A comment to Erik’s grave post this morning mentioned how in a sense the lynching of Leo Frank was an American version of the Dreyfus affair, although obviously there are many big differences. Robert Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism points out how the original KKK was a kind of proto-fascist organization avant la lettre, and he notes as well that the Dreyfus affair was an important precursor to the rise of fascism proper.

Similar ingredients mingled in the popular emotions aroused in France after 1896 against Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish staff officer wrongly accused of spying for Germany. The case convulsed France until 1906. The anti-Dreyfus camp enlisted in defense of the authority of the state and the honor of the army both conservatives and some Leftists influenced by traditional anticapitalist anti-Semitism and Jacobin forms of nationalism. The pro-Dreyfus camp, mostly from Left and center, defended a universal standard of the rights of man. The nation took precedence over any universal value, proclaimed the anti-Dreyfusard Charles Maurras, whose Action Française movement is sometimes considered the first authentic fascism. When a document used to incriminate Dreyfus turned out to have been faked, Maurras was undaunted. It was, he said, a “patriotic forgery,” a faux patriotique . . .

The term national socialism seems to have been invented by the French nationalist author Maurice Barrès, who described the aristocratic adventurer the Marquis de Morès in 1896 as the “first national socialist.”
Morès, after failing as a cattle rancher in North Dakota, returned to Paris in the early 1890s and organized a band of anti-Semitic toughs who attacked Jewish shops and offices. As a cattleman, Morès found his recruits among slaughterhouse workers in Paris, to whom he appealed with a mixture of anticapitalism and anti-Semitic nationalism. His squads wore the cowboy garb and ten-gallon hats that the marquis had discovered in the American West, which thus predate black and brown shirts (by a modest stretch of the imagination) as the first fascist uniform. Morès killed a popular Jewish officer, Captain Armand Meyer, in a duel early in the Dreyfus Affair, and was himself killed by his Touareg guides in the Sahara in 1896 on an expedition to “unite France to Islam and to Spain.” “Life is valuable only through action,” he had proclaimed. “So much the worse if the action is mortal.”

Paxton also points out that at the height of the Dreyfus frenzy in 1898, Jewish shops were looted, and Jews in French Algeria were murdered. Indeed, he argues that if historians had been asked in say 1920 which country was more likely to engage in massive anti-Semitic repression, France or Germany, no one would have chosen Germany.

One big difference between the Dreyfus and Frank affairs is that the former was a vastly bigger deal within its respective culture. It’s almost impossible to overstate the degree to which the Dreyfus affair convulsed French society for an entire decade, while today I doubt one in a hundred Americans would recognize Leo Frank’s name (I’m assuming here that the Dreyfus case remains a central event in the contemporary French popular memory, which is admittedly a pure assumption, as I’m basing that on how famous it still is among educated people across the world).

That the Dreyfus affair featured many of the key ingredients that would erupt a couple of decades later into the fascist waves that swept across Europe seems clear. The recent emergence in public discourse in America of Leo Frank truthers, including an official DOD spokesman, is not a good sign to put it mildly. As so often turns out to be the case, the past isn’t even past.

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Dubai’s rise to global prominence has often led it to being one of the primary metonyms for the United Arab Emirates, a sovereign nation of which the Emirate of Dubai is a part. While Dubai and Abu Dhabi tend to dominate the spotlight, the United Arab Emirates is, in fact, a federation of seven emirates — each with its own distinct history, leadership, and culture. Before unification, these emirates existed as separate sovereign entities ruled by individual leaders.

The historic moment that brought them together took place in 1971, when the rulers of the emirates came together to sign the Constitution of the United Arab Emirates. This defining event — the raising of the first U.A.E. flag and the official formation of the nation, occurred at a site that now forms the location of the Etihad Museum

Architecturally striking and rich in symbolism, the museum was designed by Moriyama Teshima Architects to resemble an open manuscript, representing the beginning of the U.A.E.’s story. Seven towering columns are integrated into the structure, each symbolizing a pen used to sign the original declaration. The very declaration is preserved and displayed in Pavilion 6 of the museum.

