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The Memphis City Council approved a resolution to move the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Mayor Wharton said this is a movement designed to honor Forrest’s will and testament, in which his last wish was that he and his wife be buried at Elmwood Cemetery.

With the revulsion against Confederate symbols that has resulted from shooter Dylann Roof's internet picture with the Confederate battle flag, Robert E. Lee has been put in the gunsights of social radicals. Lee was one of the two great generals of the Civil War and due in part to his good fortune in having an excellent biographer in Douglas Southall Freeman, is generally regarded as the greatest, although it should be noted that Grant won the war. Lee came from one of the oldest families in Virginia and arguably its most distinguished. His father, Light Horse Harry Lee, was a...

In the wake of several Gettysburg-area stores making announcements on if they'll continue to sell Confederate flag-related merchandise, the Lutheran Theological Seminary is making its stand. Saturday, the day before a Living History event was slated to take place on the seminary's campus, the administration announced it would be banning symbols of hate speech and racism on seminary grounds, said the Rev. John Spangler, executive assistant to the president for communication and planning. The ban prohibits the display of the flag or flags associated with the Confederate States of America, Spangler said. "The subsequent use by other groups have made...

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a southern Democrat contemplating a run for president, encouraged people on Wednesday to understand the “complicated history of the Civil War” when calling for the removal of the Confederate flag across the country.“This is an emotional time and we all need to think through these issues with a care that recognizes the need for change but also respects the complicated history of the Civil War,” Webb wrote in a post on Facebook.Responding to the shooting in Charleston last week, the governors of South Carolina and Alabama have called for the removal of the flag off...

For the past couple of days I’ve been ashamed and disappointed that RedState has decided to enter into the feeding frenzy over the Confederate flag (note: the flag in question is actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but for sake of brevity I will refer to it as the Confederate flag) and have cooperated in tying that flag to the shootings in Charleston, SC. As humans we are, at the core, herd animals and we like to be liked. That is understandable and, from an evolutionary point of view, essential to survival. There is a line,...

All three statewide-elected politicians in South Carolina have now called from the Confederate Battle Flag to be taken down. The Post and Courier reports:

As the New York Times reports this morning, not a single Republican presidential candidate has the courage to tell South Carolina to stop flying the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol. It is a bit late for that, to be sure; public display of any kind of the symbol of the slaveholders’ rebellion should have been banned after the Union victory in 1865. Removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s seat of government has become an African-American cause in the wake of last week’s Charleston church massacre. It may be incommensurate with the crime, but black...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - State offices across South Carolina are closed Monday for Confederate Memorial Day. The holiday itself was Sunday, marking 152 years since Southern Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson died after he was accidentally wounded by his own troops. But since May 10 was on a Sunday, the holiday for state workers is on Monday this year. Several other states in the South also have official holidays to honor the Confederacy, although the dates vary.

A former aide to President Ronald Reagan wants a handful of Southern states to secede from the union and form a new country named for the late GOP hero. It may come to a shock to some Alabamians, however, that Douglas MacKinnon's vision of the country known as "Reagan" would initially only include South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. Those three states were chosen, MacKinnon told talk show host Janet Mefferd, due to their population size and natural resources, such as access to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

A number of years ago I came across a good image of the above Slave's Friend abolitionist pamphlet.   It was published sometime between 1836 and 1860, most likely in the earlier years.    Freeper Ruy Dias de Bivar was kind enough to send me the image above, which is from MAN AT ARMS, published by the NRA, August, 1997, page 12. I intend to make this pamphlet easily available on the Internets, but I need a better image than the one above.   I know at least one better one exists, because I saw it in a reference book on weapons...

One of the more effective arguments used by those arguing for same-sex marriage and sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws is that homosexuals have no choice in the matter -- that sexual orientation is something that you are born with, and you can't change it. The claim is that this is a natural part of human variability, no different from skin color or hair color or how tall you are. As an acquaintance -- a generally conservative, gay high power rifle shooter (talk about being a member of the world's smallest cross-section of identity groups) told me once, "Why would anyone choose...

Did you know that three Memphis, Tennessee parks named for our great Southern leaders Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest-Forrest Park, Confederate President Jefferson Davis-Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park were changed?

Researchers say they may have the final clues needed to solve the mystery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which never resurfaced after it became the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship, taking its eight-man crew to a watery grave.

A Virginia company filed a lawsuit after it was forced to stop its construction of a monument in Alabama honoring a noted Confederate general, who also was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The federal suit, filed by KTK Mining of Richmond, claims that the company received the necessary permits to do the work on the monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery honoring Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, The Selma Times-Journal reported. However, the city of Selma, Alabama, suspended the permits when the project drew protests. The KTK mining company claims it had not received notice prior to the...

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

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – The first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship is upright for the first time in almost 150 years, revealing a side of its hull not seen since it sank off the South Carolina coast during the Civil War. Workers at a conservation lab finished the painstaking, two-day job of rotating the hand-cranked H.L. Hunley upright late Thursday. The Hunley was resting on its side at a 45-degree angle on the bottom of the Atlantic when it was raised in August 2000 and scientists had kept it in slings in that position in the lab...

We all know that today is a day to remember US troops that have fallen in battle. In the state of Virginia today is also a day to remember our brave soldiers of the Confederacy. The marching armies of the past Along our Southern plains, Are sleeping now in quiet rest Beneath the Southern rains. The bugle call is now in vain To rouse them from their bed; To arms they'll never march again-- They are sleeping with the dead. No more will Shiloh's plains be stained With blood our heroes shed, Nor Chancellorsville resound again To our noble...

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

"After all, I think Forrest as the most remarkable man our 'Civil War' produced on either side.”

Both Greece and Rome made significant contributions to Western Civilization. Greek knowledge was ascendant in philosophy, physics, chemistry, medicine, and mathematics for nearly two thousand years. The Romans did not have the Greek temperament for philosophy and science, but they had a genius for law and civil administration. The Romans were also great engineers and builders. They invented concrete, perfected the arch, and constructed roads and bridges that remain in use today. But neither the Greeks nor the Romans had much appreciation for technology. As documented in my book, Science and Technology in World History, Vol. 2, the technological society...