Free Republic

Korea Delegation to China in 1863 The first photographs of Koreans are released to the public Thursday. The six pictures of the Korean delegation to China were taken at the Russian legation in Beijing in January 1863. Three members of the delegation appear in one of the pictures. A British missionary at the time collected the photos and took them to Britain. Recently, photography professor Park Ju-seok at Myongji University made them public after they came into his possession.

December 22, 2005, 8:57 a.m. Can You Hear the Bells? Christmas 1864. In the winter of 1864, an unexpected sense of optimism and good cheer settled on the northern states. The Civil War continued, but the news from the fronts was promising, and hope flourished that with spring the end would come and peace would return. New Yorkers in particular were in a festive frame of mind, of a like unseen since the before the war began. People skated in Central Park, and rode sleighs through the snowy fields. They stopped at shops for warm cider, confections, nuts and dried...

This past Sunday, the elderly gentleman who presides over our Sunday School class handed out copies of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Day proclamation. After doing so, he pointed out the fact that if the ACLU had been around in 1863, it would likely have raised a stink about the proclamation. Thus is the state of modern America. Even in the mind of someone born roughly eight decades ago in the Deep South, our culture war has come to overshadow what people around here once called “the War of Northern Aggression.” In one sense, our Sunday School leader is right. Thanksgiving...

Minnesota officials yesterday rejected a Virginia request for the return of a Confederate flag taken by Union troops during the Battle of Gettysburg.     "The flag will remain in Minnesota and will be held by the [state] Historical Society on behalf of the people of Minnesota, and that is not going to change," said Patrick McCormack, deputy director of the society. "We have a clear legal right to possess the flag."     Virginia officials had asked the U.S. Army's Center of Military History to persuade Minnesota to return the flag, but a spokesman for the center said Virginia will need to fight...