I drove down to Knoxville, Tennessee today to run a few errands and decided to hit a couple of the bookstores on the west end of town. For those of you who haven’t spent much time there, Knoxville probably has more big bookstores than any other city of comparable size, and some cities much larger—so many, in [...]
Archive for January, 2009
…and all those seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century wars, too
Posted in Historiography, History and Memory on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A note on NatGeo’s Lincoln
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, History and Memory, tagged Abraham Lincoln on January 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
A few days ago I posted a rather critical assessment of a Lincoln documentary that aired on the National Geographic Channel. I stated that the program was light on information, that it lacked focus, and that its use of contemporary images was questionable.
Not long after I posted this item, I received a reply from Mr. Fritz Klein, who portrayed [...]
Lincoln Symposium in North Carolina
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Bicentennial on January 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The good folks at the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources sent me some information on an upcoming Lincoln event that I’m happy to pass along. It’s a symposium at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh on Feb. 12th, featuring a display of some great archival material. Presenters include Joseph Glatthaar (author of an [...]
Lincoln goes geographic
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, Civil War on January 21, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Last night I caught the National Geographic Channel’s “The Real Abraham Lincoln.” I was sorely disappointed. It had to be the least informative Lincoln documentary I’ve ever seen, taking a dry and superficial ”just the facts” approach that played out like Lincoln’s Greatest Hits. It breezed through the highlights of his life story with no real [...]
All the horrors of war, plus a stick of gum
Posted in Civil War, History and Memory, tagged Civil War News on January 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I recently found out about a rather unusual genre of Civil War art which I just had to share with as many people as possible.
As a young tyke I was an avid collector of the “Dinosaurs Attack!” bubble gum cards issued by the Topps trading card company. They were similar to the Mars Attacks cards from the ’60’s that inspired Tim [...]
Bring on the fanciful Cowpens images
Posted in American Revolution on January 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Today is the anniversary of the pivotal Battle of Cowpens, the Revolutionary War’s tactical masterpiece. Daniel Morgan’s Continentals and militia won a remarkably complete victory over Banastre Tarleton’s British dragoons and infantry.
An incident took place near the end of the battle that’s become a hallowed bit of Revolutionary lore. The details vary a bit from source to [...]
Pithy insights from outside
Posted in American Revolution, Teaching history on January 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m teaching an elective course on the American Revolution for non-history majors this semester.
Last night we discussed the taxation controversies of the 1760’s. We spent a lot of time on eighteenth-century notions of power and liberty, the fact that the colonists were predisposed them to see conspiracies and tyrannical plots with every [...]
Guilford Courthouse study on the way, and it’s about time
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, tagged Guilford Courthouse on January 12, 2009 | 6 Comments »
One of the most critical battles of the Revolutionary War was the brutal face-off between the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina on March 15, 1781. It was a pivotal engagement, a Pyrrhic victory that crippled the British army and contributed to Greene’s reconquest of South Carolina and the surrender of [...]
Culling the blogroll
Posted in History on the Web on January 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A few of my linked blogs went defunct, so I dropped them and added some worthies from the list at Cliopatria. Have fun!
The face of Lincoln’s father?
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, tagged Thomas Lincoln on January 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
One of the highlights of the collection at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum in Harrogate, TN is the photograph seen here, which may be the only image of Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas. It’s been published and reproduced numerous times since it first surfaced many decades ago, but there have always been doubts about the identity [...]
