Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Nice news story to say the least.

Every time I think America is getting better kids, they do something stupid.

I love this quote pertaining to the 33% result of teenagers who knew the importance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

"School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it," says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. "What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom's Cabin part."

I’m not certain of the exact dates, but this is probably the earliest notice for the American Civil War Center’s March 2009 Conference on record. Even the Center hasn’t posted information on its Web site. However, Anedra Bourne, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, has indicated the conference will focus on Abraham Lincoln, a very appropriate topic considering it will be the 200th anniversary of his birth.

We'll make a point of keeping everyone up to date as details emerge. However, if the 2009 mirrors the one held in 2007, which by the way was pulled off with far less planning, it should be an extraordinary event.

Before the Civil War, there was the Mexican-American War. A few months ago, there was a nice documentary on it but it seems like it came out a bit early. Why? Well, because last Saturday was the 160th Anniversary of the end of the war.

Why would we care about it on (an almost) Civil War blog? Simply put, this war would become the proving ground for many of the senior officers for both the Confederacy and the Union.

Since I didn’t see anything out there in the blogosphere talking about the war, I thought I would share this link to an interesting editorial that came my way.

Take a look and ask yourself, could the sentiment from the author be expanded to how America has handled the Civil War too?