Digging Up a Hero
This morning’s Washington Post reports that archaeologists have found the likely site of George Washington’s childhood home near Fredericksburg. They’ve also uncovered marbles, wig curlers, utensils, dinnerware, and a pipe… Read More»
Very Degraded in Every Way
Kevin Levin, at his blog Civil War Memory, recently posted an image and an excerpt from an old Virginia history textbook. He was disgusted (and rightly so) by the book’s… Read More»
'Here was a city of the dead'
Last week, the blog Shorpy posted a series of photographs of the dead from the Civil War battlefield of Petersburg. Like the one above, they’re tough to look at and… Read More»
'The white man's favorite blacks'
Yesterday’s blog post included the remarkable fact that, after the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph sold their Mississippi plantation to one of their former slaves, Benjamin Montgomery.… Read More»
Jeff Davis, Meet Horace Greeley
I came across two unexpected Virginia connections in our entry on Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president. Oh, by the way, Davis’s two hundredth birthday, as a few bloggers have pointed… Read More»
The Great Man’s Dirty Linen
Miscegenation is all the rage! It’s been the focus of a couple of entries on this blog and will, in the coming week, be a concern of the weekly history… Read More»
History in 200 Words; A Case Study (Pt. 2)
In Pt. 1, we moaned about the difficulty of making fine historical distinctions in the space of a mere 200 words and then used, as an example, a distinction that—let’s… Read More»
History in 200 Words; A Case Study (Pt. 1)
Each week, Encyclopedia Virginia publishes a feature called Virginia Vignettes. These are short paragraphs highlighting some bit of Virginia history and are often, though not always, culled from entries we… Read More»
On the Burned Ruins of Richmond
I was in Richmond recently and I wondered aloud whether the city had been burned during the Civil War. This was, perhaps, a stupid question, but I’m from Iowa. So… Read More»
Happy Loving Day
Today is the forty-first anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that in 1967 legalized mixed-race marriages. In this morning’s Washington Post, African American novelist Karyn Langhorne… Read More»
Social Media
Recent Comments