Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Georgia
Archaeologists in Georgia have found the location of the prison that served as an overflow facility for Andersonville
"November 17, 1864—Three of our men were frozen to death last night in the stockade! Large fires are going, but many are so reduced in vitality that they easily froze notwithstanding,” wrote Union Pvt. Read more >>
Putsch Comes to Shove
On December 21 Eugene Talmadge, a virulent white supremacist who had just been elected governor of Georgia, died at the age of sixty-two. Since Talmadge had not yet been inaugurated, no one was sure what to do next. Read more >>
The first settlers marked the borders of their lives with simple fences that grew ever more elaborate over the centuries
Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost, and he meant that fences did more than just enclose space; like his woods and roads, they bounded a social and psychological landscape. Read more >>
In early Georgia, the founders of Methodism got off to a terrible start
THE SUCCESS OF John and Charles Wesley in founding Methodism is well documented, but what is seldom mentioned is that they started their ecclesiastical careers with a period of unrelieved bungling. Read more >>
Charles Hopkins received the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry at the battle of Gaines’ Mill, but his toughest fight was trying to survive at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. He left this never-before-published record.
How Juliette “Daisy” Low, an unwanted child, a miserable wife, a lonely widow, finally found happiness as the founder of the Girl Scouts of America
In 1911 Juliette “Daisy” Low taught her first seven female Girl Guides to raise chickens and to spin wool. Read more >>
A newly discovered Union diary shows that Sherman’s march was about as Ruthless as Southerners have always said it was
It was called “the most extraordinary and astounding adventure of the Civil War”
On the pleasant Sunday evening of April 6, 1862, the men of Company H, 33rd Ohio Infantry, were relaxing around their campfires near Shelbyville, Tennessee, admiring the Southern springtime and trading the latest army rumors. Read more >>
The black laborers on John Williams’ plantation never seemed to leave or complain. It took some digging to find out why
CUMBERLAND ISLAND AND HOW MODERN TIMES AT LAST HAVE REACHED IT
One of the good things that happened in America in 1970—a year otherwise noted for spreading oil slicks, raging forest fires, mercury in rainbow trout, and burgeoning pipelines in the tundra—was the decision by the National Park Service to purchase Cumberland Read more >>
Roosevelt, like Lincoln and Wilson, died fighting for his ideals.