Free Republic

<p>Was it the South rising again? Or just a very uncivil blunder on a hallowed Virginia battleground?</p> <p>Either way, Thomas Lord, a Bronx-born Yankee, felt the bite of a rebel bullet in Dixie last weekend, 143 years after the surrender at Appomattox. He was the latest casualty of a national conflict under re-enactment most anytime, anywhere above and below the Mason-Dixon line, although not normally with live ammunition.</p>

WINDSOR, Va. (WAVY.com)-- A man participating in a Civil War reenactment was shot Saturday afternoon, according to the Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Department. The incident happened around 12:30 p.m. at the fairgrounds, about three miles outside of Windsor on Route 258. This wasn't your typical re-enactment. Tom Lord was one of many men acting out a scene for a film being made about the Civil War. During that filming, Lord was shot...for real. Speaking only to WAVY.com, Tom says he isn't as worried about the damage done to his body. He's more concerned with the damage this could do...

Ghosts from civil rights era are fading away OXFORD -- University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat is well aware of the significance of the nation's first black presidential nominee, Democrat Barack Obama, arriving this week on the same campus where James Meredith broke the color barrier in 1962. When the international media spotlight returns for the Friday debate, the chancellor knows questions about race will come from the expected 3,000 members of the media. Feeling confident about the work the school has done in recent years, Khayat believes many journalists with opinions of the university forged by the riot...

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE'S first invasion of the North culminated with the Battle of Antietam, in Maryland (or Sharpsburg, as the South called it). The battle took place on Wednesday, September 17, 1862, just 18 days after the Confederate victory at Second Manassas, 40 miles to the southeast in Virginia. Not only was this the first major Civil War engagement on Northern soil, it was also the bloodiest single day battle in American history. To view the magnitude of the losses, consider that Antietam resulted in nine times as many Americans killed or wounded (23,000 soldiers) as took place on...

Most history books written by Democrat professors downplay the fact that the Worst President Ever was a Democrat. Did the Democrats nominate him? No, he was the 1864 Republican nominee for vice president.Andrew Johnson – Andrew Jackson Johnson, to be precise – was the only southern Senator not to go with the Confederacy. For being strong on nation security, this hardline Democrat was nominated to be Abraham Lincoln's 1864 running mate. // continued at http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/andrew-johnson.html

Valdosta State professor pens ‘Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War’ Generations of students have been taught that the South lost the Civil War because of the North’s superior industry and population. A new book suggests another reason: Southerners were largely responsible for defeating the Confederacy. In “Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War” (New Press, $27.95), historian David Williams of Valdosta State University lays out some tradition-upsetting arguments that might make the granite brow of Jefferson Davis crack on Stone Mountain. “With this book,” wrote Publishers Weekly, “the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.”...

Maudie White Hopkins, who grew up during the Depression in the hardscrabble Ozarks and married a Confederate army veteran 67 years her senior, has died. She was 93.

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party's few...

--Snip-- On this date: In 1863, Federal batteries and ships began bombarding South Carolina's Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor during the Civil War, but the Confederates managed to hold on despite several days of pounding.

Ever since the document was examined several weeks ago, it's been a mystery. Initially, it appeared to be a reproduction of the terms and conditions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Appomattox, Va., in 1865. But staff members of the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum in Center City - who came upon the document while preparing for the museum's relocation - soon noticed pen indentations in the paper, and darker and lighter ink strokes consistent with handwriting. They also found a notation in a 1935 museum inventory identifying the document as an "original." Could this artifact, crudely...

CLINTON, Tenn. — Likening the case to the racial discord of the mid- to late 1950s in Anderson County, county school officials on Thursday night said this week's U.S. federal court hearing over a student's right to wear the Confederate flag symbol is being funded "by outside sources." "Regardless of what you read there's a lot more to it than our enforcement of our dress code," John Burrell, Anderson County Board of Education chairman, said during the county school board's regular monthly meeting. At the meeting's start, Anderson County school board members spent approximately 20 minutes in an executive session...

...The decision comes with no guarantee of where or whether the statue might be displayed or how it is interpreted.

TEMPLE TERRACE — Bart Siegel, an outspoken advocate for the display of the giant Confederate flag near the intersection of Interstate 4 and I-75, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot in his Temple Terrace home Thursday. Siegel, 50, was a Republican accountant who penned long letters to newspapers and verbally sparred with columnists. In 2000, he announced his desire to "stir things up" by running against then-Hillsborough Clerk of the Circuit Court Richard Ake, a Democrat unopposed since 1986. Siegel lost, but kept stirring things up. In the face of a protest, Siegel professed his love for the...

TAMPA, FLA. - Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket. Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-75 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the highway intersection.]

