A Dead Civil War Soldier Waldo Potter was a cousin of mine who perished on the battlefield the day before Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. It was only the beginning of April and in Upstate New York where his family awaited news of his whereabouts the earth was still barren of color and cold….
Tag: Civil War
Jubilee Singers And Their Biggest Fan
“There were many times, when we didn’t have place to sleep or anything to eat. Mr. White went out and brought us some sandwiches and tried to find some place to put us up.” Other times while the singers would wait in the railway station, White “and some other man of the troupe waded through sleet or snow or rain from hotel to hotel seeking shelter for us”
Novel Inspiration (3): The Scapegoat
INSPIRATION: Every addict needs a scapegoat. Captain Simon McCullough’s motto: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die. This gets John Weldon’s goat. How unfair it is that Simon coasts through life suffering nary a scratch while drinking, womanizing and joking all the way? Weldon fails to note the fatalism in Simon’s motto….
Bravery=Freedom
What would you do if you saw a person you knew as an acquaintance being taken away by two strange men? John Price escaped from slavery in 1856 with few skills and in sorry health. When the residents of the utopian Christian town of Oberlin, Ohio took him in, they found Price odd jobs and…
Amusement Parks and Masculinity
We talked about Lena Dunham wanting to be loved not for her writing but for her half-naked figure in grungy underwear as we sat by the lake watching boys split into rival teams; ISIS vs.soldiers and super heroes. One hundred and fifty years ago both Union and Confederate soldiers “spoke routinely of deluded people,…
Death and Life in a Hospital
I wonder if many people still name their children after the great men and women of the past or have modern historians poisoned that well too. I named my daughter after Theodore Roosevelt not so much for his policies (some of which I disagree with) but in honor of his zest for life and fearlessness…
Are You Brave?
While many would see the above image as horrifying proof of racism in America, we must remember the flip side. Yes, there were racists, but as the cartoon says, the Republican congress gave blacks the right to vote and pushed for racial equality. The fact that violence and hatred still remained after the Civil War…
Rape Culture Civil War Style
Good news! There was no such thing as “rape culture” among Northern soldiers fighting for the Union in America’s Civil War. Scholars looked for the tell-tale signs of “rape culture” and found none. No Rolling Stone frat parties gone awry, no Duke Lacrosse team—oh wait those things didn’t actually happen. Back to the Civil War….
Henry Burden “spent a lifetime in devising means for lightening toil”
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For want of the horse, the rider was lost; For want of the rider, the message was lost; For want of the message, the battle was lost; For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost, And…
American Art: Wilderness on Fire
Learn more about: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN ART
