With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Southern California does indeed have a Civil War history

Ulysses S. Grant IV, a grandson of the Civil War general and U.S. president, was a geology professor at UCLA.

More than 30 Confederate soldiers are buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Rosecrans Avenue was named for Union Army general (and later Los Angeles-area resident) William Rosecrans.

UCLA history professor Joan Waugh ticks off such facts to illustrate that, though it's natural to associate the Civil War with cities in the East and the South, links to the struggle can also be found in Southern California.

Gettysburg Avenue, Antietam Avenue and Appomattox Drive, for instance, are roads inside Los Angeles National Cemetery near Westwood.

Waugh, the author of "U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth," grew up in Los Angeles but says she was unaware until about a decade ago that there were about 10,000 Civil War veterans buried at the cemetery.

Waugh, who teaches a seminar titled "The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture," now takes her students to the cemetery — a different world just a few blocks from the comfort zone of Westwood — to "bring Civil War history alive. It's a moving experience."...
Read entire article at LA Times