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The fight over Robert E. Lee's beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades One afternoon in May 1861, a young Union Army officer went rushing into the mansion that commanded the hills across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. "You must pack up all you value immediately and send it off in the morning," Lt. Orton Williams told Mary Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, who was away mobilizing Virginia's military forces as the country hurtled toward the bloodiest war in its history. Mary Lee dreaded the thought of abandoning Arlington, the 1,100-acre...

On CSPAN, Just announced that the final Vote will happen by Mid-night

Sources: Pelosi, Dems lock up 218 By PATRICK O'CONNOR & JOHN BRESNAHAN & JONATHAN ALLEN | 11/7/09 7:16 PM EST POLITICO 44 Hours before an expected vote on a sweeping health care bill, House Democrats believe they've secured the 218 votes they need to approve the bill, several party insiders said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the House floor about 6:30 p.m. to say, “Today we will pass the Affordable Health Care for America Act.. . .We will make history. We will also make progress for America's working families." In response to a question about whether the bill would...

Amid Rising Violence, Mexicans Fight Back Government Efforts to Control Drug Turf Wars Aren't Enough, Some Say; Mayor Promises to 'Clean Up' Organized Crime By DAVID LUHNOW and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's war on drugs took a grim twist this week, as a prominent mayor said he had created an undercover group of operatives to "clean up" criminal elements -- even if it had to act outside the law. Underscoring why the mayor may have felt compelled to take such steps, the new police chief in a neighboring town, a retired brigadier general, was shot and killed...

Social Upheaval, How Close Are We? Politics / Social Issues Oct 24, 2009 - 02:33 AM By: Michael_T_Bucci Many authors who have contributed to The Market Oracle have expressed concern - some overtly and some in passing - about the possibility of social upheavals in the US caused by economic dislocations and what impact these events would have on the markets. How close are we? An excellent synopsis by Mr Andre Damon of the current status of economic conditions extant in the US and the world on the eve of the G20 conference contains a prescient conclusion: "These different factors...

Conservatives are sick and tired of being taken for granted, misrepresented, and talked down to by the same "elite" Republicans in Washington who hopelessly screwed everything up during the Bush years. Everybody knows exactly whom we're talking about here. The same snobby, elitist, stuffed shirt, squishy, poll-obsessed Country Club Republicans who went to D.C., forgot who put them there, wasted the incredible opportunity they had to change this country for the better, and are now pointing the finger at everyone except themselves for their mistakes. Here are five messages for those people: We're not going back to the Bush years:...

Gentle readers, I’ll bet you’ve never heard of the Secret Six. Neither had I until a few years ago. The Secret Six, as they came to be known, were Boston’s first limousine liberals. Most came from distinguished Boston stock and were all strong abolitionists in the period leading up to the Civil War. They gave money to the militant abolitionist John Brown, who would be considered a terrorist today, knowing he would use the donations in violent ways. When Brown failed, all but one ran like cowards away from their association with him.*** On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859,...

On November 23, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant ordered George Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland to take Orchard Knob in preparation for the battle of Missionary Ridge. As Thomas' men advanced, the Confederate skirmishers fell back after a heavy engagement. Two days later Grant, Thomas and General Gordon Grainger were standing on the knob watching the battle of Missionary Ridge. From this vantage point they watched as the Army of the Cumberland routed Bragg's Army of Tennessee in what some scholars believe was the South's last chance for victory in the Civil War. Thomas needed a place to bury...

--snip-- It was 150 years ago today, Oct. 16, 1859. The long-haired, wild-eyed Brown was about to launch a raid that would hasten the Civil War and make him the most notorious man in America, a figure who still ignites controversy a century and a half later. Some see him as an Osama bin Laden; others, as a Christian soldier who gave his life to end human bondage. "You could ask 100 people about John Brown and still get 100 opinions," said Jeff Bowers, a ranger at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, which plans three days of activities this weekend...

