Gaines M. Foster is Murphy J. Foster Professor of History Emeritus at Louisiana State University. This interview is based on his new book, The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
Robert E. Lee
For the record, Robert E. Lee was not a founding father
Watch Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine explain this to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia:
Edward Garrison Draper is admitted to the Maryland bar
His admission came 166 years after he first applied to the bar and was denied. Here is Sydney Trent at The Washington Post: Edward Garrison Draper was more prepared to be a lawyer than most White attorneys in the mid-19th […]
Slavery was the cause of the American Civil War
Most historians agree with the title of this post. So do many Americans. But there are others who still claim that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. Watch: Yesterday I showed this video to my Civil War […]
Another time capsule is found in Richmond’s Robert E. Lee monument
They have been looking for this thing since September. Here is ABC News: After a time capsule found last week proved to be a letdown, another one has been found in the pedestal of a now-removed Robert E. Lee state […]
What will happen to the Robert E. Lee statue that once stood in Charlottesville, Virginia?
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center will melt it down and turn it into a new piece of public art. Here is Eduardo Medina at The New York Times: The City Council of Charlottesville, Va., voted on Tuesday to […]
Allen Guelzo on how to tell the story of Robert E. Lee
One of our generation’s best historians of the Civil War is the author of the forthcoming Robert E. Lee: A Life. In a recent piece at The New York Times, Allen Guelzo writes about the challenges of writing a biography […]
Richmond’s Robert E. Lee monument will come down tomorrow
Here is the Associated Press: A towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, will be taken down on Wednesday as a symbol of racial injustice, more than 130 years after it was erected in tribute to […]
Episode 85: Reckoning with Confederate Monuments
Historian Karen L. Cox argues that “when it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground.” In this episode, we talk with Cox about the history of Confederate monuments and how the recent racial unrest in the United States […]