The museum grounds house a remarkable collection of exhibits, including personal artifacts and original Emirati passports belonging to the founding rulers of the seven emirates. Visitors can also explore the diverse currencies that circulated in the region prior to unification, the most interesting of them being the Gulf Indian rupee, a currency created by the Indian government to combat the strain on its financial reserves as a result of gold smugglers misusing the actual Indian rupee in the Gulf during a tumultuous time when the rupee was legal tender in parts of the Middle East.

More than just a museum, this site serves as a national landmark, offering an immersive journey into the U.A.E.’s path to unity and celebrating the vision, diplomacy, and cooperation that brought the federation to life.

Disclaimer: I received this wine as a sample but all opinions are my own.

Narince is such a fantastically flexible grape. We’ve seen it in on its own, in blends, no oak ages, too much oak aging, skin contact, sparkling, and semi-sweet. It makes a wine for every palate. 

For years, Arda has made a Reserv Narince. It’s a beautiful wine, one of my favorites. But, I’ve always wondered why the grape wasn’t a regular part of its Kuşlu lineup. And, while I still don’t know the answer to that, I am thrilled that now there IS an Arda Kuşlu Narince!

Arda Bağcılık

Arda Bağcılık is a small, family-run winery tucked near the historic town of Edirne in Turkey’s Thrace region. Founded in 2007 by Ilyas Saç, this small production winery is a family affair tended to by Saç’s children. Wine lovers all, his daughter Şeniz oversees the wine production while his son Yavuz, a wine scholar, and his wife Bahar manage the winery. 

Situated in the north western tip of Turkey, winters here are cold and snowy, and summers are dry with constant northern winds. Stratas of sand and stone over terra rosa and clay ensure that drainage is not a problem in the fields and helps with Arda’s efforts to cultivate low yields and high-quality grapes. Arda has doubled its capacity since opening and now can produce up to 100,000 bottles a year spread across native and international grapes. They cultivate or cooperate with growers of Narince and Papazkarası alongside Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Gamay, and Merlot. 

Narince

Narince is probably the most widely grown native white grape in Turkey. It originally comes from the Tokat region near the Black Sea, where it thrives in rich, alluvial soils. But over time, it’s made its way into vineyards all across the country—from the Aegean coast to Thrace.

Harvest usually happens in the second half of September, but that timing can be tricky for winemakers. Most of the vineyards in Tokat are owned by independent growers rather than wineries. These growers often sell the grapes to winemakers and the leaves to other buyers. In fact, Narince leaves are a traditional choice for making yaprak sarma (stuffed grape leaves). The problem is, the leaves are picked when they’re at their best—well before the grapes are ripe—leaving the fruit exposed to disease and damage from sun and wind. This disconnect in timing and quality control may explain why Narince has found homes in other parts of Turkey, where winemakers can better manage the entire growing process and create a variety of styles with this terroir-expressive grape.

One of those other parts of Turkey, Thrace, has been a great move for the grape. It is incredibly different from the Black Sea’s moderate and kind of maritime climate. Yet, Narince has thrived in the colder Thracian landscape and varied soils the Strandja Massif gives wines here an expression that at once is Narince…but also something else. 

Arda Kuşlu Narince, 2024

Back in the day, Arda sourced Narince—from outside growers. In fact, their first Narince release was actually under the Kuşlu label! But, back in 2013, they made the wine with purchased fruit. Nice though it was (I can only assume never having had it myself), it didn’t fully reflect Arda’s own hands-on approach—something they’ve since changed by planting Narince vines right there on the estate. Growing their own grapes has given them much more control over quality—and it shows.

But this is about more than just making better wine. By growing Narince in Edirne, Arda is helping expand the grape’s terroir footprint. And now, Arda has expanded its own footprint with this wine.

