have met with disastrous consequences so far, but if there’s anything Washington is particularly adept at, it’s making bad foreign policy outcomes worse, which is why we weren’t at all surprised to learn that the commander of the Pentagon's new Syrian "force" was captured, along with his deputy, by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra last week near...

For a 56th birthday present to himself, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) (R-North Carolina) took perhaps the most aggressive step yet against the Republican Party’s establishment. It marked perhaps the most bombastic challenge to House Speaker Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) (R-Ohio) leadership, and another point at which long-simmering tensions within the Republican caucus have exploded out into the open.

As the sun went down after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were glowing a faint blue. Many men waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days that April, until medics could treat them. Once they were taken to field hospitals, the troops with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries — and to get better faster. Thus the mysterious blue light was dubbed “Angel’s Glow.” In 2001, 17-year-old Civil War buff Bill Martin visited the Shiloh battlefield with his family and heard the legend of Angel’s...

Foote's narrative is such a breath of fresh air when compared to much of the politically motivated and agenda driven Civil War history of recent years. That alone would make it bad enough but, in addition, much of what is being written is not only poor history, it is poor literature. (Foote remains of the few adults in a room of Civil War historians populated by juveniles.)

Booker T. Washington In 1857, the Supreme Court, with seven of the nine justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property. Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, wrote that slaves were “so far inferior … that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit.” After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment was adopted Dec. 6, 1865, abolishing slavery in America. Once Southern Democrats were forced to free their slaves, they attempted to effectively re-enslave them by passing “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow Laws” which...

About 80 descendants of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd marked Friday's 150th anniversary of Mudd's July 24, 1865, arrival at an isolated Gulf of Mexico fort where he was imprisoned after splinting the broken leg of President Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Wearing "Free Dr. Mudd'' T-shirts, the group toured Fort Jefferson, a former Union military prison on an island 68 miles west of Key West in remote Dry Tortugas National Park. Most visited the cell where Mudd spent four years after being convicted as a co-conspirator in Lincoln's assassination. Great-grandson Tom Mudd, who spearheaded the pilgrimage, believes the doctor was unaware of...

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