What did William Seward (NY) and Henry Wilson (MA) know about the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry? Here is Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian: The House select committee on the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, according to chairman […]
Jefferson Davis
Stone Mountain: Monument to white supremacy
Rebecca Onion writes at Slate: “The Confederate memorial carving at Georgia’s Stone Mountain is etched with more than a century of racist history. But tearing it down won’t be easy.” Here is a taste of her piece, “Hatred Set in Stone“: […]
What about all those Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol?
Here is a taste of William Hogeland‘s piece at Boston Review: Eleven statues of Confederate officers, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, stand in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. In response to House Democrats’ recent effort […]
Wilentz: “We can honor–and dishonor–American leaders of previous eras without turning history into a simplistic tale of good versus evil”
Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz addresses monuments to our complicated past. Here is a taste of his piece at the The Wall Street Journal: Given history’s complexities and contradictions, though, where should we draw the line? In the starkest […]
The Author’s Corner with Michael E. Woods
Michael E. Woods is currently Associate Professor of History at Marshall University. Starting in August 2020, he will be Associate Professor of History and Director/Editor of the Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This interview is […]
The Author’s Corner with Ben Wynne
Ben Wynne is professor of history at the University of North Georgia. This interview is based on his new book The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis: The Political Life of Henry S. Foote, Southern Unionist (LSU Press, 2018). JF: What led you to write […]
Jefferson Davis’s New Home at UT-Austin
What should we do with Confederate monuments? Should they be destroyed? Should they remain standing? Should we supplement them with additional monuments or interpretive signs and plaques? In 2015, the University of Texas at Austin moved a bronze statue of […]
Churches and the Legacy of Racism: A Tale of Two Congregations
Back in June, I wrote a post about the 150th anniversary of the founding of First Baptist Church in Dallas, the congregation led by court evangelical Robert Jeffress. In that post I referenced Tobin Grant’s 2016 Religion News Service piece […]
The Largest Confederate Monument in America
It’s the Jefferson Davis Highway. Historian Kevin Waite explains: The largest monument to the Confederacy is not made of bronze. It’s paved in asphalt. For over a century, portions of America’s road system have paid tribute to a failed slaveholding […]
Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 4
For previous posts in this series click here. We began Day 4 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Montgomery is the only city where we are spending two nights. This means that we didn’t have to pack our suitcases this yesterday!). In the […]
University of Texas Professors Protest Removal of Jefferson Davis Statue
On Sunday the University of Texas at Austin removed a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate State of America, from its location in front of the school’s main tower. The statue will be moved to a history […]
Quote of the Day
“First question about Davis. Great Confederate president, or the greatest Confederate president?” –Stephen Colbert to James McPherson on the October 6, 2014 Colbert Report. McPherson was on the show to discuss his recent book Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander […]
*New York Times* Interview With James McPherson
He is currently reading Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington. The last “great book” he read was James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States. He believes that Bernard Bailyn, David Brion Davis, Gordon Wood, Eric […]