The Arda Kuşlu Narince used whole bunch pressed grapes, fermented in stainless steel tanks. Unlike the Rezerv, there’s not oak at all. I’d have known this was Narince without looking at the label as soon as I put the nose in my glass. The characteristic aromas of white flowers, tree and stone fruit, and notes of orange floated out of the glass. Sipping revealed a generous palate with a weighty finish giving a nod to Black Sea Narince’s weight and slight oiliness. The fruit and flower flavors wrapped around a strong, acidic backbone, balancing the 13% ABV. 

Not only is this a delicious wine, like all those in Arda’s Kuşlu series, its quality punches way above its price category.

The post Narince Taking Wing with Arda Kuşlu appeared first on The Quirky Cork.

This is the grave of Mary Phagan, plus the pro-lynching propaganda placed there.

The story of Mary Phagan is a sad one and also an infuriating one in terms of what happened after her death.

The South was changing rapidly in the early 20th century and as these things go, people liked some of that and they did not like much of the rest of it. The rise of the textile mills transformed the little southern towns of the Piedmont, from Alabama up through north Georgia, the Carolinas, and east Tennessee. People from farms moved into these towns for work. Since child labor was part of the appeal for northern capital to move to the South, many of them were children. One of them was Mary Phagan, a young girl whose family moved to the growing textile town of Marietta, Georgia after she was born in 1899, in Florence, Alabama. Now, not every new factory was a textile factory. Some made other things. Phagan’s family was in Marietta, but she got a job in the National Pencil Company factory in nearby Atlanta. Her supervisor was a man named Leo Frank. One day, Frank saw her and then later that night, she was found dead in the factory, murdered after being raped. That day was also Confederate Memorial Parade Day, so the racists were all frothing at the mouth. She wanted to attend the parade but never made it.

What happened to Phagan remains unknown. But it’s extremely unlikely Frank killed her. A janitor is the most likely suspect. In any case, the murder of Phagan became a huge cause in Atlanta. That this factory was owned by Jews and northern Jews for that matter made the outrage reach a fever pitch. Suspicion fell on Leo Frank. He was charged with murder based on no evidence. The janitor was kept in isolation for six weeks and then told to testify against him, despite telling wildly different stories all the time about how Frank had him help hide the body. Mobs surrounded the courthouse, demanding a conviction. The entire city of Atlanta wanted to see the Jew pay for killing that nice white girl.

A leading musician known as Fiddlin’ John Carson, who later would become one of the first recording stars of country music, helped raise the stakes here, writing songs about Mary Phagan. When Frank was found guilty, Atlanta celebrated.

Meanwhile, Jews around the nation were aghast. Frank had incompetent defense lawyers. When the leading Jewish lawyer Louis Marshall gave advice to his lawyers, they ignored him entirely. There were appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, but they were all on procedural grounds, not on the point that he was not guilty and it was a farce. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes did vote to throw out the convictions based on the fact that it was a trial held in a mob atmosphere, but they were the only justices to do so.

Pressure grew to commute the sentence and let Frank free. The Georgia governor, John Slaton, was on the fence. But here came Tom Watson. The former Populist had now turned full on race-baiter and anti-Semite. He used his powerful newspaper network to demand justice for Phagan, which meant the death sentence for Frank. Slaton stayed on the fence despite the pressure. Although he was convinced of Frank’s innocence, he commuted the sentence to life in prison, assuming that once feelings cooled a bit, Frank would be found completely innocent and let free. Fiddlin’ John Carson was on the statehouse steps performing his new songs about Phagan in protest of the commutation in front of large crowds.

Frank was sent to a prison farm. He was nearly killed by another inmate who slashed his throat with a knife. On August 16, 1915, 25 citizens of Marietta, where Phagan was from, arrived at the prison farm and took him. It does seem that the guards did anything at all to even pretend to prevent this. They drove him to Marietta. And they lynched him from an oak tree. He was dead at the age of 31. Fiddlin’ John Carson then wrote another song about the oak tree and celebrating the murder. A crowd of 3,000 people gathered around the tree the next day and took pictures of themselves with the body.

