freedmen

Ordinary Life for Romans Under Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius
History

Ordinary Life for Romans Under Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius

Bruce Strom 3

Professor Aldrete in his Wondrium lecture on the History of the Ancient World points out that the ancient historians and sources are silent on what life was like for the many farmers who labored in obscurity, that these ancient histories are really histories of political leaders and city dwellers. For every person who lived in the city in much of the ancient world, eight or nine lived on a family farm. The ratio differed around Rome, about a quarter of the people nearby lived in the city. Most people never traveled more than twenty miles from home, never saw a king, never read a book, or heard a philosopher speak. Most people living on farms did not even know the name of the Roman Emperor, and life went on as before no matter who was emperor. […]

General Longstreet and Reconstruction
Civil Rights

Terror During Reconstruction, White League Confronts General Longstreet and Union Army

Bruce Strom 2

We will tell the stories of General Longstreet and the Union Major Merrill. General James Longstreet, a former Confederate general who had become a pariah in the South when he changed his party affiliation to Lincoln’s Republican Party, tried to prevent the insurrection in New Orleans. For his second posting during Reconstruction, Major Merrill attempted to reverse the insurrection of parishes on the outskirts of New Orleans. […]

Civil Rights

Chaos of Reconstruction, Terror After the Civil War

Bruce Strom 1

Major Merrill says that he knew that the “Ku Klux Klan is much greater in numbers than is commonly supposed, and that a large number of the most respectable people in the county are more or less intimately connected with it. The debauched sentiment of the old slave-holding communities sees no great offense in whipping a negro for being a radical. The old sentiment is rife, where differences of opinion are settled by killing the man who dares to disagree with them.” […]