The long road ends at Durham

Jul 17, 2016 | News

The long road ends at Durham For more than nine months, some 50,000 troops in the Army of Northern Virginia were dug in at Petersburg, in a situation that none other than Robert E. Lee had early on described, in writing, as “untenable.” During the long face-off, their...

Averasboro, and a civilian view

Jul 17, 2016 | News

Averasboro, and a civilian view They’re making this easy for me. The week ended with distant artillery at Fort Bragg jarring the foundations of this old house. Then, on Sunday, gunners in the reenactment at the Averasboro Battlefield Museum a few hundred yards...

Old myths frustrate modern hopes

Jul 17, 2016 | Antebellum era, News

Old myths frustrate modern hopes If you grew up white, Southern and embedded in the successor class to the Antebellum gentry, you’ve likely heard it — more than once: “I was always told that they treated them like family.” “Them”...

The Day Joe Johnston Stopped the War

Jul 17, 2016 | News

The Day Joe Johnston Stopped the War The day after I became a teenager in 1960, Look magazine published a piece by American novelist MacKinlay Kantor, titled, “If the South Had Won the Civil War.” At the time I found the title intriguing, but the substance...

Gen. Sherman’s critical turn of events

Jul 17, 2016 | News

Gen. Sherman’s critical turn of events As the summer of 1864 gave way to autumn, Maj. Gen.William T. Sherman was restless. What remained of Atlanta was under Union control. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood had by Sherman’s reckoning lost his enthusiasm for...

Matters of time and timing

Jul 17, 2016 | News

Matters of time and timing If a 19th-century Time magazine had picked a Person of the Year for any of the war years, Abraham Lincoln would have been impossible to ignore. The mere fact of his election in 1860 stirred South Carolina to declare the Union dissolved and...