Civil War

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• SOURCE: Bill Moyers
  7/30/2020
  

  Bill Talks with Heather Cox Richardson About ‘How the South Won the Civil War’

  It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy.

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Learning from Lincoln: Meeting Crisis with Action

  by William L. Barney

  The United States is at a crossroads. The path chosen will determine whether contemporary America resumes its role as a beacon of hope and progress to the rest of the world or joins the Confederate slaveholders of the past among history’s losers. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  7/26/2020
  

  Benny White, Who Brought Black History to Life Leading Civil War Reenactors, Dies at 75

  “He dedicated his life to it,” said his brother Marco White of Hyde Park. “Everything in his life was the 54th.”

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• 7/26/2020
  

  Mankato’s Hanging Monument Excluded Indigenous Perspectives when it was Erected and when it was Removed

  by John Legg

  Both while it stood and when its presence became inconvenient, the Hanging Monument shows how memorials control historical narratives and elevate particular interpretations of the past.

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine
  7/22/2020
  

  The Notorious ‘Yellow House’ That Made Washington, D.C. a Slavery Capital

  by Jeff Forret

  Located right off the National Mall, the jail lent institutional support to slavery throughout the South.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/20/2020
  

  ‘Woefully Uninformed’: Kanye West Slammed for Saying Harriet Tubman ‘Never Actually Freed the Slaves’

  “Kanye West is in desperate need of a crash course in American History,” said historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

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• SOURCE: Tampa Bay Times
  7/20/2020
  

  Living History Or Playing War, Brooksville Raid Reenactment Ends After 40 Years

  Glenn LaFantasie and Kevin M. Levin comment on Civil War Reenactments as a 40 year-old Florida event is cancelled in 2020. 

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• SOURCE: Journal of the Civil War Era
  7/20/2020
  

  Fear of a Black Planet (Part 1)

  by Scott Hancock

  With their AR-15s and assorted other guns, a few dozen people, “living in fear of my shade” plus truth and history, met us with anger and threats, unlike any other year the Confederacy has come back to Gettysburg. Fellow historians of every shade, we must respond.

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• SOURCE: WTOP
  7/15/2020
  

  Maryland Civil War Sites Receive $5.1M Grants To Preserve History, Support Tourism

  Thirteen Civil War Heritage areas have been awarded more than $5.1 million in grants to help support improvement projects in the state of Maryland.

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• SOURCE: CBS News
  7/12/2020
  

  The History and Future of Confederate Monuments

  As debate over the takedown of Confederate monuments continues, historian Julian Hayter examines why and when the statues went up in the first place.

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• SOURCE: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  7/11/2020
  

  As Monuments Tumble, Are We ‘Erasing’ History? Historians Say No

  ‘Monuments do a very poor job in talking about history,’ says history professor Hillary Green.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/9/2020
  

  During the Civil War, the Enslaved Were Given an Especially Odious Job. The Pay Went to Their Owners.

  The National Archives has made available online a trove of almost 6,000 Confederate government payroll records that account for money issued to hundreds of owners and others for the work of the enslaved.

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• SOURCE: Hattiesburg American
  7/2/2020
  

  Confederate Monument in Mississippi City Pays Tribute to Past that Never Was

  by William Sturkey

  That monument does not deserve its place of reverence. It never did. And it’s never too late to tell the truth.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  6/30/2020
  

  The Confederates Loved America, and They’re Still Defining What Patriotism Means

  by Richard Kreitner

  For most of U.S. history, patriotism and white supremacy, the values supposedly embodied by the two flags, have hardly been at odds. Rather, they have been mutually constitutive and disturbingly aligned.

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• SOURCE: JStor Daily
  6/29/2020
  

  Abolitionist “Wide Awakes” Were Woke Before “Woke”

  What the "Wide Awakes" helped create was focus in muddled political times, a whipping up of the enthusiasm of other voters: “By the end of 1860, the nation was wide awake.”

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• 6/28/2020
  

  Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalism and the Confederate States of America

  by Ann Tucker

  White southerners looked to contemporary European nationalist movements and compared the South to aspiring nations abroad. This allowed them to conceive of the South as a potential nation, distinct from the North and separate from the United States, and to justify secession and the creation of the Confederacy.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/23/2020
  

  Geico Quietly Takes Down Ad Referencing Civil War Massacre of Black Soldiers

  The insurer’s radio ad used the phrase ‘Fort Pillow,’ which is the name of a Tennessee fort where 300 Union soldiers were killed after surrendering.

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• SOURCE: Civil War Memory
  6/22/2020
  

  So This is the Historical Context You Were Looking For

  by Kevin M. Levin

  The problem is that no amount of historical context can turn a monument from something that was intended to be venerated by the entire community into a classroom.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/21/2020
  

  The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State

  by Stephanie McCurry

  Whatever way you look at it, it is impossible to turn this history and its leading figures into a part of American heritage. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/17/2020
  

  Forgotten Civil War Map Shows Antietam as a Cemetery

  The digital map, which had attracted little notice outside of the New York Public Library, offers significant insight into the course of a pivotal Civil War battle.