Grape & Canister

Civil War news, books, videos, and an Otis pic

(Source: Explore Beaufort SC)

News

The Washington Post editorialist Charles Lane writes in favor of removing the Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s not the strongest argument in favor of removal, but it’s worth a read.

Historian Gary Gallagher shares some of his favorite books about the Army of Northern Virginia in The Civil War Monitori magazine.

The city of Savannah has decided to rename one of its oldest parks after Susie King Taylor.

The oak-shaded square that will bear Taylor’s name near the southern edge of Savannah’s downtown historic district had spent 170 years named for John C. Calhoun, a former U.S. vice president from South Carolina who was a vocal supporter of slavery in the decades preceding the Civil War….

Born to enslaved parents in 1848, Taylor was secretly taught to read and write as a girl living in Savannah. As a teenager during the Civil War, she fled to Georgia’s St. Simons Island, which was occupied by Union troops.

Taylor worked as a nurse for the Union Army, which in turn helped her organize a school to teach emancipated children and adults. After the war, Taylor set up two more schools for Black students. Before her death in 1912, Taylor became the only Black woman to publish a memoir of her life during the war.

Last year Reconstruction Era National Park “brought in around 18,000 visitors, contributing over a million dollars to the local economy.” This is great news.

Five of the “Little Rock Nine” have spoken out against the efforts in Arkansas to censor the teaching of African American history.

Five of us were among the nine brave students who faced violence, hatred and intimidation to integrate Central High School in 1957. We endured unimaginable hardships and sacrifices to fight for our right to quality education and equal opportunity. We are proud of our contribution to the civil rights movement and the advancement of democracy in this country. We consider the accurate retelling of our history an American right for those of us who endured, a necessity for student learning and mandatory for educational progress in this country. Yet in a number of states we are seeing curriculum violence being perpetuated today by forces who don’t want students to learn the truth about American history.

Videos

Check out this rare Civil War map at the New York Public Library.

Here is a segment from a recent documentary about the history of Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Historian and former Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has a brand new memoir that just hit bookstores. Here is a sneak peek.

New to the Civil War Memory Library

Matthew J. Clavin, Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War (New York University Press, 2023).

Bruce Dorsey, Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation (Oxford University Press, 2021).

C.W. Goodyear, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier (Simon & Schuster, 2023).

Edward J. Larson, American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023).

Otis Sees You