 From the back of a cannon in Fort Sumter, the church steeples of Charleston are clearly visible across the harbor. Charleston is proud of its historic steeples, most notably St. Michael's Episcopal, St. Philip's Episcopal and St. Matthew's Lutheran. There are so many churches its nickname is "the Holy City." Charleston is also proud (still) of having fired the first shot of the American Civil War. In April 1861, city residents clambered onto church roofs and into steeples to watch Fort Sumter get blasted. -SNIP-Shortly after midnight on Aug. 22, the Swamp Angel began lobbing incendiary shells into the...

Zimbabwe's troubled national unity government moved a step closer to breakdown Friday as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said his formation of the Movement for Democratic Change would cease to interact with its governing partner, the former ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe, following this week's arrest of a top MDC official. Mr. Tsvangirai told reporters in Harare his MDC would "disengage" from ZANU-PF "until such time as confidence and respect are restored among us," clearly alluding to the indictment of MDC Treasurer and Senator Roy Bennett on charges of possessing weapons for purposes of terrorism, and his incarceration following...

The concepts of race, war, and politics have changed immeasurably from the Civil War to the present. Our first African President has tried to emulate the legend of Abraham Lincoln, it is time to dispel some of the myths. This article will use letters and documents written from 1863 to 1865, borrowed from the ‘The Boisterous Sea of Liberty’ by David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz. Black soldiers fought for the Union at great personal risk, The Confederacy threatened to summarily execute or sell into slavery any Black soldiers that were captured. Lincoln threatened to reciprocate against Southern prisoners if...

Pennsylvania historians announced plans Tuesday to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War with a statewide commemoration. "The Pennsylvania Civil War 150 commemoration is far more than a formal remembrance," said Barbara Franco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. "It is a collection of stories brought to life that are as epic as the fields of Gettysburg and as small as the struggles of a soldier's wife working to survive her husband's absence on a Pennsylvania farm." The early kickoff of the Civil War program is primarily a call for participation to state residents and historical...

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Researchers seem to have solved the mystery of what happened to the “Big Red” flag flown by Citadel cadets when they fired on a ship trying to resupply Fort Sumter three months before the Civil War. The Post and Courier of Charleston reports a 10-by-7-foot flag with a large white Palmetto tree and a white crescent on a red field has been located in storage at an Iowa museum. Researchers think it is the same flag that flew over Morris Island when cadets fired on the supply ship Star of the West, forcing the ship to...

WASHINGTON -- Reparation for the legacy of slavery and peonage may not come in the form of a check, but it must come, speakers said Friday at a forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Others said the apology for slavery that the House passed last year and the Senate passed this year were good first steps, and singled out U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who was on Friday's panel, for authoring the House resolution. "For him to stand up -- before even other people in the caucus stood up -- is remarkable," said Harvard Law School professor...

Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise,...

Download a Panhandling for Reparations Kit Instructions, statement, receipts, flags and FAQ.(continued at link)

Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more ... My hands are tied, The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars ... Civil War

<p>SHARPSBURG, Md. -- An unknown Civil War soldier began his journey home to New York state Tuesday, nearly a year after a visitor to the Antietam National Battlefield spotted his remains in a cornfield that saw the fiercest fighting of the war.</p>

When some Americans believe the current president is a communist cult leader trying to brainwash the nation’s schoolchildren, and other Americans want the last president to be dragged off his ranch in handcuffs, it is time to reassess the state of our union. So may I make a modest proposal. There is a way to end the bitter bickering over health care, affirmative action, abortion, religion in the public square, taxation, torture, and the proper role of government. It is called secession. Yes, I know: Splitting the U.S. into two nations is a bit extreme. But extremism in the defense...

As the Health Care Reform Town Hall meetings and Tea Parties heat up and the August Congressional summer session winds down, conservatives finally have a play book to help them gain traction on the slippery slope to socialism that they feel this country appears to be heading. “Rules for Conservative Radicals,” written by Michael Patrick Leahy (www.michaelpatrickleahy.com) takes the Alinsky viewpoints expressed in “Rules for Radicals,” and puts a moral, ethical, conservative spin on them.