Former Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey said Monday that the Nikki Tinker ad featuring pictures of a Ku Klux Klan rally and denunciations of incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen's vote not to remove the statue and remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park "has nothing to do with race." Asked if injecting the incendiary television images into Thursday's 9th Congressional District Democratic Primary contest would be seen as racially divisive, Bailey said: "That may be an ancillary side of it, but that's not the main focus, and it's not the intended focus." Cohen's campaign pushed back vigorously on the...

Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket. Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-10 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. Despite years of boycotts, schoolyard bans, and banishment from capitol domes, the Southern battle colors...

Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey recently returned to the U.S. South, where his family has roots, and found that George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the region deeply: "the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language." In the August 11 Newsweek cover, "The End of the South" (on newsstands Monday, August 4), Newsweek looks at the race issue head-on in the region that has fought the longest and the hardest, and suffered the most, trying...

This is particularly relevant since Congressional Democrats spent a whole day passing a resolution - apologizing for slavery and segregation - for something that everyone acknowledges was a crime. All because one of their members is a white guy in a black district in a tough race. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19880631&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

MONROE – At first glance, it’s an unlikely combination. A black family seated under a tent facing a line of Civil War re-enactors, proudly holding Confederate flags and gripping their weapons. But what lies between these two groups is what brought them together: An unmarked grave about to get its due, belonging to a slave who fought for the Confederacy. Weary Clyburn was best friends with his master’s son, Frank. When Frank left the plantation to fight in the Civil War, Clyburn followed him. He fought alongside Frank and even saved his life on two occasions. On July 18, the...

"One in five American adults - 22% - believe that any state or region has the right to "peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic," a new Middlebury Institute/Zogby International telephone poll shows." "Broken down by race, the highest percentage agreeing with the right to secede was among Hispanics (43%) and African-Americans (40%). Among white respondents, 17% said states or regions should have the right to peaceably secede." "Politically, liberal thinkers were much more likely to favor the right to secession for states and regions, as 32% of mainline liberals agreed with the concept. Among the...

ABC News' Jan Simmonds reports: Republican vice presidential prospect Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., told reporters today that removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina's Statehouse would not be a priority during his final years in office.

At the start of every presidential race, the Democrats perform a masochistic ritual. They promise to take a stand in Dixieland, get in touch with their inner NASCAR, sweet-talk the Southerners with a heavy emphasis on faith and flag. The aim, every time, is to capture some of those states and thereby clinch the election. Care to guess how well the Democrats have fared lately? Eleven Southern states compose the Old Confederacy. The last Democratic nominee, John Kerry, won zip and lost 11. The previous nominee, Al Gore, won zip and lost 11. Indeed, all the Democratic nominees since 1980...

he national NAACP has again said it will step up a campaign against South Carolina for flying the Confederate flag at the State House. The organization declared it would exert continued pressure to discourage NCAA sporting events and film production in South Carolina.“This is unfinished business,” said Lonnie Randolph, state NAACP president, echoing the message delivered Monday by NAACP interim president and CEO Dennis Hayes, at the organization’s 99th national convention in Cincinnati. Hayes told the Associated Press the organization is still working on its plan to discourage tourism and film production in the state. The National Association for the...

A woolen flag with cotton stars flew the night Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson caught a bullet in the arm -- a quiet witness to one of history's great accidents. You can see it inside a case on the third floor of the N.C. Museum of History, hanging over a Confederate ammunition chest recovered from a Johnston County farm: the flag carried by the regiment that inadvertently shot the man who was arguably the South's No. 2 general. The museum just bought the flag for a price Curator of Military History Tom Belton would describe only as a bargain. Any price...

I told myself I'd limit myself to one vanity post per several hundred comments and threads I'd posted, so I apologize in advance. Currently, I'm doing some summer reading and I'm looking specifically for books on the Civil War/War Between the States--or the "War of Northern Agression" if you're so inclined. While I am for certain that this topic could fill up my living room and perhaps my grandparents' entire house, I'm looking for anything that those of you who argue back and forth on the Civil War threads have read. Thanks in advance.

RICHMOND — The American Civil War Center is weighing a $100,000 gift to its interactive Richmond education center. The gift is a bronze likeness of Confederate President Jefferson Davis being cast by Lexington sculptor Gary Casteel. The offer comes from the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A spokesman for the Southern heritage group says the statue is a fitting tribute to the only president of the Confederate States of America in the city that was the capital of the Confederacy. Brag Bowling says it would complement a statue of Abraham Lincoln, which was installed at the National Park grounds five years...

