On this day, 150 years ago, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox, Virginia Courthouse. This event essentially ended the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history, which claimed the lives of over 600,000 soldiers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Houston housewife who has quietly collected rare Civil War images for 50 years has sold more than 500 early photographs to the Library of Congress.
Al-Monitor delivers one of the most sobering assessments of the bloody mess in Syria to date, as author Edward Dark returns to his hometown of Aleppo for a look at the plight of the dwindling Christian community, and finds them turning to dictator Bashar al-Assad for protection from the jihadis fighting to overthrow him.
The United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday, March 23rd, in a case deciding whether the State of Texas acted unconstitutionally in disallowing the sale of a license plate displaying the Confederate Flag. The Texas Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) argue that the free speech rights of their members have been violated by the rejection of their 2009 application for the license plate. The license plate bears the Confederate flag and the words “Sons of Confederate Veterans 1896.”
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, President Barack Obama cautioned against judging recent barbaric attacks by ISIS as unique to Islam. He pointed to (among other things) depredations committed by Crusaders over 900 years ago.
On January 15–just four days before the commemoration of General Robert E. Lee’s birthday–The Daily Beast ran a story claiming Lee would have approved of the removal of Confederate battle flags from Washington and Lee University and that Lee wrote in a “self-serving” manner, post-Civil War, to cover his tracks on secession.
A video recently surfaced that allegedly shows a branch of the Syrian army forming a platoon of suicide bombers. The video, uncovered and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on December 30, has not been independently verified outside of MEMRI experts.
Lebanon has implemented a new law requiring Syrian refugees to retain a visa before entering the country in an attempt to limit the prodigious flow of refugees from war-torn Syria into their nation.
The government of Libya, a state currently fighting a civil war, has banned all Palestinians, Sudanese, and Syrian nationals from entering their country.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited his Syrian troops in Jobar to discuss the damage various anti-government factions have done to the state. Speaking just northeast of Damascus as the beleaguered country entered its fourth year of a civil war, he had little hope to offer his troops.
