News from Around the South 5/26 – 6/2

ALABAMA: Citizens Divided on Confederate Holiday Alabama state offices closed Monday for an annual holiday that some residents celebrate, others would like to eliminate and some just don’t understand: Jefferson Davis’s birthday. The Confederacy’s...

News from Around the South 5/12 – 5/19

    SOUTH CAROLINA: Civil War Ship Stolen by Slaved  Found The wreck of a ship once commandeered by slaves and sailed to freedom during the Civil War has very likely been found. The shipwrecked Planter almost certainly rests beneath 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5...

News from Around the South, 2/17 – 2/24

Virginia: Civil War Soldier’s Letters Return Home DANVILLE, Va. — For 150 years, the letters written by a Confederate soldier — Pvt. Joseph Payne — back home to his wife in the Whitmell community of Pittsylvania County were carefully stored by descendants who...

A Name Under Siege

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — On the fourth floor of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, on a top shelf just to the left of the map collection, lie more than a dozen books that profile one famous Memphian: Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. There are the old ones,...

A Strange Cargo

Major General William Rosecrans, leader of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland, had a problem. “Old Rosy,” as he’d been nicknamed at West Point, was a handsome Ohio-born history buff and hobbyist inventor with a reputation for getting nearer to combat than any other...