Thanksgiving
It was originally an American tradition, observed in some parts of the country but not in others, until 1863 when President Lincoln made it an official holiday at the end of November. “It has seemed to...
View ArticleReporters are more lazy than credulous
Lazy, sure. Credulous? Maybe. But by the time I’d been in the news biz for a few years I’d realized that truly worthwhile stories didn’t come waltzing into my arms very often. Yet like a cop issuing...
View ArticleThis just in from the Civil War…
The (apparently) world’s first combat submarine, which few alive today have ever seen. Now you can be one of them. You’d never have gotten me in that thing. I’m the descendant of infantrymen. But I...
View ArticleClimate Czar of Mars
The usual shrill babble and punchy trailer clips are flogging John Carter, Disney’s remake of Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1917 novel Princess of Mars, but it looks like a kiddie combo of Hercules and Avatar....
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At First Light
This new painting of the 9th Georgia Artillery Battalion opening fire on Fort Sanders on Nov. 29, 1863, is one of the few that’s ever been done on the battle that is the subject of my historical novel...
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The Texas Unionists
Edmund J. Davis was one of the about 2,000 Texans who fought in the Union army during the Civil War. He survived to become the last Reconstruction governor. But there were many more who offered their...
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A Mississippian in Texas
Jess McLean of Dallas, author of the only compendium of the troops of the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment (of whose unit I am finishing the first regimental history), is trying to preserve this old...
View ArticleGettysburg’s 150th
I’m not sorry to be missing Gettysburg’s 150th anniversary these next three days. Too many reenactors, thousands of them, in fact. And too many of them are too corpulent and their uniforms too clean to...
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A Rebel soldier’s message to President Lincoln
Rocky Lockley, a reader of my Civil War blog about my great grandfather’s 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, emails with a photo of an extraordinary find. He and a friend recently dug up this old...
View ArticleYankee hypocrisy: The lies New York publishers tell
I’ve been wondering what to do for a post on this Sesquicentennial year (1863) of the American Civil War. I finally decided that this 3-year-old review on “The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship...
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