The Battle Of Mill Springs

Although Brig. Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer’s main responsibility was to guard Cumberland Gap, in November 1861 he advanced west into Kentucky to strengthen control in the area around Somerset. He found a strong defensive position at Mill Springs and decided to make it his winter quarters. He fortified the area, especially both sides of the Cumberland River.
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Atrocities and Slavery in the North

African-American Men Burned at the Stake in New York In England, burning had been used to punish rebellious women, peasants and poor people, demonizing the most oppressed people in European society. Carol Karlsen makes the point that characteristics of the witch were projected onto black and poor white women, seen as being “seductive, sexually uncontrolled,…

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The Founding Fathers & Slavery

In his 1775 treatise, Taxation No Tyranny, British author Dr. Samuel Johnson rhetorically asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”  The paradox that Dr. Johnson called out in 1775, is a question Americans continue to grapple with to this day—the institution slavery.  The institution of slavery had been a part of American society for more than 150 years when the Revolutionary War began in 1775.  Slavery existed, and was protected by law, in all 13 American colonies when they declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776.
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Events & Overview of the Pre-Civil War Era

During the early 19th century, and especially after the War of 1812, American society was profoundly transformed. These years witnessed rapid economic and territorial expansion; the extension of democratic politics; the spread of evangelical revivalism; the rise of the nation's first labor and reform movements; the growth of cities and industrial ways of life; radical shifts in the roles and status of women; and deepening sectional conflicts that would bring the country to the verge of civil war.
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In Defense Of General Forrest

Gen. Forrest is the subject of a very old hoax that has been around since the 1860s. There is no truth to the rumor that he was ever a 'leader of the kkk' or that he was a racist.  When he was called to appear at the 1871 US Congressional Committee that investigated the charges of his rumored involvement with that group, he was building a railroad with most of his workers being blacks, whom he paid better wages than other companies were paying whites.  He worked to promote civil rights for blacks, and for all men; his speech to the Pole Bearers is proof of that.
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