(This first appeared on washingtonmonthly.com on July 7th.) When I last took weekend blog duty here, I coincidentally had an article in The New York Times in which I noted that the US Army had ten bases named after Confederate generals, and argued that we should rename them as soon as possible. My point, in …
Tony Horwitz has written an excellent article in The Atlantic called “150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War.” Horwitz, author of the very pereptive A Confederate in the Attic, makes the point that point that most Americans have a thin but generally positive view of the war, a post-WW II, post-civil rights era assessment that …
This piece first ran in The Dallas Morning News on June 16, 2013. Fort Hood is the Army installation in Killeen, halfway between Austin and Waco. The base opened in January 1942, serving as a training center for soldiers joining artillery and anti-tank units. Today, it’s the Army’s largest active-duty armored post, a base where …
(This article first appeared on the site of The Washington Monthly on May 26, 2013.) As it happens, I have an article today in the Times’ review section wondering why we continue to have US Army bases named after Confederate generals. There are at least ten: Forts Lee, Pickett and Hill in Virginia; Fort Bragg …
Many thanks to The Group, who invited me to come speak about And the War Came at their monthly meeting last Friday at the Mt. Pleasant library in Pleasantville. The very attentive audience asked a lot of good questions, and I am very grateful for the chance to come and talk about the origins of …
Fifty years ago (fifty years ago tomorrow, to be precise), my mom and dad drove my brother and me from our home in Baltimore MD to Culpepper County, Virginia, about sixty miles away, for a centennial reenactment of the first Battle of Bull Run, which took place 150 years ago today. About 2000 reenactors restaged …
50 YEARS AGO: THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN AT 100 Read More »
In my freshman year of college my friend Bob Crumlish and I were sitting in the college cafeteria doing what 18 year olds were doing in cafeterias the length and breadth of America, namely, screwing around. In our case, we were using teaspoons to catapult elements of a fruit cocktail through the air and onto …
Brinksmanship is a pretty effective tactic; the disciplined refusal to compromise until the very last minute often panics a less steadfast opponent into making desperate concessions. Currently Congressional Republicans are engaging in brinksmanship with the debt ceiling, refusing to approve raising the ceiling by the deadline of August 2nd unless there is an effective budget …
And the War Came received an excellent write-up in Michael Humphrey‘s blog Techno-Tainers on Forbes.com: “Byliner’s third Original, “And the War Came,” marches readers chronologically from just before Abraham’s Lincoln’s election to the doorstep of war. We arrive byway of every imaginable thought direction – the passionate abolitionist and adamant slavery defender, the brave-savvy leader …
Richard Cohen had a useful article in The Washington Post the other day, in which he takes on the myth around Robert E. Lee. “It’s about time Robert E. Lee lost the Civil War,” writes Cohen. “The South, of course, was defeated on the battlefield in 1865, yet the Lee legend — swaddled in myth, …