Professor Igor Panarin, whose book “The Crash of America” is just out, claims that by November the book will be yesterday’s news. Panarin believes President Obama will lead his country to a breakup. Panarin compares Obama to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. “Obama is “the president of hope”, but in a year there won’t be any hope. He’s practically another Gorbachev – he likes to talk but hasn’t really managed to do anything. Gorbachev at least had been a secretary of a regional communist party administration, whereas Obama was just a social worker. His mentality is totally different. He’s a...

CAMP MILTON, Fla. — History and nature have combined in a little-known park which was once the major Confederate military base in north Florida near the end of the Civil War. In 1864, Camp Milton was a key Confederate installation aimed at blocking Union advances toward Baldwin, a supply centre and rail head. Florida was a big supplier of cattle, salt and other goods to the Confederate army.

ORANGE, Va. — Officials in central Virginia approved a Wal-Mart Supercenter early Tuesday near one of the nation's most important Civil War battlefields, a proposal that had stirred opposition by preservationists and hundreds of historians. The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to grant the special permit to the world's biggest retailer after a majority of more than 100 speakers said they favored bringing the Wal-Mart to Locust Grove, within a cannonball's shot from the Wilderness Battlefield. Historians and Civil War buffs are fearful the Wal-Mart store will draw traffic and more commerce to an area within the historic...

A Hollywood conservative has headed East. It's "Freedom Concert" time for Jon Voight. The Academy Award winner will join Sean Hannity in Cincinnati and Atlanta this weekend to honor fallen soldiers and present college scholarships to surviving children. Mr. Voight -- a warrior himself in many ways -- has been cogitating about the state of America, meanwhile. "There's a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country?" Mr. Voight tells Inside the Beltway. "We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever...

B. Hussein Obama, a man bent on the destruction of America, has taken further measures to humiliate, destroy and demoralize America. The evil that is Barack Hussein Obama continues to lie to the American public, insult and degrade America’s Christian population, openly appease the Muslim’s around the world who would like to kill us and destroy America, while sending his minions out to harass the average American, and wasting millions of dollars while doing so. No wonder he needs a vacation. Jon Voight, noted Hollywood actor, former liberal activist and now a champion of common sense and patriotism, says, "There's...

It is a chilling question and one that has been troubling me for about two weeks. I read the “low grade civil war” phrase as a declarative statement from a commenter on a news story about the Congressional Town Hall meetings and it has been rattling in my brain ever since. I’ve been wanting to post about this question and today seemed like the right time since now I’m not the only one worried about this question. In today’s Washington Times, actor/activist Jon Voight makes this statement: “There’s a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil...

A Hollywood conservative has headed East. It's "Freedom Concert" time for Jon Voight. The Academy Award winner will join Sean Hannity in Cincinnati and Atlanta this weekend to honor fallen soldiers and present college scholarships to surviving children. Mr. Voight -- a warrior himself in many ways -- has been cogitating about the state of America, meanwhile. "There's a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country?" Mr. Voight tells Inside the Beltway. "We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever...

The Senate voted to apologize for slavery on June 18. The House apologized last summer. The first family -- descendants of Africans, of enslaved Africans and of slave-holders -- visited a slave fort in Ghana. These were historic occasions, and they occasioned the kind of hue and cry that always accompany the subject of slavery and whether we still need to reckon with it. I believe we do need more reckoning, and a little more love and a little more logic would help that process. Logic first: There's this quasi-math problem in which things don't add up. Many African-Americans naturally...

