Under Fire: A Gunner on USS Congress in the Battle of Hampton Roads - The fearsome Rebel ironclad CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimack, aka Merrimac) materialized in Hampton Roads, Virginia, that calm and clear Saturday morning, March 8, 1862. “The ‘Merrimac’ was steaming slowly towards us,” recalled Seaman Frederick H. Curtis of the wooden sailing frigate USS Congress, “and every eye on the vessel was on her. Not a word was spoken, and the […]
Who Writes The Laws? - It is distressing for those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says to observe the destruction of liberty caused by vaccine mandates. On one side of this destruction are those whose opposition to vaccines finds comfort in the executive orders of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who purported to prohibit private businesses […]
News From Around the South, 10/11 to 10/18 - FLORIDA: A Close Brush With History—UWF History Trust’s Black Politicians Exhibit It was recently announced in the last Emerging Civil War newsletter that I’ve taken on a part-time position with the University of West Florida’s Historic Trust in Pensacola, Florida. I had begun volunteering in their Collections Department – and diversifying in their archives occasionally […]
When Are Secrets Not Secret? - “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Last week, President George W. Bush’s torture regime reared its head in an unusual argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured by a militia in Pakistan and handed over to the CIA, which brought […]
South’s Resistance To Vaccine Has Historical Precedent - On Monday, David Leonhardt’s morning newsletter for the New York Times introduced a grim new term into our pandemic vocabularies: “Red COVID.” The partisan gap in the effects of the pandemic, the newsletter explained, had widened. “Every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state,” Leonhardt wrote. Some of the […]
