Free Republic

HARRISBURG, PA.-PRNewswire/ Each Memorial Day, ceremonies across the country echo with the sound of a plaintive bugle call, played to honor those who died in America's wars. The call is "Taps" and it dates back to the American Civil War. "There are some heart-warming myths about 'Taps,'" warns George Hicks, the executive director of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Museum, which opened in 2001, has 65,000 square feet of exhibit space that tells the story of the entire conflict, without sectional bias. The Museum's exhibit about Civil War music includes six battered and tarnished bugles that...

Letters from the Front News from the battlefield was not always good, but sad mail was better than none Last of a series. By Deangelo McDaniel DAILY Staff Writer With a heavy heart, Col. Columbus Sykes sat near a tree in Aberdeen, Miss., and wrote a letter to his niece and nephew. "You are yet young, very young," he wrote, "one just emerged from his mother's arms; the other an infant, whose age is numbered only by months." Less than a month earlier on Oct. 26, 1864, Sykes had held his brother, Dr. William E. Sykes, in his arms as...

GETTYSBURG, Pa. - A weekend casting call for a proposed reality TV show based on the Civil War drew potential contestants hoping for the grand prize: $1 million in gold. Producer Kevin Dolan is shopping around "Sabers and Roses" and said he is hopeful of landing a network deal. Dolan owns the historic Landon House in Maryland, where real-life Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart hosted his "Sabers and Roses" ball in 1862 before the battle of Antietam.Dolan would host the show in the guise of his alter ego, "Johnny Reb." Contestants would be divided into Yankee and Rebel teams; each contestant...

You won't see his picture in the post office, but Clarksdale businessman Hartley Kittle is now listed as public enemy No. 1 by the outd-of-sync administration at Ole Miss. And with that, Kittle becomes the darling of the "vocal minority." That's how Athletic Director Pete Boone referred to the defenders of traditions at the Oxford-based campus. And here's what Kittle said in the state's largest publication in Mississippi - The Jackson Clarion-Ledger: "They took the flag, we don't have 'Dixie' and now it's Colonel Reb. They can say whatever they want, but they'll realize the deal when they count the...

OXFORD, Miss. - Colonel Reb, the mascot at the University of Mississippi, may soon be in for major changes.Ole Miss athletics director Pete Boone said Monday that the mascot, decked out in red and blue and outfitted like an 18th century Southern gentleman, should no longer represent sports teams at the Oxford school."It doesn't fit anything we do," Boone said.Coming up with an alternative has been a problem, so Colonel Reb will stick around at least through the 2003 football season, Boone said.It's possible there could be a change for the 2003-04 basketball season, he said."We have made a stab...

DATE: May 27, 2002 SUBJECT: Reb Upholds S.C. Constitution The Reb Sutherland for Governor campaign has intercepted two articles about the upcoming gubernatorial race written by pastors who are well known in Columbia, South Carolina. Pastor Robert Slimp, Midlands S.C. League of the South Political Coordinator, wrote to the Heritage organizations and said, "I know the South Carolina League of the South will be proud to support Ken Wingate for governor." Retired Chaplin E. Ray Moore, a leader in the home schooling movement, has written an article in a tabloid entitled, "The Columbia World", May, 2002, on page 8. His...