Free Republic

Picture this: Three men with Long Bay Salvage Co. arrested a barge late Sunday night. The concept of arresting a barge is unusual for landlubbers but is the correct procedure for maritime salvage. Capt. Rick Skimmyhorn, Rodney Thomason and Rufus Perdue live in Murrells Inlet. They found the Reconstruction-era barge about 40 miles off the coast of South Carolina, and recovered two cannon in July. Monday morning, the three men brought a third cannon, a 10-inch Columbiad, to the port of Georgetown. A crane from Andrews Metal Works lifted the cannon from the water and placed it on the shore...

WASHINGTON - The American Civil War consumed at least 620,000 lives over more than 1,400 days and has been scrutinized, discussed and interpreted ever since.The war has captured popular imagination and marched into the domain of novels, drama, art, film and television documentaries. There are Civil War reenactments not only on the sites of battles but in places where battles were never fought. Scholars spend their careers studying and writing about the war and the people who lived through it.Now, the Library of Congress, the repository of millions of Civil War letters, photographs, books, diaries, drawings, and war maps, sets...

Perhaps the most moving moment of Ken Burns' 11-hour documentary "The Civil War" is the reading of Sullivan Ballou's July 14, 1861 letter to "My very dear Sarah," written days before he was killed at the first Battle of Bull Run. Americans hearing his words 129 years later treasured them almost as much as the Union major's widow must have, reciting the letter at weddings and funerals. The Ballou letter epitomized the great achievement of Burns' film, which PBS is rebroadcasting over five nights beginning Sunday. Burns gave viewers "the impression of being present in the past," as historian Robert...

HAGERSTOWN, Md.--And now, the slaughter at Bloody Lane, brought to you by F&M Bank.Corporate sponsors and 13,000 Civil War buffs will come together next week to re-enact the bloodiest day on U.S. soil, the Battle of Antietam.For the first time at such an event, three of the almost 40 participating companies are exclusive sponsors of specific skirmishes.In addition to the fighting at Bloody Lane, where 5,500 men were killed or wounded, spectators can watch the daybreak clash in the Cornfield, sponsored by Antietam Cable, and the afternoon arrival of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill's men--presented through the courtesy of Hagerstown Trust.The...

  A Civil War Book Collection for 2002 by Donald W. Miller, Jr.As a boy and teenager I came to know a woman who was born in 1866, one year after the war ended. She was Mary Lyde Hicks Williams, my great-grandmother. She lived in North Carolina in an antebellum plantation home that General Alfred Howe Terry of General Sherman’s Army used as his headquarters during Sherman’s march through North Carolina. Her father fought for the Confederacy at Fredericksburg, Antietam, and Chancellorsville, and led the 20th North Carolina Regiment in the Battle at Gettysburg. He was captured on the...