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News
The Sons of Confederate Veterans are planning a rally on Saturday at Stone Mountain at the sight of the largest memorial to the Confederacy in the country. Local groups have requested the governor cancel the event. I understand the importance of free speech, but I would expect at least a statement from the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which is planning to reinterpret the grounds around the memorial away from a Confederate memorial site to one that will include a new museum and promotes education.
The keynote speaker for the event is John Weaver, who is a member of the SCV and the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. I don’t see how the SMMA can expect the community to place its trust in its vision for the site if it can’t even issue a statement condemning or at least distancing itself from this event.
Looks like the state of Florida is going the extra mile to protect its Confederate monuments from communities, who should have the right to decide how to utilize their public spaces to commemorate the past.
Lawmakers in Alabama attempted and failed to separate Robert E. Lee’s birthday from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which are both currently observed on the third Monday in January. No suprise there.
The question of the ultimate fate of the Robert E. Lee monument which was recently removed and given to the Jefferson School-African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville is still up in the air. The trial has once again been postponed. The center planned to melt it down and turn it into a piece of public art.
An Ohio Republican has made the argument that reparation payments should be made to United States soldiers for ending slavery during the Civil War. I guess he never learned that roughly 200,000 Black men fought for the Union.
A Virginia man recently pleaded guilty to bringing a pipe bomb to a Civil War reenactment at Cedar Creek in 2017 and blamed it on Antifa.
The College Board has now essentially admitted that it caved to political pressure in designing the curriculum for its new AP African American Studies course. Revisions are being planned to reintroduce concepts that were initially part of the curriculum.
Videos
Is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly a Civil War movie?
Not a big fan of PragerU, but this short video about Zachary Taylor offers a helpful overview of his life, his presidency, and the events leading to the Civil War.
Here is another “Step into History” video with Garry Adelman
New to the Civil War Memory Library
David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Doubleday, 2023).
Frederick A. Wallace, Framingham's Civil War Hero:: The Life of General George H. Gordon (History Press, 2011).
Elliott West, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).
I agree with Gary and Garry, while I love The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, it isn’t a Civil War movie. It was a backdrop to the story. Director Sergio Leone did his research and based what the POW camp on photos from Andersonville. He showed the hateful brutality and stupidity as a condemnation of war in general. The Civil War was the vehicle he chose to make his statement.
However, for my personal history, the Civil War introduced me to the movie. My father is a tremendous fan of Sergio Leone’s westerns and it was on TV one night. I must have been 12 or so and thoroughly interested in the Civil War. My dad said to come watch, as it was set in the Civil War. I was skeptical, but soon hooked on Leone’s movies.
State budget allocates $11M for Stone Mountain museum
https://www.ajc.com/news/state-budget-allocates-11m-for-stone-mountain-museum/CPEPGOM2UBDX7AZZV6YWEKCYYQ/
(Via AJC News)