The Wrong Side of History

Sometimes the lessons of history take a long time to sink in. A Herald-Leader editorial on July 12, a letter to the editor about the Civil War on July 13 and Paul Prather’s piece of July 17 all point to the slowness with which we learn about history in this...

Books: Matthew Brady's Portaits

Although “Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation” is billed as a biography, it actually reads as a by-now familiar story of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, parallel in an eerie way to the communication revolution we are experiencing in this...

Civil War Tattoos

The enlistment records of many Irish recruits during the Civil War provide detail on age, height, hair/eye colour and complexion. Although informative, this data still leaves us without a picture of life experience, or any insight into character. One exception was...

Heroes and Memory

When I first arrived in America a few years ago, one of the first things I noticed was the road name, Jefferson Davis Highway. For a moment, I wondered whether I was trapped in the 2004 mockumentary C.S.A: the Confederate States of America, where the South had won the...