THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Edmund J. Davis was one of the about 2,000 Texans who fought in the Union army during the Civil War. He survived to become the last Reconstruction governor. But there were many more who offered their dissent at home and some were punished for it, including in the still-celebrated Nueces Massacre of German Unionists and [...]

This new painting of the 9th Georgia Artillery Battalion opening fire on Fort Sanders on Nov. 29, 1863, is one of the few that’s ever been done on the battle that is the subject of my historical novel Knoxville 1863. Artist Ken Smith of Pulaski, Virginia, is offering a print for sale here. The novel [...]

The usual shrill babble and punchy trailer clips are flogging John Carter, Disney’s remake of Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1917 novel Princess of Mars, but it looks like a kiddie combo of Hercules and Avatar. The bad guys burn coal, you see, and are damaging the Martian atmosphere. Uh oh. John Carter is a Confederate soldier [...]

The (apparently) world’s first combat submarine, which few alive today have ever seen. Now you can be one of them. You’d never have gotten me in that thing. I’m the descendant of  infantrymen. But I can’t help but admire the sailors who volunteered for the H.L. Hunley—and perished.

Lazy, sure. Credulous? Maybe. But by the time I’d been in the news biz for a few years I’d realized that truly worthwhile stories didn’t come waltzing into my arms very often. Yet like a cop issuing speeding tickets, I had a quota to meet. So what Andrew Ferguson calls the Chump Effect, i.e. reporters [...]

It was originally an American tradition, observed in some parts of the country but not in others, until 1863 when President Lincoln made it an official holiday at the end of November. “It has seemed to me fit and proper that they [our blessings] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart [...]

Jo Anzalone, who is descended from a 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment soldier, took a trip not long ago retracing the unit’s wartime movements. She carried with her an antique silver syrup pitcher belonging to her Civil War ancestor, Private Jonathan James McDaniel, and posed it at different sites. Here, the pitcher sits on the business [...]

Well, Colonel West, for sure. Cain, however, seems to be scurrying back to the quarters ahead of the patrols by joining in the WaPo’s manufactured racial-insensitivity scandal against Rick Perry. Much as I liked Cain, his behavior here is despicable. Could it be Mr. Pizza actually is, in fact, just another Democrat water boy in [...]

One use of federal tax money I support is the establishment and maintenance of historical parks. Such as the closing of Fortress Monroe (the green area inside the blue moat above at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay) which the Army has decided to abandon. Not because I used to spend time there in 1970-71 [...]

For generations, Americans basically had one painting/lithograph of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. It showed Lee sitting amicably at the same table with Grant. It was Northern propaganda intended to help reunite the country. Finally, back in the mid-1980s, the print was replaced with this one from participant descriptions of the actual scene and [...]