This all helped spur the recreation of the Ku Klux Klan, also in 1915, and which dominated much of the nation for the next decade, using ideas of immigrants threatening white women as its core to succeed. While this iteration of the KKK was anti-Black, that wasn’t really where it focused its attention. It was on immigrants and especially Jews like Frank, as well as sexually liberated women who were voting too. The best way to think about the second KKK is as the real precursor to MAGA, though it never developed a Trump figure. But it’s really the same combination of nostalgia, fear, hate, and cynicism that drives these people too, with a lot of emphasis on the first issue, looking to roll back the nation to a time when its members felt more comfortable than they did with all this scary modernism changing their lives.

In 1982, an 83 year old man who had worked as an office boy all the way back in the day testified that he had seen the janitor move the body of Phagan to the factory’s basement after he had presumably murdered her. This led the state of Georgia to pardon Frank in 1986, a mere 71 years after his lynching.

Now, the fact that Phagan was killed and Frank lynched for it is just a horrible, awful, no-good story. Every part about it is awful. This would be a sad and depressing grave post anyway. And then you add in the pro-lynching apologies placed at the grave site after 1986. This isn’t some leftover from 1925. This is new! Better make sure to note that the pardon did not exonerate Leo Frank! Need to remind everyone that we totally think he did and no pardon by squishy Jew loving liberals is going to get in the way of our beliefs about this! It’s so, so gross and awful. They’re ready to lynch again to protect our white women!

I came out of that cemetery really cursing the South more bitterly than almost any other time and I’ve seen a lot of horrors of southern history.

Mary Phagan is buried in Marietta City Cemetery, Marietta, Georgia.

If you would like this series to visit other people involved in this case, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Fiddlin’ John Carson is in Atlanta and Tom Watson is in Thomson, Georgia. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

The post Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,925 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

SUNDAY, July 6th “Californiaaa”

12pm - Touch down at SFO

12:45pm - 1:20pm - Drive around the Mission District to look for parking (this is a great way to intimately get to know about a 6 block radius). One of us has to stay behind to pump milk (new mom alert!) and then subsequently dump it out into the gutter behind our parked car. This feels very San Francisco to us. No further questions!

1:30pm - Arrive at Bernal Cutlery and are greeted by Gil Levy, Chez Panisse alum and the man behind their legendary conservas curation. There is truly every type of knife you could ever need and so many that you may never use but deeply desire. Walls of perfectly refurbished vintage knives side-by-side with shining new Friedr Herder blades, laid out on plush felt pads to hold in your hand like it’s a high-end jewelry store. Electric.

Things that caught our eye:

• Ati Manel Spiced Smoked Mackerel Pâté (best tinned fish packaging out there?)

• Bernal Cutlery Oyster Knives (good heft and sharp blades—perfect for cold water shells)

• Pocari Sweat

2pm - On our walk to lunch, we stumble upon the San Francisco Poster Syndicate installing a new mural and handing out posters which we each get to take home for a small donation.

2:30pm - Chorizo burritos from La Oaxaqueña on Mission St. eaten while overlooking the skyline in Dolores Park surrounded by off leash dogs and sun-burned butt cheeks. A close-up magician emerges through a cloud of weed smoke to offer a private show and, don’t worry folks, he takes Venmo.

3pm - A quick coffee tasting at Fellow (a few doors down from Bernal on Valencia) to shake off the cobwebs and get ready for the road. This is more like an art gallery than a coffee shop and Jon is a curator at the top of his game. A must-stop for any bean geek.

3:30pm - Drive to Napa. ETA 1 hour and 15 minutes Listen to our playlist here!

7pm - Dinner at Ad Hoc

Gracious and all-knowing General Manager, Dan, fluently guides us through the daily changing menu. He’s been in the Thomas Keller universe for 18 years and effortlessly exudes the hospitality the TKRG is known for. Fun fact: he is also an artist and created the famous pig logo for the restaurant and was asked to make the drawings seen in the Ad Hoc cookbook!

