Gone With The Wind—Or Are They?

by Fred Ray August 4, 2020

A look at the people who buy all those statues people have been tearing down. The leaders of Newton Falls have declared their town a “sanctuary city” for unwanted statuary. “History is a big part of this community’s identity – you can still dig up arrowheads in the fields – and we have acres of […]

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Josie Wales’s Gun For Sale

by Fred Ray July 24, 2020

One of the guns from what was probably Clint Eastwood’s best Western is up for auction. Set in Missouri during and just after the Civil War, it chronicles the flight of an ex-Confederate guerilla to escape a vengeful Union. “Well, you gonna pull those pistols or whistle ‘Dixie’?” Moments after delivering this line in the […]

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Civil War Smallpox Strains Found

by Fred Ray July 23, 2020

Smallpox, unlike the Minié ball, was an indiscriminate, equal-opportunity killer that killed about 30% of those it infected.  Although there was no cure, English physician Edward Jenner had devised a vaccine of sorts. He noticed that milkmaids often contracted cowpox, which resembled smallpox but was much less virulent, and were thereafter immune to smallpox. He […]

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Gray Lady Down, Dispatches From the Statue Wars

by Fred Ray July 19, 2020

Michael Goodwin (New York Post) has another, harder look at the New York Times’s ruling Ochs-Sulzberger clan in a new column. After recounting what he revealed in the last column, he goes on to show that a member of their extended family owned slaves. Bertha Levy (later Ochs) lived for a time with her Uncle […]

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The New York Times’s Confederate Connections

by Fred Ray July 14, 2020

Michael Goodwin (New York Post) has an excellent article looking at the history of the New York Times, and its Confederate connections that it now finds so offensive in others. … the Times has never applied to its own history the standards it uses to demonize others. If it did, reporters there would learn that […]

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Vandals Damage Monuments to Escaped Slaves, Underground Railroad Mural To be Removed

by Fred Ray July 12, 2020

The madness continues all over the country. A statue of “Aunt Lucy” Nichols has been defaced in New Albany, Indiana. Born in 1838, Nichols escaped from a Tennessee farm in 1862 with her young daughter, Mona, and traveled several miles to the Union line across the Hatchie River. She joined the 23rd Indiana Infantry Regiment […]

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Lest Zeb Vance Offend Your Eye

by Fred Ray July 9, 2020

The city of Asheville has done some boneheaded things but this time they’ve outdone themselves. The Vance Monument downtown, which I mentioned earlier, has now been covered with a plywood barrier and a shroud, to keep it from offending anyone until a commission decides what to do with it. The mayor, Esther Manheimer, says that […]

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