The Sons of Confederate Veterans say they will permanently install a giant Confederate flag near the junction of Interstates 4 and 75 to counter what they consider increasing slights to Southern heritage. But the group, founded 112 years ago to protect all that is noble about the South, is itself racked by angry divisions. Since the 1990s, clusters of Sons members have aligned themselves with "heritage groups" like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens, both considered hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The law center says the Sons may have been taken over...

Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as it goes about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy.

Views on Confederacy may cost Webb VP nod By DAVID MARK | 6/10/08 6:35 PM EST Text Size: Jim Webb Webb, a descendent of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s. Photo: John Shinkle Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as they go about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy. Webb is no...

One of the most disconcerting aspects of liberal bigots is their insatiable appetite for tearing down anything American in order to build up anti-American sentiment. The issue over the Confederate flag is an excellent example. Most liberals have nothing but contempt for one of the most lasting and cherished symbols of the South; preferring to label those who revere the Confederate flag as red-necked racists and hate mongers. To most liberals, diversity is a terrific concept, except when it spawns tolerance for ideas and practices the left opposes. Amazingly enough, those same self-righteous liberals who are so anxious to disembowel...

Two controversies involving schools, kids and flags have made recent news in Minnesota. But the cases had radically different outcomes. The first occurred in May at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High. Four eighth-graders refused to stand while the rest of their class recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The kids got one-day, in-school suspensions. But school officials lifted the suspensions immediately after the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota fired off a letter pronouncing that the First Amendment protected the students' conduct. The ACLU's letter warned of dark consequences for school officials who had violated the eighth-graders' free-expression rights....

At least one of the Bloomington Kennedy High School students suspended Tuesday, June 3, for displaying a Confederate flag had been warned about doing so after an earlier incident. Rick Kaufman, Bloomington Public School's executive director of communications, said three students who participated in the flag display have been suspended and won't be permitted to take part in Kennedy's graduation ceremony tonight, June 4, at Target Center in Minneapolis. At least one of the suspended students had been warned against displaying the flag following a previous incident, said Kaufman. He declined to give details but said the student must have...

Three high school seniors have been barred from Bloomington Kennedy High School's graduation ceremony tonight at Target Center because of what the school district is calling a prank involving Confederate flags. Rick Kaufman, a spokesman for the Bloomington School District, said three male students brought the flags onto school property Tuesday morning. He said they were suspended after "carrying and waving" the flags in the parking lot as parents and students arrived at the school. Bloomington Kennedy senior Kellie Rezac is a friend of the three boys and helped organize a protest outside the school earlier today. Rezac said the...

Three seniors at Bloomington Kennedy High School will not be allowed to walk in their graduation ceremony after driving to school with confederate flags flying from their trucks. Seventy-five other students showed up at the school Wednesday morning to protest the action taken by the school against Justin Thompson, Joey Snyder and another student. "I figured, you know, we’re seniors, it’s the last day of school…we didn’t mean any offense by it," Thompson said. Added Snyder: "We didn’t look at it as racist or anything." But school officials feel that flying a confederate flag violates the school’s student conduct policy....

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) ― Flying the Confederate flag has long been controversial in Southern states but now it's causing a heated debate at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minn. Three seniors who displayed the flag will not be allowed to attend their graduation ceremony Wednesday evening. "It was sitting like that in the parking lot," said Justin Thompson, as he held a Confederate flag that was hanging from a pole inside a pick-up truck bed. On Tuesday, three seniors, each with a rebel flag on the back of their pick-ups, parked at Kennedy High School. "I'm just a country type...

I've been doing some genealogical research and have traced a couple branches of my family through the Civil War, the Texas War of Independence, and the Revolutionary War. I've also been given the opportunity via some co-workers to join the Sons of the Republic of Texas. I've checked into it, but have also found other historical societies such as the Sons of the Confederacy, and the Sons of the American Revolution. Does anyone out there have any info on these groups as to what it's like to be involved in these groups, and which ones are worth joining?

TAMPA, Fla. -- A giant Confederate battle flag -- believed to be the world's largest -- may soon be flying near a Tampa highway intersection. A Confederate heritage group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to fly the flag that measures 30 feet tall and 50 feet wide. The group said it expects to have its flag in place by 2009. "I'm surprised that they would allow something like this to go on in Hillsborough County," county NAACP President Curtis Stokes told the St. Petersburg Times. The group has building permits but still needs $30,000 to complete the project,...

TAMPA — Next year, a giant Confederate flag may tower above the tree line near the junction of Interstate 75 and Interstate 4. The Sons of Confederate Veterans wants drivers in the Tampa area to see the massive flag — 30 feet high and 50 feet long — atop a 139-foot pole, the highest the Federal Aviation Authority would allow. It would be lit at night. With the pole already in the ground and building permits in hand, the group is on its way to having what it calls the "world's largest" Confederate flag in place by mid 2009. The...

