Got some more library magazine discards... A long run of The Nation, starting with vol. 1 no. 1
From looking up a little history, apparently the #Duluth Public Library began as only a reading room in 1869, which changed location many times until 1902 when the Carnegie library was built. That in turn was the main library until 1980. So it seems possible that these bound volumes of early issues of #TheNation were part of the library's collection from the very beginning.
Not much public domain pictures to scan, but fascinating to read a weekly newsmagazine from just months after the end of the Civil War
From The Nation, Thursday, July 13, 1865: Kentucky debates the 13th Amendment:
I am realizing I actually know very little about the history of Reconstruction and the immediate aftermath of the Civil War
This seems grimly prophetic...a defeated confederate soldier expresses "hope that the cause lost on the field may be retrieved at the polls" and the South, assuming blacks were kept disenfranchised, "would be sure to regain its ancient position, could it prevail upon even less than a fourth part of the North to coalesce with it as firmly as they did in 1856."
Meanwhile in the art world people of 1865 are annoyed by misuse of the term "Pre-Raphaelite"
The series "The South As It Is," penned by a correspondent traveling the defeated Confederate states, is simply amazing.
The efforts to canonize Lee did not take long to begin after Appomattox. From The Nation, Sept 14, 1865
I don't know if I'd ever heard of Andersonville, but the trial of Captain Wirtz (POW camp commandant) is a recurring topic. He was ultimately convicted of war crimes and executed. So the Daughters of the Confederacy eventually put up a statue in his honor. https://www.nps.gov/ande/learn/historyculture/camp_sumter_history.htm
Almost a third of the Union prisoners in his care -- 13,000 -- died in just 14 months that the camp existed.
The thing I read recently relating Walt Whitman and "friends of Dorothy" makes me wonder about subtext here. Is this...a euphemism way of saying if the Fenians invade, the Canadian militia will wind up just inviting them in for dinner and gay romance?
Reading an article this morning from January 4, 1866, about men's fashion, from trousers to long hair to the preponderance of black cloth
@Johnnephew NextDoor was slower then, but little else has changed.
@Johnnephew Oh, they were trying to canonize him all through the Civil Wat, they just kept missing.
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Fine. Enjoy your meal, and tip your waitstaff. I’ll be here all week!
@Johnnephew that’s fascinating
@Johnnephew and had to take history classes that weren’t my speciality (Japan) and took one on that era. It was fascinating. And depressing.