As a young boy living at Carolina Beach I was fascinated by the protruding bones of a shipwreck lying less than a hundred yards offshore. We knew that it was a Civil War blockade runner. Later I learned that the ship was originally christened as the Havelock and launched in Glasgow, Scotland. During our Civil […]
In early April 1865, General Robert E. Lee withdrew his troops from their lines around Richmond and Petersburg and retreated west. He hoped to link up with the army of Joseph Johnston in North Carolina, but it was not to be. The remnant of Lee’s once formidable army was trapped near Appomattox and forced to […]
As I watched the Confederate statues come down I had the following thoughts. It is difficult for us to appreciate the perspective of our forefathers. With our modern sensitivities we are often prone to denounce them for behavior that their contemporaries may have considered normal or perhaps even worthy of praise. It is also […]
Confederate Monument At Gettysburg Confederate statues and symbols are being torn down and destroyed all over the country. Recently I read that some people are calling for the removal of Confederate monuments from the fields at Gettysburg. How sad. Do they wish to erase history? Was the Union army fighting against ghosts? It […]
Blockade Runner Modern Greece Run Aground Near Fort Fisher in 1862 When I was a young boy growing up near Greensboro, North Carolina, there were still reminders of the Civil War around us. It was 65 only years in the past, less time than now separates us from the Korean War. There were a […]
Final arrangements were recently concluded for the disposition of the statue Silent Sam, a memorial to the thousands of North Carolinians who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Silent Sam had been ripped from his pedestal on the University of North Carolina campus during a demonstration in 2018. Recently, many other Confederate monuments […]
Slavery has existed since the beginning of recorded history. The great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome were built on a foundation of slave labor, and slavery continued to exist in various parts of the world until the modern era. The African slave trade was a very profitable business, and many nations and peoples reaped […]
It is interesting to reflect on how much the world has changed in the last 175 years. My father was born in 1873, his father in 1841. Both were born at a time when there were no automobiles, no radios, few or no telephones, very limited medical facilities, etc. Railroads were new phenomena when my […]
The family often vacationed at Carolina Beach in the early 1930s, and in the mid 30s Dad had a beach house built there. The cottage was located a mile north of the town center and was separated from the ocean shore by sand dunes. A year or two later Dad had two smaller cottages built […]
Over the next few weeks there will be a number of very personal posts that give intimate details on my life and my family. I hope that this is not off-putting. I think we can all learn a great deal from each other. All of us have some very interesting histories and experiences, good and […]
