Good Enough for Hackman
Asheville's Mayor Says "No" to Picture with HK Edgerton
(See Gene Hackman Signs Civil War Book in Asheville - below- for Photo Details)

Gene Hackman signs Civil War Book in Asheville
Meets H.K. Edgerton in jovial verbal exchange

H. K. Edgerton protests: Has NASCAR lost its roots?

The Un-Civil War in Missouri

Contemplating the Southern Black Man

Causes of the Uncivil War
Part One of a Series
by Mike Scruggs
A Brief Explanation of the Impact of the Morrill Tariff

Most Americans believe the U. S. “Civil War” was over slavery. They have to an enormous degree been miseducated. The means and timing of handling the slavery issue were at issue, although not in the overly simplified moral sense that lives in postwar and modern propaganda. But had there been no Morrill Tariff there might never have been a war. The conflict that cost of the lives of 650,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and perhaps as many as 50,000 Southern civilians and impoverished many millions for generations might never have been.

The Hanging of Mary Surratt
Part One of a Series
by Mike Scruggs
On July 7, 1865, forty-two-year-old Mary Surratt, an attractive, dark-haired widow, was hanged on the gallows at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington along with three others convicted of complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by a military court. Mary Surratt was the only woman of the four. She was, in fact, the first woman ever executed by the government of the United States. The execution of Mary Surratt was not a triumph of justice. It was a disgraceful political atrocity that still stains the national conscience and mars the American ideal of justice.

Part Two: Background of Abduction Plot
The Surratt tavern and inn at Surrattsville was both a polling place and post office. John Surratt, Sr. had been the first postmaster there. During the war it became a stopping place for Confederate and even Union agents and couriers traveling between Washington and Richmond. Naturally, it was an ideal first stopping place in Booth's plan to abduct Lincoln. Two days before the aborted abduction attempt on March 20, John Surratt, Jr., David Herold, and George Atzerodt visited there and deposited two carbines with the proprietor, John Lloyd. Lloyd was a Confederate sympathizer and occasional agent and courier when sober.

Part Three: The Military Trial
The Military Commission trial of the alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination convened on May 9, 1865. Court was held in a 30-foot-by-25-foot room at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington, near the cells of the accused. The weather was generally hot and humid and the ventilation of the makeshift courtroom was poor. This frequently challenged the span of attention of the military tribunal. The prisoners sat behind their defense attorneys on seats raised about one foot higher. The hoods of the male prisoners were removed, but they were not allowed to speak, except to their defense attorneys, or to move. Their restricted movement made it difficult to get the attention of their attorneys. Despite these restrictions, defendant Lewis Powell managed to shout once that Mrs. Surratt was innocent. On many days the press and a limited number of observers were allowed to attend the sessions. Mary Surratt seemed to be the center of public attention. Many of the observers indulged in conversations heaping humiliating verbal abuse on her within her hearing.

Part Four: The Verdict
On July 7, 1865, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and Mary Sarratt were hanged for conspiring in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Samuel Arnold, Samuel Mudd, and Michael O'Laughlin were given life sentences of hard labor at Dry Tortugas Prison, off the Florida coast. Edward Spangler was given a lesser sentence. Years after the trial, Brigadier General William E. Doster, the attorney for George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell, said that "the trial had been a contest on which a few lawyers were on one side and the whole United States on the other-a case in which the verdict was known beforehand."