Free Republic

Timeless words...written 149 years ago but could have been penned yesterday, but not by the current Imposter-in-Chief: "Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and...

Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, commemorated by the Atlantic in a special issue, now available online. Although photography was still in its infancy, Civil War photographers produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of war to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. As brother fought brother and the future of the United States was uncertain, the public appetite for information was fed by these images from the trenches, rivers, farms and cities that became fields of battle. Today's collection is part 1 of 3, covering the places of...

A fascinating letter has emerged from a one-time slave to his former master in reply to being invited back to work on the farm where he spent more than 30 years in servitude. Jourdon Anderson wrote to Colonel P.H. Anderson in August 1865, explaining that since he had been emancipated, he had moved his family from Big Spring, Tennessee to Ohio, was being paid for his labour and could support his family. According to an edition of the New York Daily Tribune published at the time, Jourdon Anderson dictated the letter to give his weighty and fitting response.

The Syrian government has condemned a decision by the Arab League to pull its monitors from the raging civil war zone. The Arab League said Saturday it had decided to "immediately" suspend its mission to monitor the situation in Syria due to the growing violence, the BBC reported. The decision came less than a week after a vote to extend the mission another month. Fierce fighting near Damascus centered on several eastern suburbs that had been seized by opposition forces, and which government troops fought to recapture. At least 12 people were killed and 30 others were wounded in the...

Traveled by Native Americans, presidents, generals, gypsies and families seeking a new life in the west, “The Great Road,” known today as Frederick Road or Route 355, provided a path for both the adventurer and the entrepreneur. As the main route northwest from Georgetown, the last port on the Potomac River, it was heavily traveled from the mid 18th century until it was replaced by Interstate 270 in the 1960s. It began as an Indian trail leading from the Piscataway settlement at the mouth of Rock Creek to the great “Conestoga,” a trail that included footpaths and waterways (what we...

The world got an unobstructed view of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley for the first time since the Civil War on Thursday as a massive steel truss that had surrounded the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship was finally removed.

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful combat submarine when it sank a Union ship in 1864, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time on Thursday, capping a decade of careful preservation. "No one alive has ever seen the Hunley complete. We're going to see it today," said engineer John King as a crane at a Charleston conservation laboratory slowly lifted a massive steel truss covering the top of the submarine. About 20 engineers and scientists applauded as they caught the first glimpse of the intact 42-foot-long...

The world got an unobstructed view of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley for the first time since the Civil War on Thursday as a massive steel truss that had surrounded the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship was finally removed. The truss weighing more than 8 tons had shrouded the sub since it was raised off the coast of South Carolina almost a dozen years ago.

the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Jewish family loyalties mirrored what occurred throughout the United States where brother fought against brother. Jews also found themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield. Out of 150,000 Jews in the U.S. at the outbreak of war, estimates are that 3,000 fought on the side of the Confederacy and 6,700 for the Union. It is thought 600 Jews died in battle. That there were Jews in the Confederacy was a fact largely forgotten until the publication in 2000 of the book, "The Jewish Confederates" by Robert Rosen. He meticulously documents how Jews...

Remember those cartoons with the feisty Confederate snarling, “Lee surrendered. I didn’t.” Well, Dixie has risen, but it seems more “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Southern Hospitality now welcomes corporations as it once did travelers. There is little respite from the national economic doldrums Americans endure due to debased dollars, tax and regulatory uncertainty plus a popular culture increasingly resentful of success. But internal shifts signal that the South beats the North in more than just SEC football dominance. The South long disdained Yankee capitalism, but now in many respects she exhibits freer markets than her historic rival....

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. claims Jim Crow is returning. In a recent speech, Mr. Holder said that attempts by states to pass voter identification laws will disenfranchise minorities, rolling back the clock to the evil days of segregation. He said that a growing number of minorities fear that “the same disparities, divisions and problems” now afflict America as they did in 1965 prior to the Voting Rights Act. According to the Obama administration, our democracy is being threatened by racist Republicans. Hence, the Justice Department must prevent laws requiring a photo ID to vote from being enacted. Mr....

