“As there had been only two prominent Irish generals, and only one, Cleburne, had had a very distinguished record, the story of the common soldier was the story of the Irish Confederate.” In 1877 a group of prominent Irish Americans met in Charleston to commemorate the Irish Volunteers in the Confederate States of America. Two »
University of Virginia Press, 2009 A flourishing cottage industry customarily called “memory studies” is now thrusting into its third decade. This well-researched volume makes a useful contribution to the field as well as to our understanding of southern culture. The author rightly declares that “social memory is one of the key elements that constitutes social »
“‘Son, I don’t care if you have to sell peanuts on the street, you work for yourself. Don’t make another man rich.’” As anyone who has studied the history of the South knows, racial hostility was ubiquitous across the Mississippi Delta throughout the hundred years following the Civil War. But contrary to the dominant narrative, »
“‘Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations. These wrecks of manhood thrown together in careless heaps or ranged in ghastly rows for burial were alive but yesterday.’” The Civil War was a little more than a year old in the first days of September 1862, and Confederate »
“When train number nine on the Western North Carolina Railroad tumbled off Bostian’s Bridge in 1891, it ignited a media frenzy, as well as a firestorm of outrage, a detailed investigation, a compelling mystery, and a series of unanswered questions.” Norfolk Southern locomotives still rumble periodically over Bostian’s Bridge trestle, a 300-foot long stone bridge »
Photo Essay
In the autumn of 1938 a photographer named Charles A. Farrell visited a seasonal mullet fishing camp at Brown’s Island, in Onslow County, North Carolina. What he discovered there captured his imagination: a remote hamlet of fishermen’s shanties far from civilization and two legendary clans of fishermen in relentless pursuit of one of the Atlantic’s »
Food
“‘My husband likes to say . . . ‘We’re not just another hot sauce, we’re 400 years of history.’” Datil peppers sun on five bushes by the pool in Mary Ellen Masters’s backyard next to Faver Dykes State Park—a wild, scrubby preserve in south St. Johns County, Florida. Masters, whose family has lived in the »
Music
“‘I am proud to be a farmer in the lowlands / A place where even squares can have a ball . . .’” In the spring of 1975, as in previous years, Lochem organized its annual music festival. Lochem is a Dutch village in the rural eastern Achterhoek region (literally, “the back corner”), nestled near »
“The strumming of stringed instruments booms out through the PA, elaborate fiddle melodies erupt, followed by the soaring voice of the poet-practitioner, embracing those present, scanning the scene before him . . . drifting, shaping, moving verses that elicit a chorus of gritos.” It’s a typical sweltering July evening in central Texas, close to ten »
Essay
“[T]his more complex tale of the origins of ‘Tar Heel’ shows that it is rooted in hard work by poor people, work that dirtied the bodies of both enslaved Africans and poor whites in the Piney Woods.” A New Explanation North Carolinians have long called themselves Tar Heels, and “Tar Heel” is a badge of »
