Food for thought - a little combination of digital history and the Civil War

I have a digital history project in mind and would like to see if it is feasible. For starters, for anyone reading this blog, what do you consider the top 25 (if we can come up with that many) most controversial topics (excluding battle/military leader-related) pertaining to the Civil War?

The need to lay aside animosities for dead men - a clarification

Kevin made a good point yesterday and I should have been more clear. When I see the word “traitor,” my problem is with the way that it is used within a body of work - the context in which it is used. If it is a part of discussing things within historical context, then I [...]

The need to lay aside animosities for dead men

While I clearly have grievances with the way some people like to distort history for modern agendas, I think that there should be a cut-off point between being aggravated with people today and bashing people of yesterday. To some degree, it reminds me of modern political campaigns where mudslinging runs rampant in an effort to [...]

Looking back on the first week of blogging

After about a week of blogging I find myself looking back on my posts and asking myself if I am blogging or writing articles. What is the prescribed method (if one exists) of blogging digital history? I’ve looked at a number of blogs within the digital history genre and within the Civil War memory/American Civil [...]

Mythbusting in Civil War memory

I hate getting those “chain e-mails” that give warnings demanding some form of country-wide outrage. I usually trash such e-mails without opening them, but in some cases, they are sent by a “friend.” In this case, I might open the e-mail and I might even read over the contents (and, most of the time, I [...]

A “grave case” of mistaken identity… I mean loyalty

In late October, I received an e-mail announcing the illegal removal of a Union veteran’s headstone (in Madison County, N.C.) by a direct descendant (but even more surprisingly, he is also a deputy of Gaston County, N.C.). Apparently the Union veteran had prior service with the Confederate army. Like some of the people with whom [...]

More thoughts on digital history as interactive narrative

With an ever-pressing desire to explore new ways of presenting history, I find it difficult reading through George P. Landow’s Hypertext 3.0 without continually trying to figure out how the theories and applications can work within the practice of digital history. This is especially the case when considering that relatively few digital history sites have gone [...]

Comparing Civil War memory to Revolutionary War memory

In one of my classes last spring at William & Mary, I had the opportunity to examine how former Loyalists and Tories from the American Revolution had been treated in historic memory. Now, some think that the two are one in the same, but even I came to realize that this is not the case. [...]

History as interactive narrative!? Why not?

After developing an annotated bibliography of digital history resources this past fall, over  Christmas break I finally took the time to read Digital History (Cohen and Rosenzweig). I enjoyed it greatly! However, after having read this book, I was left curious as to why Janet Murray (Hamlet on the Holodeck) had only received mention on one [...]

The he-man Lincoln-haters club

About a week ago, I had the opportunity to attend the annual Lincoln Birthday event (sponsored by the Lincoln Society of Virginia) held at the Lincoln family cemetery near Broadway in Rockingham County, Virginia (the Lincoln family resided in this county since the 1760s, and Thomas Herring Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s father, was born here in [...]