Free Republic

Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters have claimed the deadly terrorist attack in France was “to make people lose attention” [sic] in their movement and focus on “white” lives instead. “Ok I’ve come to the conclusion that what happened in Nice was to make people lose attention off [sic] #BlackLivesMatter and focus and unite against us”, wrote Twitter user Semsa, who is based in London but says “Egypt’s the motherland”. She has since made her account private. “Don’t #PrayForNice we are fighting a civil war against whites. #BLM”, tweeted Franklin Omar, an activist who also appears to be from London, and...

A Yale University employee is out of a job, and the school is out a window, after he used a broomstick to smash a stained-glass window he complained was racist. Until recently, Thomas Menafee worked as a dishwasher for Yale. But he says he grew enraged that, while working at Yale’s Calhoun College, he had to see a stained glass window which shows black laborers harvesting cotton. The window, he said, was an offensive portrayal of slavery, and so on June 13 he impulsively decided to eliminate it by force. “I took a broomstick, and it was kind of high,...

Civil War

The home to the Surratts would be named Surrattsville and today is Clinton The first woman to be executed in America took place on July 7, 1865. Her name was Mary Surratt. President Jefferson Davis said; “I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.” America had not yet celebrated her 85th birthday when the South seceded from the Union in the year of our Lord 1861. Secession was recognized as a God given right that was also exercised by the 13 American Colonies in...

The Wall Street Journal reported on a trove of Civil War era telegrams — many of them to and from Abraham Lincoln — that have never been decoded. The telegrams are owned by the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. They have started a project, "Decoding the Civil War," to transcribe and decipher their collection of nearly 16,000 Civil War telegrams between Lincoln, his Cabinet and Union Army officers. About a third of the telegrams were written in code. The library is crowdsourcing the project through the largest online platform for collaborative volunteer research, Zooniverse. They...

"Historian Garry Adelman describes the events that took place during the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1-July 3, 1863." I found this video very well done in just 4 minutes. Gave me a good start to understanding this complex battle and also something to think about on this day of Pickett's Charge. I don't know how many of you here are well versed with the way the battle went but for me it's still a learning experience.

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War.

A strong majority of Democrats would cancel the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if it meant President Obama could serve another term, a new poll found.Data provided to The Hill by the conservative polling outlet WPA Research found that 67 percent of Democrats would take a third term for Obama over a potential Clinton administration.Only 28 percent said they’re ready to move on from the Obama White House, while 6 percent are undecided.Obama is enjoying a surprisingly strong approval rating for a president serving out the final months of his second term.A Washington Post-ABC News survey...

In 1862, a man named Lt. Charles H. Colley of Gray, ME was killed during the Battle of Cedar Mountain. When his grieving family opened up the casket that was supposed to contain their son, they were stunned to discover that a fully uniformed Confederate soldier had been shipped to them instead. Having no way to identify the soldier, and also lacking the means to ship him back to Virginia, Lt. Colley's family decided to bury him in Gray Village Cemetery alongside the Union soldiers who had been killed in the war. They figured that this unknown Confederate's family would...

I have concluded that not doing fairly unto others ultimately could bring about another U.S. civil war. Please hear me out. See if you don’t agree it could happen unless the growing unfair political financial tide is corrected. The growing spread of wealth inequality has been underway for many years. It has come to pass even in a democracy and a so-called exceptional nation. I’m not a history major, but in my serious interpretation, another civil war appears to be a distinct possibility. Doing great and greater for the financially elite and less and less for others has come to...

Captain America: Civil War is the 897th installment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This time round, the superheroes take sides, with the marketing asking if you’re #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan but not if you’re #TeamNeither, as would be most useful in my case. I swear this is the last Marvel film I will see as I never get anything out of them and whatever I say only sets the fans against me, which is not what you want at my age.

It has a fine walnut stock, a blue finish and a very simple inscription that reads “Albee to Lawton.” But this 19th-century rifle has become the most expensive single firearm ever sold at auction according to the Rock Island Auction Company, which recently sent the historic piece to a new destiny with an undisclosed buyer. The price: $1,265,000. “Other guns have sold higher as a pair, but no other single firearm surpasses this new world record. It was an honor to be entrusted with an American treasure,” said Kevin Hogan, president of the Illinois-based company. The rifle itself was a...

Hollywood, typically regarded by those of us on the political right as a bastion of hedonistic leftists, has lately been flouting that stereotype. Still in theaters, Disney's The Jungle Book boasts subtle but articulate themes affirming human liberty and the value of capitalism. Dropping over the weekend from the related Marvel Studios, Captain America: Civil War likewise takes a firm philosophical stance in favor of choice over control. Its politics prove so prominent that they moved Salon writer Amanda Marcotte to denounce Captain America as "a douchey libertarian."Exploring the politics of the film will require delving into some particulars...

On a stage festooned with Confederate flags, a singer was belting out “Dixieland Delight” by Alabama near an obelisk honoring the Americans who fled to this outpost in the aftermath of the Civil War. “We’re not racists,” said Cícero Carr, 54, an engineer whose great-great-grandfather hailed from Texas. Wearing a fedora featuring the rebel battle flag, he explained in Portuguese, “We’re just revering our ancestors who had the good sense to settle in Brazil.” At the annual celebration of Brazil’s self-described Confederados one scorching Sunday in April, Confederate flags adorned the hoop-skirted gowns of young belles and the trucker caps...

Captain America: Civil War confirms our national dumb-down. While the mainstream media pretzel themselves over the presidential primaries, Marvel Studios has steadily accomplished a rejiggering of the American public’s cultural and political consciousness. Civil War completes this devolution in its story of superhero combat where one faction of pop icons, led by Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), faces off against another faction, headed by billionaire genius Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). As momentary adversaries, Captain America and Iron Man almost represent the schism that now divides American voters, politicians, and pundits. I say “almost,” because the film’s comic-book...

Don't look for any happy ending here. Or any ending. The debate over the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) can be expected to last as long as there are isolationists and interventionists arguing over American foreign policy -- that is, approximately forever. Few if any conflicts illustrate the tragic nature of history so well, for there were no simple choices in Spain. There were more than enough heroes and villains, not-so-innocent bystanders and gawkers galore -- along with an endless supply of impossible choices. No one's hands were Ivory Soap clean, but curiously enough none were hopelessly dirty. Time, the great...

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — Police in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have evacuated about 20 homes after a man mistook a Civil War-era landmine for a cannonball and took it home. Police say as of about 4 p.m. Thursday that the U.S. Air Force Bomb Squad was looking for a place to explode the ordinance. Police spokesman Cpl. Kirk Zaner said a Hot Springs man dug up what he thought was a cannonball near Danville. The man put the 32-pound landmine in the back of his pickup and drove about 65 miles home. After researching pictures of Civil War-era weapons, the man...