My 2nd great-grandfather was a Civil War Soldier. Grandpa LuckyBogey, Sr., and his two brothers are listed in the muster roll of Company B, 49th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A. of Telfair County, Georgia, known as the Telfair Volunteers. 4th Sergeant LuckyBogey, Sr. was wounded and captured at Petersburg, Va. in April 1865. Grandpa Luckybogey , Sr. escaped from Jackson Hospital in Richmond the next day and as General Lee surrendered, Grandpa LuckyBogey, Sr., , on his own, made his way back home to Georgia. See the History of the 49th Regiment and the 35th Georgia...

The story of the Battle of Gettysburg and 50th Anniversary Reunion would make for a heart-warming and touching TV Historic mini-series or Hollywood movie.

The Obama administration is raising the stakes in a fight over states' rights and firearm ownership by arguing that new pro-gun laws in Montana and Tennessee are invalid. In the last few months, a grass-roots, federalist revolt against Washington, D.C. has begun to spread through states that are home to politically active gun owners. Montana and Tennessee have enacted state laws saying that federal rules do not apply to firearms manufactured entirely within the state, and similar bills are pending in Texas, Alaska, Minnesota, and South Carolina. Yet the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives now claims that...

ELLISVILLE (AP) — Newton Knight still haunts the Piney Woods and swamps of southern Mississippi, 140 years after the Civil War. --------------------- snip Knight eventually took a former slave who helped him during the war as his second wife and started another family, siring white children with his legal wife, Serena, and children of mixed ancestry with Rachel. He lived with his black family much of his life after the war. “He’s in this hostile environment, across the color line — the worst sin imaginable — living openly and having children, posing in pictures with his African-American children and...

ELLISVILLE, Miss. — Newton Knight still haunts the Piney Woods and swamps of southern Mississippi, 140 years after the Civil War. Knight, subject of the new book "The State of Jones" by journalist Sally Jenkins and Harvard University historian John Stauffer, remains an obscure Civil War figure. To the authors and some in Jones County, where Knight led a campaign against the Confederacy, he's an American hero.

CUMBERLAND, Md. — A dispute has erupted in Cumberland over the distribution of a brochure that purports to explain the history of the Confederate battle flag in Allegany County public schools.

Civil rights groups on Thursday put city and business leaders here on a 30-day notice that unless they meet a list of demands – including a ban on the display of the Confederate flag at taxpayer-funded events – they will be subjected to protests and boycotts.

During the persecution of Christians during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman prefect Rusticus was frustrated by the serene equanimity of the Christian convert Justin, a Platonic philosopher. The Romans considered Christianity a supserstitio parva (perverse superstition) and classified its morality as immodica (immoderate) for, among other things, refusing to abort the unborn and "expose" the newly born. Bereft of rational arguments against Christians, Nero blamed them for burning Rome, as some would blame the Jews for the bubonic plague. The demagogic policy, updated by Lenin and made a political craft in our day, was to "never let...

Frustration and disappointment that have arisen out of the town of Jonesborough’s decision to not allow bricks honoring Confederate soldiers to be placed in the Veterans Memorial Park have spread beyond the town limits. The Southern Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit organization based in Black Mountain, N.C., that advocates in matters involving Southern history, heritage and culture, has contacted Jonesborough officials cautioning them about excluding the Confederate soldiers and urging them to reconsider the town’s current policy. The town decided nearly a decade ago, when the park was originally built, that the park would honor soldiers who served in the...

South Carolina is selling money to make money. State officials have quietly picked through boxes of Civil War state currency and auctioned it on eBay, providing the state archives with an influx of cash amid tight budgets. "These are very bad times. This helps us a great deal. We can pay for things we could never afford otherwise," said Charles Lesser, a senior archivist at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. About 40 boxes of the currency were supposed to be destroyed more than a century ago, but some of the bills were tucked away in the Statehouse...

President Obama sent a wreath to the Confederate memorial at Arlington cemetery during the memorial services to recognize the sacrifices and service of the members of our armed forces this week. It has been a tradition since Woodrow Wilson offered a wreath to memorialize Confederate dead at Arlington and a tradition that many on the American far left wanted to see ended. They have been disappointed. But the president also started a new tradition, one that everyone should welcome and one that we should all hope is continued by every succeeding president that comes after Obama. President Obama also laid...