What is so amazing about Ad Hoc is how they serve their prix fix menu family style, using world-class ingredients and hospitality that makes you feel exceedingly special, yet is how they treat every single guest. It feels like a neighborhood spot where you could easily become a regular. As if this could and should be done everywhere around the country… Alas, it cannot be replicated.

—

First Course - Tequillaberry Salad (paired with Jasper Hill 18 month aged clothbound cheddar, local fig jam on toasted bread from Bouchon Bakery)

Main Course - New York Strip Steak with horseradish cream and au jus, buttered peas and carrots, and an insane creamed corn made with the marrow of the corn cob. And the Fried Chicken add-on, of course.

Dessert - Vanilla soft serve with a trio of chocolate sauce, butterscotch, and strawberry preserves and homemade chantilly cream.

8:30pm - An unnecessary nightcap at RO next door so that we can say we got our passports stamped at every TKRG spot in town. Uni toast and cornets topped with Osetra caviar, two glasses of Modicum Blanc de Blanc. Still water for the table. We’ve gotta go.

9:30pm - Fumble around with the rental car to figure out how to turn the headlights on (Why do they keep changing cars? We figured this out already!) Pit stop for cans of Red Bull. Drive back to Napa with our high beams on.

Good night.

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MONDAY, July 7th “Laundry Day”

4:45am - East coast hours wake up call, fresh as daisies. Might miss one meeting or two. Spend the morning working from the airbnb and eating leftover Ad Hoc fried chicken over the sink.

10:30am - Breakfast at Bouchon bakery. Plain croissants, kouign amann, ham and cheese baguette, iced beverages.

11:45am - Arrival at The French Laundry. We’re greeted by Sous Chef Tim Chiang who gives us a tour of the restaurant with the sweetest smile. He whisks us through hidden doors, the dining rooms, The Kitchen To End All Kitchens, the wine room, and the China room where their entire collection of beautiful dinnerware is stored in cling-wrapped stacks, waiting to be chosen for one of the many courses each night.

The French Laundry…

Around the farm, we call it "dropping the F-bomb". We've had the privilege of working with Chef Thomas Keller for over 20 years, a relationship that still leaves us wordlessly, utterly grateful. It's still our most powerful testimonial; so potent that it is likely the reason why many of us at Island Creek have jobs.

As farmers and purveyors, we're in an endless cycle of growing food and then letting it go. Once it's out of our hands, we're left hoping that our efforts and intentions are not only honored by the chefs who serve it, but felt by the person who eats it. The French Laundry sets the bar for how every farmer would hope their product is treated.

12pm TRAINING TIME

Marisol Bradford, our fantastic National Sales Manager, leads a staff training in the dining room, spilling the details into what makes an Island Creek, an Island Creek; how merroir shapes our oysters in just the right way for use in the iconic dish, Oysters and Pearls. It’s moments like these, having the privilege to share our passion with others who are at the top of the game, that makes it all worth it.

1pm - PHEW, the nerves are starting to dissipate. The most intimidating part of our trip is now behind us. Chef Tim gives us a tour of The French Laundry Culinary Garden across the street. It’s a wonderland of stunning flowers, thirsty bees, crawling vines, and row upon row of succulent berries, cucumbers, artichokes, and long beans.

Chef Tim reaches down to pick each of us a strawberry that proceeds to change every single one of us on a cellular level. The Mara de bois strawberry; so juicy, sweet, flavorful. A naughty little berry that we’ll never forget. We crave her, still.

4pm - Dinner time at The French Laundry! As parents to young children (minus Marisol) who are still on east coast time, we are PUMPED for this early reservation. We fantasize about what movie we’ll watch when we get back to the Airbnb after dinner.

I mean, what can we really say about this dining experience that will do it justice or hasn’t been said a million times over? It was exquisite, thrilling, beautiful, abundant. Yes the food and the wine are incredible, but the service is what takes it to the next level. This is hospitality at its finest where every night is the Superbowl.