"just Hum me a tune in the evening hours occasionally & I will fancy I hear it borne on the Autumnal breeze" James E. Love, a Union soldier, wrote those sweet words on Oct. 9, 1861, to his fiancée back in St. Louis. He and Eliza Mary "Molly" Wilson, both natives of northern Ireland, had secretly become engaged before he joined the army two months into the Civil War. The letter, mailed from near Sedalia in western Missouri, is more chatty than newsworthy, written during a lull in the hunt for elusive home-state rebels. Love describes the beauty of the...

Many musicians and writers of poetry will admit that some of their finest work comes when they have experienced a death or a tragedy of some kind, that the writing of poetry has an almost cathartic effect. Such is the case of one of the best known and most beloved carols associated with Christmas, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which came from the pen of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and was written on Christmas Day, 1864. His had been a tortured life in last few years before that day. On July 11, 1861, his wife Fanny had...

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and a delegation of rabbis from Judea and Samaria met with Ephraim Brigade commander Colonel Ron Kahane of the Ephraim Brigade on Wednesday. At the meeting Kahane and his officers told the rabbis about the incident at the Ephraim Brigade headquarters, where some 50 angry youth clashed with soldiers and threw Molotov cocktails and stones at IDF vehicles after hearing rumors demolition orders were to be carried out in Jewish communities Monday evening. In a separate incident Kahane was injured on Monday when stones were thrown at his vehicle. At the meeting the rabbis shared...

I got a real bad feeling the 2nd Civil War may be coming soon. While the (1% millionaires and billionaires) continue to print Trillions of dollars and run off at the mouth on the radio and television while continuing to run the world by establishing themselves as the “FEW WHO CONTROL THE MASSES) it has all the elements for a bad outcome. As a conservative who has given much thought to what all is going on, it has become abundantly all too clear that the objective of the 1% Democrats and Republicans who are OWNED and DIRECTED by HUGE CORPORATIONS...

Over the past several months, the NAACP has launched a campaign against the Confederate Battle Flag by protesting its presence at the South Carolina statehouse. Governor Nikki Haley did not respond to the demands of the NAACP to remove it. In a similar matter, black protesters have called for the removal of the Battle Flag from a Georgian cemetery that happens to have interred the bones of Confederate soldiers. And now, most recently, Republican presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry of Texas has become the newest target of the NAACP over whether the Battle Flag should appear on license plates. In...

Shelby Foote's War Story How a Memphis novelist’s history of the Civil War made history itself It was supposed to be a brief assignment—eighteen months or so, tops. In 1954, with the centennial of the end of the Civil War approaching, Bennett Cerf, the president of Random House, wrote the novelist Shelby Foote to propose a “short history” of the conflict. In midsummer the author traveled from his home in Memphis to meet with the publisher in New York, and the two came to terms. The target was 200,000 words; the advance, four hundred dollars. For Foote the plan was...

One hundred fifty years ago, Civil War broke out in the United States. In my opinion, this war was the worst war in our 235 + year history. It divided us as a people on many issues - slavery only one of them. The casualties - including both the Union and Confederate soldiers - were the greatest of any of our wars - even the American casualties during World War II - the worst war of the 20th century. The video scene below from Cold Mountain (2003) and extended lyrics from When Johnny Comes Marching Home give a sense of...

Despite all the evidence of the past several decades, you still have not grasped one simple fact: that, just about a century after the last one ended, we engaged in a great civil war, one that will determine the kind of country we and our descendants shall henceforth live in for at least the next hundred years — and, one hopes, a thousand. Since there hasn’t been any shooting, so far, some call the struggle we are now involved in the “culture wars,” but I have another, better name for it: the Cold Civil War In many ways, this new...

On November 6, 1861, Brig. Gen. U.S. Grant left Cairo, Illinois, by steamers, in conjunction with two gunboats, to make a demonstration against Columbus, Kentucky. The next morning, Grant learned that Confederate troops had crossed the Mississippi River from Columbus to Belmont, Missouri, to intercept two detachments sent in pursuit of Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson and, possibly, to reinforce Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s force. He landed on the Missouri shore, out of the range of Confederate artillery at Columbus, and started marching the mile to Belmont. At 9:00 in the morning, an engagement began. The Federals routed the Confederates...

Seven months of unrest in Syria approached the brink of all-out armed conflict Monday as 41 people were killed, among them 11 soldiers who clashed with organized army defectors. Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Assad to immediately stop the killings of civilians, a day after the Arab League called for “national dialogue” to end the violence. “There are continuous killings of civilian people. These killings must stop immediately,” Ban said in Bern. “I told Assad: ‘Stop before it is too late,’” he said. “It is unacceptable that 3,000 people have been killed. The U.N. is urging him again to...

The tiny Mediterranean island of Caprera, near Sardinia, was not the sort of place to find an American diplomat in the late summer of 1861, but that’s precisely where Henry Shelton Sanford landed late in the afternoon of Sept. 9. It had been a long, involved trip: he came from Brussels to Genoa by train, secretly chartered a ship to avoid public notice and, on the night of Sept. 8, sailed through the Ligurian Sea to Sardinia. Landing late the next day, he hired a small boat to take him to Caprera, then walked more than a mile on a...

BINGHAMTON, NY – The Civil War — already considered the deadliest conflict in American history — in fact took a toll far more severe than previously estimated. That's what a new analysis of census data by Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker reveals. Hacker says the war's dead numbered about 750,000, an estimate that's 20 percent higher than the commonly cited figure of 620,000. His findings will be published in December in the journal Civil War History. "The traditional estimate has become iconic," Hacker says. "It's been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that...

While Rebel and Union soldiers still fought it out with bayonets and cannons, a Confederate designer had the foresight to imagine flying machines attacking Northern armies. He couldn't implement his vision during the war, and the plans disappeared into history, until resurfacing at a rare book dealer's shop 150 years later. Now those rediscovered designs have found their way to the auction block, providing a glimpse at how Victorian-era technology could have beat the Wright Brothers to the punch. The papers of R. Finley Hunt, a dentist with a passion for flight, describe scenarios where flying machines bombed Federal troops...

Any time a major bank releases a report saying a given course of action is too costly, too prohibitive, too blonde, or simply too impossible, it is nearly guaranteed that that is precisely the course of action about to be undertaken. Which is why all non-euro skeptics are advised to shield their eyes and look away from the just released report by UBS (of surging 3 Month USD Libor rate fame) titled "Euro Break Up - The Consequences." UBS conveniently sets up the straw man as follows: "Under the current structure and with the current membership, the Euro does not...

Phoenix-based Nuestros Reconquistos claims that there will be a war very similar to the Civil War fought in the next five years. “La Raza and MEChA have already talked to Latinos and Phoenix and explained that Latinos need to arm themselves for war,” says Nuestros Reconquistos President Manuel Longoria. Latino groups believe they have enough people in states such as California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to successfully wage a war on the United States.

The following is a transcript of "The Tom Joyner Morning Show's" interview with President Barack Obama, which aired Tuesday morning. TOM JOYNER: Yeah, it is slow and frustrating. And a lot of people are voicing their opinion about how frustrating it is for us in the black community and the unemployment rate being almost twice as much what the general market employment rate is. I understand. I understand people complaining, but I don't agree with people who are trying to - black people, black leaders who are trying to make you look bad, as if this is all your fault....

You need to start stocking food. You can do a lot if you start early. Unfortunately, “early” might have been yesterday. Now we’re way past early, and you need a reasonable plan to get food supplies that will store well and don’t cost too much. Buy extra, use FIFO. Go ahead and buy more food than normal when you’re out shopping, and set it aside as preparedness. Use the “first in, first out” rule to eat your older supplies first. Keep rotating your supplies so you never abandon food “way in the back.”

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — When word reached Camp Lawton that the enemy army of Gen. William T. Sherman was approaching, the prison camp's Confederate officers rounded up their thousands of Union army POWs for a swift evacuation — leaving behind rings, buckles, coins and other keepsakes that would remain undisturbed for nearly 150 years. Archaeologists are still discovering unusual, and sometimes stunningly personal, artifacts a year after state officials revealed that a graduate student had pinpointed the location of the massive but short-lived Civil War camp in southeast Georgia. Discoveries made as recently as a few weeks ago were being...

As Congress and the White House battle to resolve the nation's debt crisis, a legendary letter written 150 years ago this week by a Civil War soldier on the eve of battle, bidding a heartbreaking farewell to his wife and children, offers a gentle reminder to all Americans of the meaning of sacrifice and love of country. Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island, just 32 years old but already a major in the Union Army, sat down that calm Sunday night to write his wife, Sarah, before leaving to fight in what would become known as the First Battle of Bull...

MANASSAS, Va. -- It was a sweltering summer morning, the air heavy with humidity, when men from across the country gathered on farmland near Bull Run. Some of the land was owned by a freed black man, Jim Robinson. The rest by an infirmed widow, Judith Henry, who was cared for by her family and a slave. The average age of the men was 21. They were young and had only been part of the army for a matter of weeks. Some prayed. Others boasted. Some were hoping for a fight while others were dreading the idea of either shooting...

On Jan. 2, 1864, Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne presented his fellow Southerners with a question about the war they were fighting. “Was the war about independence? Or was the war being fought primarily to preserve slavery?” said former Georgia labor commissioner Michael Thurmond.

The Revenge of William Tilghman of the S.J. Waring Rebel privateers in the brig Jeff Davis had captured the S.J. Waring on July 7. For the past week, they had been sailing for a Southern port.... .... William Tilghman, the black steward from the original crew of the Waring, concocted a plan to retake the ship. When the Waring was captured, the Confederates cut up the United States flag to piece together a Confederate flag. Tilghman had vowed revenge and his plan addressed such feelings. Just before midnight, with the Confederate captain and two mates asleep and the ship under...

The past two decades since the 1991 collapse of Communism have seen the Russian Federation and the U.S. involved in an updated version of the 19th century’s “Great Game’ for mastery in Eurasia over the debris field of the former USSR. Not surprisingly, Moscow regards its former colonial fiefdoms as part of its “near abroad,” a “Monroeskii Doktrin” variant of U.S. interest in Central and Latin American, where a priori interests rule. U.S. interests in the post-Soviet Eurasian space since 1991 have fixated first on the region’s immense but underdeveloped energy resources, while the post-9/11 environment added a second dimension...

On Thursday, July 14, at 10 a.m.. the Georgia Historical Society will be conducting a dedication service to unveil a marker commemorating Confederate Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom. Cleburne’s plan was to provide manpower for the South to face the ever-increasing Federal Army which was beginning to recruit black soldiers and which continued to swell its ranks with immigrants, particularly from Germany and other parts of Europe. It was becoming increasingly clear to Southern officers during the winter of 1863-64 that the South was fast running out of men to continue the...

As Union and Confederate soldiers left the comforts of home for the grim realities of war, many brought along family pets or adopted stray or wild animals, which quickly took on semi-official roles. Regiments from the North and the South kept dogs, cats, horses, squirrels and raccoons as mascots. Some chose more unusual animals, including bears, badgers, eagles, wildcats, even a camel.

"Thanks to the development of "crowdsourcing" or collaborative transcription of manuscript materials, libraries are now able to use the knowledge and interest of the general public to meet goals that they would never have the time, financial, and staff resources to achieve on their own. Please help us transcribe the 3011 diary pages in this collection. Simply select a diary and enter the text as it appears on the digitized image."

As of this writing, another murderous attack against American soldiers has taken place in Iraq, leaving a total of 4,459 American soldiers killed since the beginning of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” This does not include the thousands of Iraqis that have murdered each other over the years since Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003. Whether it is Sunni, Shia, or Christian; Arab, Kurd, or Assyrian, it appears that Iraqis of different ethnicities and religions cannot co-exist in one state. From its Frankenstein-like creation, Iraq has been nothing but an artificial entity that has caused untold misery to its inhabitants, neighbors, and...

Civil war may break out among heavily-armed Bedouin tribes in the Sinai, which has become a lawless area since the Egyptian uprising this year. Violence in the volatile Sinai Peninsula, directly south of Gaza and bordering the Eilat-Gaza route, could bring more instability to Israel’s southern border, plagued for years by slave trade, infiltration, drug and weapons trafficking by Bedouin and Hamas terrorists. Egyptian sources warned Sunday that two rival Bedouin tribes, each accusing the other of murder and kidnapping, are headed for war, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency. The BBC earlier this week also quoted local Bedouin...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War. So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother. But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s. The difference...

SANAA - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was lightly wounded, a Yemen-based Western diplomat said following an attack on the presidential palace in Sanaa on Friday, in which shells were fired. Three senior officials, but a Yemeni official said Saleh was "well." Fierce fighting engulfed the Yemeni capital, where residents cowered in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Two Yemeni officials had earlier said Saleh escaped unhurt, but the prime minister, his deputy and the parliament speaker had been wounded in the attack, blamed by the government on tribesmen led by the al-Ahmar family. Four guards were reported killed....

Charleston was in ruins. The peninsula was nearly deserted, the fine houses empty, the streets littered with the debris of fighting and the ash of fires that had burned out weeks before. The Southern gentility was long gone, their cause lost. In the weeks after the Civil War ended, it was, some said, "a city of the dead." On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been...

Black Jack Logan and Memorial Day Monday, May 30, 2011 A.D. | Author Donald R. McClarey Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience — almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. Pope Benedict, April 16, 2008John A. Logan is the father of Memorial Day. Today he is largely forgotten except to Civil War buffs and that is a shame. He was a fascinating man and he is largely responsible for establishing...

On May 24, 1861, Elmer E. Ellsworth, a 24-year-old Army colonel and close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, became the first Union officer killed during the Civil War. According to the 2003 spring/summer edition of Washington History magazine, Ellsworth, of the New York Zouaves Regiment, was shot and killed when he removed a Confederate flag from the roof of the Marshall House hotel on King Street in Alexandria. The day before, a secession convention in Virginia ratified a decision for the commonwealth to secede from the Union. Ellsworth and his regiment were among the first to arrive in the District...

The nation lost an historic lady in 2004. Mrs. Alberta Martin, the last known widow of a Confederate soldier, passed away on Memorial Day 2004.

RICHMOND, Va. - An outbreak of smallpox was the furthest thing from historian Dr. Paul Levengood's mind when his staff at the Virginia Historical Society put together an exhibit of "bizarre bits" that were added to the society's collection since its founding in 1831, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. There was Confederate president Jefferson Davis's cigar, confiscated by Union troops. There was a fungus carving of Robert E. Lee on his horse, Traveller, and a wreath made of human hair. Then someone mentioned a letter, handwritten and dated 1876, with what appeared to be a smallpox scab pinned inside...

Historic Factors In The Valuation Of The American Dollar. I have been asked to place a value of a friend's Confederate dollar, a Feb. 18, 1864 one dollar bill. In the process I made a disturbing discovery. We have all been taught that America won the Civil War and the Confederacy lost - but did they really? What is victory? What is defeat? As we are now in a financial crisis of considerable magnitude, there is the tendency to look at history for clues. Perhaps one such clue to present monetary issues may be found in re-examining past and present...

Lincoln complied with the request to reroute troops to Annapolis at first. However, on May 13, the Union army entered Baltimore, occupied the city and declared martial law, to prevent all further incidents. The mayor, city council, and police commissioner, who were pro-South, were arrested and imprisoned at Fort McHenry. However, in the case Ex parte Merryman, these actions were deemed unconstitutional.

Whereas, In addition to the well founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in reselutions adopted on the 11th March, A. D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power at Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention, pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any state that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such states, until they should be compelled to submit to...