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NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful combat submarine when it sank a Union ship in 1864, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time on Thursday, capping a decade of careful preservation. "No one alive has ever seen the Hunley complete. We're going to see it today," said engineer John King as a crane at a Charleston conservation laboratory slowly lifted a massive steel truss covering the top of the submarine. About 20 engineers and scientists applauded as they caught the first glimpse of the intact 42-foot-long...

A black college student has won the fight to keep a Confederate flag in his dorm room after school officials initially told him to take it down. “It’s not racist for me,” Thomas, a Georgia native, said in the video. “All it is is a symbol that I see as a sign of respect, and people don’t want to see it that way.”

Over the past several months, the NAACP has launched a campaign against the Confederate Battle Flag by protesting its presence at the South Carolina statehouse. Governor Nikki Haley did not respond to the demands of the NAACP to remove it. In a similar matter, black protesters have called for the removal of the Battle Flag from a Georgian cemetery that happens to have interred the bones of Confederate soldiers. And now, most recently, Republican presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry of Texas has become the newest target of the NAACP over whether the Battle Flag should appear on license plates. In...

Gov. Rick Perry told a Florida television station today that he opposes the creation of a Confederate license plate in Texas.

A Goodwill worker who spotted a photograph of Confederate General Robert E. Lee has helped the charity make $23,000 in an online auction. The tintype photograph was in a bin, about to be shipped out, when a worker grabbed it and sent it to the charity's local online department. The item was then put up for auction, which closed Wednesday night.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley isn't retreating from her decision to keep the Confederate flag atop the north end of the Statehouse in Columbia despite complaints from the NAACP, whose president this week said the ethnic minority governor is a "contradiction" for allowing the flag to fly. Speaking to a crowd at an NAACP national conference in Los Angeles on Monday, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous attempted to shame Haley into removing the flag by comparing African American slavery to oppression Haley's ancestors in India faced under British rule. "Perhaps one of the most perplexing examples of the contradictions of this...

Salon Exclusive: The Texas governor's uncomfortably close ties to groups that glorify the Lost Cause [UPDATED BELOW] Rick Perry made national headlines in 2009 when, during a speech to a Tea Party group, he floated the possibility that Texas could secede from the union. But the governor's substantive ties to the neo-Confederate movement may be deeper than previously known. A 1998 voting guide published by a leading neo-Confederate group and obtained by Salon not only endorses Perry for lieutenant governor but also describes him as "a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans." Perry's office did not respond to a...

On Jan. 2, 1864, Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne presented his fellow Southerners with a question about the war they were fighting. “Was the war about independence? Or was the war being fought primarily to preserve slavery?” said former Georgia labor commissioner Michael Thurmond.

Confederates on the Rhine By Yoni Appelbaum Jun 2 2011, 10:05 AM ET 110 Why are so many Germans participating in Civil War reenactments—and siding with the South? "On a warm spring morning about 50 miles north of Berlin, Union troops and their Confederate rivals prepare for battle." That's the attention-grabbing lede of a PRI story on the bizarre phenomenon of Germans reenacting the American Civil War. The reporter explains that many participants feel "a personal connection to the war," and that everyone with whom she spoke took care to note that 200,000 Germans had taken part in the fight:...

I am responding to a column by Leonard Pitts Jr., a noted black columnist for The Miami Herald, entitled, "The Civil War was about slavery, nothing more" (Other Views, April 15). I found this article to be very misleading and grossly riddled with distortions of the real causes of the War Between the States. I find it so amusing that such an educated person would not know the facts. I am a proud native of South Carolina. I have spent my entire life in what was once the Confederate States of America. I am currently associated with Southern Heritage causes,...

"This is total, total discrimination," said F. Lee Hart III of Suffolk, chairman of the SCV Oakwood Restoration Committee. "I don't think they want to see an Arlington of Richmond, with all of the positive media and tourism that this cemetery will draw, this being the largest combat casualty Confederate cemetery." Virginia Senator James Webb to the rescue. As the Richmond Times Dispatch piece notes, James Webb recently reminded the V.A. that "Confederate and Union soldiers have the same legal status."

1861 - Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned from the U.S. Army. Two days earlier he had been offered command of the Union army.

This is a perplexing question, as it relates to the WBTS. In some ways, yes. In others, no. I, like many of you, recently (and for the 3rd or 4th time), watched Ken Burns' PBS documentary, The Civil War. Even though I have several criticisms of the Burns' film, I still find it a fascinating piece of work and very educational. I've always thoroughly enjoyed watching the film, despite its shortcomings. One of the more moving parts of this film comes near the end, as shown below. Pay close attention at about 30 seconds in and listen as historian David...

By the act of a handful of ingrates and traitors, war is inaugurated in this heretofore happy and peaceful Republic! While we write, the bombardment of Sumter is going on; and the blood of the few gallant defenders of the glorious old flag which yet, we hope, floats over that fortress is being poured out for their fidelity to the Constitution as it is, and the Union as our fathers made it! The people know the cause of the fratricidal strife. The party, which, in the interests of a barbarous institution, has governed the country for the last 40 years,...

Tuesday, April 12 marks the 150th anniversary of the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the start of the U.S. Civil War. Over the next four years, the nation will be commemorating the bloody events of a century and a half ago, pondering their meaning and their place in history. Media outlets will produce features on the valor and the squalor, the heroes, martyrs and villains, and what they mean to today’s Americans.

"The fact that it is acceptable to put a Confederate flag on a car *bumper and to portray Confederates as brave and gallant defenders of states’ rights rather than as traitors and defenders of slavery is a testament to 150 years of history written by the losers." - Ohio State Professer Steven Conn in a recent piece at History News Network (No, I'll not difnigy his bitterness by providing a link) This sounds like sour grapes to me. Were it not for the "losers" . . .

New Research Questions Who in the Confederacy Had the Most War Dead Josh Howard is playing with fire here in the heart of the old Confederacy, with a scholarly finding that could rewrite the history of the Civil War. For more than a century, North Carolina has proudly claimed that it lost more soldiers than any other Southern state in the nation's bloodiest conflict. But after meticulously combing through military, hospital and cemetery records, the historian is finding the truth isn't so clear-cut. Official military records compiled in 1866 counted 40,275 North Carolina soldiers who died in uniform. Though known...

Texas' secession from the Union was not official until the next day.

Back in the Jurassic Era when I was young, we learned “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in school, and I often heard it on the radio on national holidays. We learned two verses, the first and the fifth. The words of the fifth verse made a deep impression on me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. It implanted in my youthful mind the idea that fighting for freedom sometimes requires actually FIGHTING for freedom, which includes the possibility of dying for freedom. But now, I rarely hear this inspiring hymn on...

JACKSON, Miss. – Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won't denounce a Southern heritage group's proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Barbour is a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate. Questioned by reporters Tuesday after an energy speech in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn't think Mississippi legislators will approve the Forrest license plate proposed by the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.