An often overlooked element in accounts of the storied service at The French Laundry is the music. On the night we dined, it was a perfect blend of dad rock, yacht rock and under-appreciated hits from years gone by. The music curation throughout our dinner was either a sly wink from the universe letting us know this was exactly where we were supposed to be or some KGB-level hospitality involving scraping our Spotify and creating the ultimate playlist made just for us, for one night only. I guess we’ll never really know—another myth added to the TKRG lore.

Our inside joke of the evening was that we were waiting for the deviled egg course. 15 minutes later, we were presented with DEVILED QUAIL EGGS on a platter with three perfect divots for the three of us at the table. We laughed a lot at this. We also marveled at how they managed to pull off such a random request, without flaw, on top of regular service, in a few minutes. It was a once in a lifetime experience made even more special by enjoying it (with uncontrollable giggles) together.

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Tuesday, 7/8 “Body by Bouchon”

10am - Breakfast at Bouchon Bakery (again). No shortage of gluten on this trip. We ordered baguette sandwiches, the TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo), chocolate cake, two cheese rolls, a soft pretzel with mustard, and iced coffees. There are still only three of us on this trip, mind you.

Shopping at Finesse (Chef Keller’s retail storefront) - Nate got Mara de bois strawberries and chocolate bars, Marisol got a French Laundry thermos and tote, Michelle got a Surf Club candle and a signed Ad Hoc cookbook.

12pm - Arrive at Bouchon Bistro to record an interview with Chef de Cuisine Ryan King and Marisol all about our years-long relationship and the four things he looks for in a perfectly shucked oyster. Video and Substack are coming soon!

1pm - Marisol dazzled the staff with her oyster knowledge, while we shucked Ninigret Nectars from RI, Shandaphs from Nova Scotia, and Aunt Dotties from our farm in MA. We sampled tinned fish and someone snagged an epi baguette from the Bakery to sop up the residual sauces.

2:15pm - Pit stop at Honor Market for a cold beverage for the drive home, where we are greeted with a FREE HOT DOG, furthering the tradition of eating processed pork products ahead of a Michelin star meal.

5:30pm - Dinner at Bouchon Bistro. We made it to the final dinner in Yountville! We are joined by one of Marisol’s former coworkers from her time with the Barbara Lynch restaurant group in Boston, and her 1.5 year old son, Jameson who sits at the head of the table in a highchair.

We toast to our last night with bubbles. Upon setting down my glass I immediately tip it over, spilling Champagne all over the table, floor, and just narrowly missing the patron sitting to my right. By the grace of Bacchus, the glass did not shatter and we were able to dab up the puddle without a single server noticing. The most discreet Champagne spill to ever occur on planet Earth.

That feels like the perfect place to end this recap. Dinner was a delightful binge of tartare, pâté, fried pig’s ears, Elysian Farms lamb, profiteroles, baguettes… The champagne might’ve spilled but we made the most of it, laughing along the way with full bellies and stories to tell.

Next stop - LOS ANGELES!

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I have long been interested in the Battle of Vicksburg.

On the one hand, the Vicksburg campaign is one of the most well-designed, well-executed campaigns of the Civil War. The details of the campaign were well known even at the time, and even cursory investigation of those details shows Grant to be an outstanding tactical and operational commander. He appropriately assesses the importance of the objective and pursues a variety of innovative techniques for bringing Vicksburg under siege. Most of these fail, but Grant is not daunted and does not allow his men or his senior lieutenants to lose faith. He responds to each failure with the dogged determination that there Must Be a Way, and then he finds that way. He accepts casualties but does not recklessly spend the lives of his men. His opposite numbers are competent if not excellent, yet he systematically manages to curtail their options. It tells you all you need to know about post-war historiography that pop military historians somehow managed to forget the Grant of the Vicksburg campaign in preference for the Butcher of the Overland Campaign, when really the contrast between the two should demonstrate Grant’s flexibility as a commander, as well as the very real tactical proficiency of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

