Grape & Canister

Update

It turns out that the Ku Klux Klan marker at West Point is not, in any way, a celebration of the Confederacy. The media coverage of this story has been incredibly distorted and with few exceptions has failed to provide any relevant historical context. I got you covered.

About that Ku Klux Klan Marker at West Point

In the News

Recently a photograph of Republican Doug Mastriano surfaced showing him wearing a Confederate uniform in 2014 while on the faculty at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mastriano is running for governor of Pennsylvania. Last week a video was a video also surfaced showing him supporting white supremacists who gathered at the Robert E. Lee (Virginia) monument on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4, 2020.

Meanwhile, Gettysburg National Military Park will soon begin restoration work on the monument.

Source: Gettysburg National Military Park

While I am not a fan of the College Board, I am pleased to see that high school students can finally take an A.P. Course in African-American history.

Historian Adam Laats does a great job of placing conservative efforts to censor the teaching of history in historical context.

Four of the fifteen Confederates monuments removed in Richmond over the past few years will be sent to Los Angeles to be featured included in an art exhibit.

Heather C. McGhee and Victor Ray remind us that democracy cannot thrive without a firm committment to public education.

Contemporary attacks on teaching true history are authoritarian attempts to impose a sanitized curriculum. America’s book banners and anti-critical race theory zealots are following a path well worn by authoritarian regimes in Russia and Hungary, which have issued laws targeting the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. issues. In the current U.S. debates, both the authoritarians and those people committed to multiracial democracy recognize that education is inherently political, because it enables students to understand, question and change their world. For the latter, this is the point; freedom comes from having the tools to comprehend a range of good and bad experiences and weigh the options for charting their future. Despite wails to the contrary from activist groups like Moms for Liberty, who claim accurate teaching of America’s history will harm white children, research shows that all students benefit from reading accurate but critical accounts. Lessons about racism make students more likely to engage and empathize across race. Such cross-racial solidarity is essential for members of our most diverse generation…

If an educated citizenry makes democracy possible, attacking schools becomes a proxy war to limit democracy. This is a battle that our parents and grandparents fought and won. Now the struggle for an honest education — and the democracy it makes possible — must be ours as well.

New to the Civil War Memory Library

Stephen Aaron, Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Stephen Cowie, When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and the Impact on the Civilians Who Called it Home (Savas, 2022).

Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes eds., Days of Destruction: Augustine Thomas Smythe and the Civil War Siege of Charleston (University of South Carolina Press, 2017).

David Silkenat, Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Videos

There is a new documentary about Lincoln currently in production for Apple TV+ that features a number of historians. You can find extensive interviews with them at Kunhardt Film Foundation’s YouTube page. Here are two that caught my attention.

Otis

Otis is frantically packing his favorite toys and food for a long weekend on the Maine coast, which he absolutely loves. It’s going to be filled with long walks on the beach, good food, and lots of belly rubs. Hope all of you have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend.