Free Republic

A lot of historical ebooks. Some free, and some "to borrow" ebooks on Stonewall Jackson . Get them before the Commies have them cancelled. (I recommend the .pdf formats.) PDF formats seem to have fewer issues as far as optical character recognition errors.

The City of Charlottesville will soon be ordered to remove the black tarps currently covering two Confederate statues downtown. Reading from an official court letter Tuesday afternoon, Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore said he thinks the shrouds on the statues of Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are a violation of a state code protecting the removal or disturbance of war memorials. Moore said the city will have 15 days to remove the tarps after an official order has been signed.

If you’ve read any news in the past day, you’ve seen reports regarding cannibalism in colonial Jamestown. It was known prior that the colonists had undergone a number of starvation years where they were forced to eat foods that they wouldn’t normally. The trash pits from the sites hold the remains of animals who aren’t normally butchered, including horses, cats, dogs, rats and snakes. Burials from this period are not given the complete funerary treatment likely due to the high number of deaths, and the skeletons show evidence of nutritional hardship and early death. The colony was founded in 1607...

The New Intolerance by Patrick J. Buchanan 04/09/2010 "This was a recognition of American terrorists." That is CNN's Roland Martin's summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined. Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War battlefields. So loud was the howling that in 24 hours McDonnell had backpedaled and issued an apology...

Based on the hundreds of e-mails, Facebook comments and Tweets I've read in response to my denunciation of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's decision to honor Confederates for their involvement in the Civil War -- which was based on the desire to continue slavery -- the one consistent thing that supporters of the proclamation offer up as a defense is that these individuals were fighting for what they believed in and defending their homeland. In criticizing me for saying that celebrating the Confederates was akin to honoring Nazi soldiers for killing of Jews during the Holocaust, Rob Wagner said, "I am...

Gov. Bob McDonnell has conceded a "major omission" for not noting slavery in declaring April Confederate History Month in Virginia. As part of his mea culpa, McDonnell inserted into the proclamation a paragraph condemning slavery as "evil and inhumane" and blaming it as the cause of the Civil War.

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) apologized late Wednesday for failing to include slavery in his proclamation declaring April as Confederate History Month. The full text of his statement follows: Governor Bob McDonnell issued the following statement today regarding the proclamation of Confederate History Month in the Commonwealth "The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of...

An order of the Virginia Colonial Council dated May 4, 1725, concerned an allegation that "divers Indians plundered the Quarters of Mr. John Taliaferro near the great mountains [i.e., the Blue Ridge] . . .[and carried off] some of the Guns belonging to and marked with the name of Spottsylvania County . . . ." The Council concluded: "It is ordered that it be referred to Colo. Harrison to make inquiry which of the Nottoway Indians or other Tributaries have been out ahunting about that time . . . ." Now, the Colonial Council was an august body and its...

Virginia Resolution of 1798 RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocably express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former. That this assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the Union of the States, to maintain which it pledges all its powers; and that for this end, it is their duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles...

Slate may show early colonist efforts to communicate with Indians. With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site. With the...

Shocking revelations into historical folktales of Virginia reveal that a long time ago, Lexington was given over in a Pact with the Devil by a blacksmith just prior to the Civil War. It is called folktale, but there are many who can vouch for the historical side of Wicked John and the Devil. As for Wicked John whom you have no doubt heard of if you know anything about the Wiley ways of the Red Demon, can say of John “that critter's so mean the buzzards wouldn't claim him”, “Too bad for heaven, too mean for hell”. One of those...

VIRGINIA, Va. -- It's probably the last time that Timothy M. Kaine will step outside his house in the morning to find two dead deer and a turkey on his doorstep. But yesterday, the outgoing Virginia governor and his wife, first lady Anne Holton, stood outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond to preside over a Thanksgiving tradition that dates to the late 1600s -- Virginia's Indian tribes paying tribute to the governor. On a damp and gray but mild morning, Kaine welcomed about 200 people, including members of several generations of Indians in traditional garb, as well as Capitol Square...

The 1850s American Farm exhibit at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, features vintage structures including s sheathed log house. The buildings were located originally near Eagle Rock in Botetourt County, Virginia, and were moved to the Museum grounds and reconstructed as one of the original exhibits in 1988.

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's 1740s log cabin is displayed as a work in progress. The cabin is a typical peeled-log, saddle-notched settler's cabin of the kind favored by Scotch-Irish moving into the wilds of the Backcountry. The construction was simple and required few tools. The museum's replica is built with one door and no windows -- a common practice which led to laws requiring homesteader's cabins have at least one window.

Just about every American, from the time they're 6 or so, learns that Mount Vernon is Founding Father George Washington's home. They draw pictures of the grand farmhouse in art class. Study it in history. File onto buses and reverently visit the hallowed ground along the Potomac River. And right now, that's Mount Vernon's problem. There's just too much George, according to some international culture experts, who are considering whether the historic estate belongs on the United Nations' list of World Heritage sites. A group advising the U.S. government on getting American sites onto the prestigious list initially rejected Mount...

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

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...

Today is Friday, April 17, 2009 Today in U.S. Civil War History 1861 - Virginia left the Union. Within the next 5 weeks Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded bringing the total of Confederate states to eleven.

(Fredericksburg, VA) -- Virginia Governor Tim Kaine will speak at an event today aimed at raising awareness and funding for the state's historic battlefields. Kaine will speak at 10 a.m. to a group in Fredericksburg that helps fund and upkeep the Fredericksburg battlefields, where Robert E. Lee is credited for a victory against the Union Army during the Civil War. In the first year of his administration, Governor Kaine set up the Virginia Historic Battlefield Preservation Fund which helps upkeep the state's numerous battlefields.

Later this month, an archaeologist at Thomas Jefferson's historic home of Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., will speak at Smith College about the use of the late president's plantation by the estate's residents, both free and enslaved. Sara Bon-Harper, archeological research manager, will lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 24, in McConnell Hall, Room 103, about "Defined Spaces: Landscape on the Monticello Plantation." The event is sponsored by the Program in Archaeology and the Lecture Committee and is free and open to the public. Bon-Harper's work at Monticello focuses on an archaeological survey of the original 5,000-acre plantation and the excavation...