Sons of Confederate Veterans - Blairsville, Georgia

10/13/2026

08/14/2026

The woods beneath Round Top had finally fallen silent.

Only days earlier, this landscape had echoed with cannon fire, r***e volleys, and the chaos of the Battle of Gettysburg. In July 1863, photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan walked through the aftermath with his camera, capturing one of the Civil War's most enduring images.

His photograph did not celebrate victory or battlefield glory.

Instead, it showed the quiet reality left behind after the fighting ended—Confederate soldiers resting where they had fallen beneath the trees near Plum Run. For many Americans, these photographs offered one of the first unfiltered glimpses of war's human cost, replacing romanticized ideas of battle with a sobering truth.

The fighting around Little Round Top, Devil's Den, and the slopes of Round Top had been among the fiercest of the entire battle. For three days, soldiers fought across rocky hillsides, forests, and smoke-filled fields. When the gunfire finally stopped, the silence that followed must have felt almost unimaginable.

O'Sullivan preserved that silence in a single photograph.

There are no commanders posing for history. No triumphant celebration. Only a peaceful woodland and the lasting reminder that every famous battlefield was shaped by thousands of individual lives, families, and futures forever changed.

More than 160 years later, this image continues to resonate—not because it glorifies war, but because it reminds us of its lasting human cost. It stands as a powerful historical record and a reminder of why preserving peace matters.

📖 History is often remembered through battles, but it is photographs like this that remind us of the people behind them.

What thoughts come to mind when you see images that capture history so honestly?

06/19/2026

Let’s talk a little about Juneteenth.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed nobody.

Doubt me? Then ask yourself the following questions.

If a President can end slavery by simple proclamation, and secession and war were primarily about slavery, then why didn’t ol’ Abe just make his proclamation as his first act upon assuming office? Wouldn’t that have headed off at least two (if not four) years of the bloodiest war in our history? Maybe it could have even prevented secession itself…

Also, if the proclamation ended slavery, then why did the Constitution need amending to add the 13th amendment almost three years after the proclamation had been issued?

Why did the plain text of the proclamation purport to free only the slaves living in territories in a state of rebellion, thus leaving slavery untouched in the loyal slave states?

Celebrating the end of slavery is proper. Perpetuating bad history is not. Let’s celebrate it on January 31 (the date of the Congressional passage of the 13th amendment) or on December 6 (the date that Georgia provided the state ratification that gave the amendment the needed 3/4ths of states to approve it for it to become law).

But let’s stop pretending that the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery. It did not. Claiming otherwise just perpetuates historical ignorance and is a failure to use critical thinking.

05/06/2026

"OLD PETE" — While on a road trip back in November 2019, I was able to stop and see some of the notable locations that General James Longstreet was connected with around his adopted, postwar hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. Specifically, these included his grave, home sites, death site, and the hotel he owned. Longstreet is one of my very favorite figures from the war and all of American history to study and it was very moving to check these off my Civil War travels bucket list.

Before his death on January, 2, 1904, James had been suffering from cancer of the eye and asked to be taken to the home of his daughter — Maria Louisa Longstreet Whelchel. After arriving there, his condition worsened and he developed pneumonia.

During a coughing spasm, his neck wound from the Battle of the Wilderness (Virginia) opened and it contributed to him bleeding to death. That wound was sustained 162 YEARS AGO today on May 6, 1864.