Category: Artifacts

  • “The Last of Old Lee”: When Soldiers Became the War’s First Historians

    History did not wait. It did not begin with the polished prose of later historians, nor with the formal reports compiled in Washington. It did not require distance, reflection, or even the passage of years. Instead, it began immediately – formed in the minds of the men who marched, fought, endured, and, at last, witnessed…

  • A Relic’s Long Journey Home

    History sometimes leaves behind objects so small that their meaning is easy to overlook – until their story is traced end to end. I am in possession of a Civil War-era Minie ball, recovered from the ground on a friend’s property near Mobile Bay, just outside Bay Minette, Alabama. The bullet is clearly identifiable as…