This Day In Civil War History May 24th 1861: - Union soldiers occupy Alexandria and Arlington Heights in Virginia. During the day Col. Elmer Ellsworth of the 11th New York takes down a Confederate flag flying from atop the Marshall House Inn. As he proceeds down the stairs he is killed by innkeeper James Jackson who almost immediately thereafter is killed. Ellsworth is the first Union officer killed in the war and becomes a martyr in the north. 1862: - Confederate forces under Gen. Thomas Jackson assault the rear guard of Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks retreating army at Middletown...

NEW ORLEANS (May 14) - A steamship that sank off the Louisiana coast during an 1846 storm has produced a trove of rare gold coins, including some produced at two largely forgotten U.S. Mints in the South, coin experts say. Last year, four Louisiana residents salvaged hundreds of gold coins and thousands of silver coins from the wreckage of the SS New York in about 60 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico, said David Bowers, co-chairman of New York-based Stack's Rare Coins. "Some of these are in uncirculated or mint condition," Bowers said, predicting the best could bring...

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2008 – Through three military conflicts, beginning with the Civil War, a group of women contributed to the war effort by making bandages for the troops. While they no longer make bandages, the Virginia-based United Daughters of the Confederacy strives to support the country’s servicemembers through historical, educational, benevolent, memorial and patriotic means. “Since we are a country at war against terrorism, the patriotic objective is the one being focused upon at the present time,” said Sherry Davis, chairman of patriotic activities for the general, or national, organization. The organization meets its goals of patriotic outreach...

May 5, 2008: The U.S. Civil War continues to kill. Sam White, a Virginia based collector of Civil War munitions, died recently while cleaning up a nine inch, 75 pound, cannon ball. White had previously restored or examined over 1,500 of these shells. But the one that killed him was different. It was fired from a ship board gun, and was designed to be more waterproof than shells used by land based artillery. This kept the fuze, and black powder explosive charge, dry and viable after 150 years. Mister White was using metal tools to clean up the shell, which...

CHESTER, Va. (May 2) - Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics -- weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms. But in February, White's hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway. More than 140...

Virginia Man Killed In Civil War Cannonball Blast May 02, 2008 CHESTER, Va. — Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown. As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms. But in February, White's hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A Central Florida man's Confederate flag prompted a free-speech battle with his employer, who doesn't want it displayed on company property. The flag is attached to Bobby Tillett's pickup truck, which he drives to work every day, WJXT reported. Because his employer has banned the flag from his parking lot, Tillett is forced to park far from his job. "If I take it down, that means you know the politically correct people would have won, and that's wrong," Bobby Tillett said. "If you believe in something that strong (you) should have no problem whatsoever to fly it."...

Petition Seeks to Remove Denton Confederate Statue(Denton County, Texas)DENTON - While to some the statue of a Confederate soldier that stands before the Denton County Courthouse represents a piece of history, others say they believe it just represents hypocrisy. That stand has incited two University of North Texas students to start a petition for the removal of the historical landmark, a statue of a Confederate soldier holding his gun to represent the South in the Civil War. "It's really very frustrating that so many people would look at this and clap," said Aron Duhon, one of the students behind the...

While the eyes of the political world were focused on Pennsylvania last week, I played hooky for a day at the invitation of the Lee County Library and bumped into a story as revealing in its way as the latest round in the struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Among other things, it explains why John McCain found it useful to spend last week touring poverty-stricken areas in the South, where Republicans rarely go. On the same day that Pennsylvanians gave Clinton a victory that still left unclear who will eventually be the Democratic nominee, voters in Mississippi's 1st...

For decades after the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party. Klansmen murdered hundreds of Republican activists and office-holders, including U.S. Representative James Hinds (R-Arkansas). On this day in 1871, the Republican-controlled 42nd Congress passed and the Republican President, Ulysses Grant, signed into law the Ku Klux Klan Act. The law banned the KKK and other Democrat terrorist organizations. President Grant then... continued at http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com. Each day, Grand Old Partisan -- http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com -- highlights 154 years of Republican heroes and heroics (and, occasionally, Democrat villainy).

"At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War."

Over the last few months, celebrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday have drawn attention to the Kentucky native's life and his legacy as president. But the 200-year anniversary of another Kentucky president's birth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is receiving mixed reviews. "I'll say it this way - winners write history," said Ron Bryant, a Lexington historian writing a book on Davis. "We need heroes, we need villains. Lincoln became a hero and Davis a villain." Davis was born in what is now Todd County, Ky., in 1808, one year before Lincoln. Davis served as the only president of the 11...