President Barack Obama sent a wreath Monday to a memorial for soldiers who fought on the side of slavery during the Civil War, continuing a 90-year-old Memorial Day tradition despite being urged by historians to “break this chain of racism.” The first black U.S. president also started a new tradition by sending a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington honoring the 200,000 black soldiers who fought for Union forces in America’s bloodiest conflict. “We ask you to break this chain of racism stretching back to Woodrow Wilson and not send a wreath or other token of...

There is a sign in Madisonville that states he was born here and one in Morristown that says he fought there, but it took some digging to unearth more savory details of the life of John Crawford Vaughn, a hero and a rogue by anyone's standards. Vaughn was a Confederate brigadier general, one of only three general officers from East Tennessee and the only one still in command when the war was over. He was born in 1824 and was even elected sheriff of Monroe County. Before that he tried his luck in the California Gold Rush, but failed. He...

Actor Duvall enters battle to save Va. battlefield By STEVE SZKOTAK LOCUST GROVE, Va. (AP) - Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duvall has fired a verbal salvo against plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter near a Virginia Civil War battlefield where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee first fought the Union's Ulysses S. Grant. Duvall, who is a descendant of Lee, said he will help preservationists in "chasing out" the retailer from a site near the Wilderness Battlefield. At a news conference on Monday, Duvall said he has no grudge against Wal-Mart but believes in capitalism coupled with sensitivity. Duvall was joined...

Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997

The cool thing about attacking someone that's been dead for over 100 years is that they can't fight back. The other cool thing is that you can use them to fuel your race baiting so that you can get some cheap publicity, get noticed, or play the faux "civil rights leader" on TV. Such is the case in Auburn, Alabama where a city councilman decided to get noticed by ripping tiny Confederate flags from the graves of long-dead Confederate veterans buried in a local cemetery. Shockingly those flags were placed there on Confederate Memorial Day. Who wouldda thunk it, eh?...

Speaking at an anti-tax protest yesterday, the Texas governor brought up the fact that Texas had the right to secede from the union if thing in Washington got bad enough. Now before we go further, let's set a little background: Texans are fiercely prideful. You've probably seen the phrase "Don't Mess with Texas" before. It was originally meant to be an anti-littering slogan, but Texans have turned the phrase into a catch-all statement of the state's independent spirit. Texans like to talk about independence and the fact that it's been part of six countries in its history. That being said,...

(AP) — WASHINGTON - Nearly 145 years after it was stolen by a Union soldier during a Civil War raid, a missing library book has been returned to the Washington and Lee University library by an Illinois man who inherited it from the soldier's descendants. The book was passed down through the soldier's family, then on to Mike Dau of Lake Forest, Ill., who tracked down the original library and returned it.

John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford's Theater in Washington. Five days earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The war was nearly over, although there were still Confederate forces yet to surrender. The president had recently visited the captured Rebel capital of Richmond, and now Lincoln sought a relaxing evening by attending a production of Our American Cousin starring Laura Keene. Ford's Theater, seven blocks from the White House, was crammed with people trying to catch a glimpse of Grant, who...

The diversity of the Old South still holds the imagination of many people who come from around the world to see; Southern Belle’s with hoop skirts, Confederate flags and soldier memorials like the Confederate Memorial carving of: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis at Stone Mountain Memorial Park near Atlanta. This story is written in the spirit of the Sesquicentennial, 150th Anniversary of the War Between the States, which will be commemorated throughout the USA from 2011 to 2015. Americans observe Black, Jewish, Hispanic, Native American and Women’s History Month...And in April we also remember ‘Confederate History Month’...

"We're looking for supporters," said DeHaven of Hoover, one of the event's organizers. "We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army."