Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Small stories that don’t warrant full posts of their own:

• The dispute over renovations to a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest in Selma drags on, and on, and on, sucking in more aggrieved parties as it goes. I haven’t talked about it much here because every aspect of it seems to be exactly according to script, with lots of angry, clichéd rhetoric and hyperbole on all sides. We’ve seen this movie before.
• Charles F. Bryan, President and CEO emeritus of the Virginia Historical Society, points out in an editorial that Jefferson Davis’ wartime administration committed many of the same “big government” sins commonly ascribed unilaterally to Lincoln then, and to the political left today. Among these were creating a “massive debt while imposing heavy taxes on its citizenry. It had a virtual monopoly on foreign trade. It maintained de facto control over raw materials, labor, transportation systems and much of the manufacturing sector. It mushroomed into a huge bureaucracy to keep these controls in effect.” “By happenstance and by design,” Bryan argues, “the new republic was marked by profound centralization and nationalization.” He’s right; deal with it.
• Mark Vogl, the self-styled “chancellor”of the online Confederate War College, has been carping for months about Mitt Romney. He’s argued that “Romney’s Mormon faith is NOT Christian,” and about Romney’s supposed commitment to “socialism,” based on Romneycare in Massachusetts. He’s accused Romney of being a “globalist,” in contrast to candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who Vogl views as “Americans.” He’s whined that Romney’s religious beliefs are getting a pass in the media because “a Mormon is a politically correct minority.” He’s called out Romney for the candidate’s “lies” about his living conditions when working as a missionary in Paris in the 1960s. Several months back Vogl gleefully cheered that “Dixie says no to Romney!” He was outraged that Romney supposedly “supports the Gays against the Boy Scouts!” and didn’t “support Chick-Fil-A in a huge battle about Christianity.” Vogl even went so far as to announce publicly that in November he will “be writing in Jefferson Davis of Mississippi for President of the United States“So guess who he’s supporting now. Go ahead, guess.
• Underwater archaeologists have discovered the wreck of the Confederate gunboat C.S.S. Pee Dee in the Greater Pee Dee River in South Carolina. Archaeologist Chris Amer cautions that the wreck is “as messy as the history that put it there,” probably in part because parts of it were salvaged in the 1950s.
• I’ve observed in the past that the various “flagging” groups have a pretty low threshold for claiming an accomplishment; now it appears they’re claiming “victory” just by showing up.
• Looks like the white nationalist League of the South (LoS) has decided to slink back into the shadows, having changed the status of its Facebook group to “closed,” so that non-members can no longer see the LoSers’ online discussions in real time. This is not entirely unexpected, as the group has come in for some negative media coverage lately. It does raise the question, though, about how their abandonment of social media is going to raise the public visibility of their movement; mens room graffiti and flagging empty office buildings at night isn’t likely to do the trick.
• Next month, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond will offer an additional tour, “Servant Life of the Confederate White House,” as part of the interpretation of that site.
• Is this a photograph of A. P. Hill? Sure looks like him.
• Speaking of look-alikes, check out this still from the upcoming Spielberg film. Can you believe that the actor who’s a dead-ringer for Stanton is also this guy? I never aspired to an acting career, but if I had, I’d want to be Bruce McGill.
  
  
  
  
• Unrelated to the CW, the Pittsburgh Steelers are doing their dead-level best to make fans regret buying those HD teevees.
• Finally, on a purely personal note, my friend and blogging colleague Jim Schmidt had a very successful book signing Saturday for his new volume, Galveston and the Civil War: An Island City in the Maelstrom. I couldn’t be more happy for Jim, because his volume really does bring a lot of new material and analysis to Galveston’s CW experience. We will both be at the Houston History Book Fair & Symposium in a couple of weeks, and hope to see you there.

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