The Future is Another Country
As a man who found intimacy with another soldier, in a relationship that outlasted the war, Alphons Richter’s story is queer to modern readers. Untangling the strangeness of the emotional, Richter provides insight into the queer history of the United States.
No matter how divided the country is today, no matter the defeats of the past several years, there remains room to be both grateful and vigilant.
There are self-sacrificing military figures in the past who have upheld ideals that even someone left of the Democratic Party might find palatable.
“Confederate Pepe” appeals to a demographically diverse, less digitally organized right movement, yet manages ultimately to “unite the right” through its easy, overreaching racist symbolism.
White backlash was never limited to the southern states. Vast and sudden changes after 1865—especially implied by the prospect of emancipating four million black people—stirred ugly counterattacks and racial backlash against the nation’s free black northern population.
Removal without consideration of the historical context that led to their placement and the social wounds inflicted by white supremacy that are continually reopened in communities around the nation does nothing to resolve structural racism and heal those wounds.
The unit maintains the standard politico-centric narrative traditional to the Civil War era. Published in 2010, this narrative arc ignores or underemphasizes intriguing historiographic contributions exploring such issues as social changes on the home front, the divided nature of Southern society, and the significance of guerrilla warfare, especially along the border between North and South.
Growing up in an Irish Catholic family, my family embodies many of the stereotypes one thinks of around St. Patrick’s Day. The cousins Patrick and Danny Boy. The fond childhood memories of pubs and Irish music, most often played by a family friend who immigrated to the United States and became, you guessed it, a police officer.
