150 Years Later

UPDATE VI:  One hundred and fifty years ago [April 24-25, 1862], "Admiral Farragut's momentous, and surprisingly bloodless, conquest of the Big Easy."  Read The New York Times, The Fall of New Orleans.

UPDATE V: Read also The New York Times, The Meaning of Bull Run.


UPDATE IV: One hundred and fifty years ago today [July 21, 1861] "the first major battle of the Civil War." Read the play-by-play of Bull Run at The New York Times, Where Ignorant Armies Clash.


UPDATE III: The South seceded over states' rights you say? Wrong. "Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states' rights -- that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery. " Read the Washington Post, Five myths about why the South seceded.


UPDATE II: One hundred and fifty years ago today [January 5, 1861] "armed secessionist insurgents from Mobile" overtook "Fort Gaines on the outer reaches of Mobile Bay." Read The New York Times, The Precarious Position of Lt. Reese, which notes that several months later, "as Charleston Harbor was lighted up during the bombardment of Fort Sumter, [Reese] was en route to Pensacola, part of a 500-man expedition headed to relieve Fort Pickens, which guarded the entrance to Pensacola Harbor and sat just 40 miles east of his previous post. The tiny garrison at Fort Pickens was one of the few forts to resist Confederate demands to surrender; with the timely arrival of Reese and the rest of the reinforcements, it managed to avoid the fate of Fort Gaines."


UPDATE: "One hundred and fifty years ago today [December 20, 1860] South Carolina declared its independence from the United States." For more on the intricate legal history that connected slavery to states’ rights — and how it led to secession, read The New York Times, Disunion: States’ Rights, but to What?

From November until April, follow the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

The Washington Post "commemorates the Civil War's 150th anniversary with commentary from experts, sesquicentennial news and an updating event calendar."

And The New York Times "revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded."