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Shane Anderson

Blog

The 1862 Louisiana Native Guard

In April 1861, a public meeting was held in New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss Governor Thomas O. Moore's call for volunteers to defend the South against the invading Union army as the War Between the States was just beginning. This particular meeting did not consist of white men, however. It was led and attended by what the newspapers called the…
Shane Anderson
March 28, 2022
Blog

Black Confederates in Reconstruction Newspapers

In an editorial published a little over a year after the Civil War ended, a Georgia newspaper writer expressed regret that the South had not accepted "the aid of the negroes" when it was offered. He even went so far as to say "we were fools" for refusing that help, and then he went even further and credited black Union…
Shane Anderson
October 16, 2020
Blog

Confederate Memorials: Speaking to Posterity

Should it be asked, why then build this monument? The answer is, they do not need it, but posterity may. It is not their reward, but our debt. - Jefferson Davis So said the former President of the Confederate States in a letter regretfully turning down an invitation to speak at the laying of the cornerstone for the Confederate Monument…
Shane Anderson
May 25, 2020
Blog

To Guard the Precious Dust of the Martyred Dead

Today there is a frenzied effort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think "frenzied" is too strong a word, take a look at video of the crowds in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who resembled (ironically) a lynch mob as they threw ropes around a metal soldier and dragged it to the ground, all the…
Shane Anderson
February 26, 2020
Blog

What the Newspapers Said: The Black Confederate “Myth” Examined

Where did the belief in the "black Confederate soldier" originate? Did it begin in 1977, after the success of the television mini-series Roots caused people to reevaluate race and slavery during the Civil War? Were stories of these men absent before then, as one of many historians who tackles this topic claims? Is it accurate or indeed fair to describe…
Shane Anderson
October 9, 2019
Blog

Black Southern Support for Secession and War

Sooner or later any student of the War for Southern Independence will run across discussion of "black Confederates," which may well be the most controversial topic related to the war. From an objective standpoint it might seem odd that there is any controversy at all. The South had a large black population in 1861, mostly slave but some free, and…
Shane Anderson
July 22, 2019
Review Posts

The First South

A review of The First South (LSU Press, 1961) by John Richard Alden One of the things I've discovered since I began studying Civil War history is that the roots of that conflict go back to before the United States were declared "free, sovereign and independent", and so a knowledge of the history of the early South is very useful…
Shane Anderson
June 11, 2019
Blog

“An Epic Poem in Bronze.”

On August 22, 2018, Forbes Magazine published an article written by Kristina Killgrove entitled "Scholars Explain the Racist History of UNC's Silent Sam Statue." 1 Two days earlier, the statue had been pulled down by a crowd of students and activists, who saw it as a symbol of "white supremacy" that had no place on the campus of UNC Chapel…
Shane Anderson
May 22, 2019