On the other hand, the strategic and political significance of Vicksburg is immense. The Mississippi River System is the most important geographic-socioeconomic fact of the North American continent. Full control of the system grants immense military latitude and immense economic benefit, to the extent that I’m still sometimes a bit surprised that both sides didn’t commit more resources to its capture and control. In an alternative reality where Gettysburg goes differently yet Vicksburg remains the same, the problem for the Confederacy is existential. The Trans-Mississippi Confederacy effectively becomes non-viable after the Union takes full control of the river; even if Lincoln was deterred from making another effort at Richmond, the western Confederate states were basically indefensible. Possibly worse, control of the Mississippi introduced an escape valve for the huge portion of the Confederacy’s population that was in servitude. The viable Confederacy shrinks to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, east Tennessee (not friendly to Richmond), the Carolinas, and Virginia, and most of those areas are under dire threat from Union naval forces.

Anyway, it’s a pretty interesting battle. This week I am free of parental and work responsibilities, so I hopped in the car and drove the nine hours to Vicksburg, inaugurating what I’m going to call the US Grant Victory Tour. Vicksburg is a charming little town in all of the ways you expect a small Mississippi town to be charming. This morning I hit the Vicksburg National Military Park at sunup (it will surprise no one to learn that it’s fucking hot in Mississippi in July), and I was not disappointed. Some pics:

I’ll pause briefly here to note that while I generally hate Confederate iconography, I have no problem whatsoever with Confederate monuments on Civil War battlefields. These spaces belong, in an important sense, to the men who fought and died on them and to the families that supported them. If Mississippi wants to erect a monument to those who died on her behalf at a place like Vicksburg, I have no objection.

This fucker, however, should have every statue expunged from history.

Unfortunately, Grant Circle is off limits because of weather damage, so I couldn’t get a pic of the statue of Grant.

I spent the rest of the morning hitting a couple museums in Vicksburg. The Old Courthouse Museum is perfectly adequate and exactly what you would expect of a Civil War museum in a small Southern town; among other bits of Confederate nostalgia there’s an exhibit dedicated to largely imaginary Black Confederates. However, in a room set aside for general Vicksburg history I found this unexpected sight:

The history here is fascinating; quoting Wikipedia because otherwise I’d just be paraphrasing Wikipedia:

When the town of Vicksburg was incorporated in 1825, with a population of 3,000, there were approximately twenty Jewish settlers, who had immigrated from Bavaria, Prussia, and Alsace–Lorraine.^[1][6] The early Jewish population of men and women were business owners, community leaders, physicians, lawyers, and teachers in the city of Vicksburg.^[1] In 1862, fifty Jewish families came together and formed the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Anshe Chesed in Vicksburg, and received a charter from the state.^[6]

In the 1866 Vicksburg city directory, ninety Jewish families owned thirty-five businesses.^[1] By 1905, there were 659 Jewish people in the city of Vicksburg, which was the peak population (4.44% of the city population).^[1] As of 2014, only some twenty Jewish people were left in Vicksburg; this loss of Jewish population was due to many factors^[1] and occurred statewide.

The history of Jews in the South is weird and the history of Ashkenazi Jews in the South is even weirder, but there you go.

I also hit the Vicksburg Civil War Museum where the experience was… unexpected. The proprietor is a middle-aged Black fella who looked me up and down when I said I wanted to enter and asked “Where you from? You know much about the Civil War?” After I paid my dues he instructed me to begin at the Wall of Secession Declarations, beginning with South Carolina. He had highlighted all of the parts of these declarations that mentioned slavery, which were of course substantial and absolutely damning of arguments that the war was about anything but slavery. I was then guided to a reconstructed slave cabin in which the voices of Black slaves were played on loop. The rest of the collection was absolutely fantastic and supported the general ideological thrust of the museum. As I left, dude was interrogating a bewildered family on whether or not they considered Robert E. Lee to be a traitor. Good times.

I am now in Savannah, TN. Tomorrow’s agenda is ambitious; Shiloh, then Fort Donelson, then Belmont. Planning to start things early.

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