"We started a war of aggression for no reason & commenced it by accidentally bombing an elementary school & killing over 100 kids."
That simple fact is so horrific that it's just kind of bouncing on the surface of our collective consciousness. We can't absorb its full implications & significance.
"biquinho pepper"
he just wants you to... be involved
But a moment when you enlist, or are discharged, from the army--as happened for thousands at this camp--is a doorway of life. At NIAHD we love to stand in those and try to peek through.
Mainly, what my students took away from this is right--it's revelatory to 'see' all this in a place that we generally do not associate with the colonial era, on 'new campus' far from our 'ancient' buildings. The built environment of the College Camp was ephemeral.
He'd just been in the battle at Green Springs + seen death for the first time at war. He said he had to "endeavor to conquer this disposition or weakness" because the sight sickened him so. Pension records have plenty of files of people whose hardest service day saw shots fired but no one killed.
These Continental Army camp sites around the country were cosmopolitan in the way the military still is--people from other states, and social classes, who never would have otherwise had reasons to meet each other. I've thought a lot about what Ebeneezer Denny said in his diary about this time:
I do feel a bit patriotic about this--not because I think that Patriots had in general the superior moral position (they didn't, esp on slavery). But because this is full pluralism on display, it's people figuring out how to get along, the proverbial 'common cause'. And because it's just... strange.
One of my students came to believe after this class session that Robert Mursh, a Pamunkey alumnus of W&M's Brafferton Indian school, having served under Lafayette, would have been at this site in September 1781. She poignantly imagined him passing the Brafferton, closed, on his way to Yorktown.
James Harris, part of a very old free Black family from Charles City County, probably served at the camp--his pension app says he served at 'stations around the city' before being deployed to Monmouth, Valley Forge, etc.
"The people hearing that we came from the backwoods, and seeing our savage-looking equipments, seemed as much afraid of us as if we had been Indians. We took pride in demeaning ourselves as patriots and gentlemen, and the people soon treated us with respect and great kindness..." -Philip Slaughter
Cornwallis had burned the new barracks on the way out of town, meaning the 'old' camp sites would have been useful again (and they'd also built a new powder magazine up the Richmond road in the interim). Many different sorts of people came and went.
We can see the French/American allied positions on the wonderful 1781-82 Desandrouins map, georeferenced here, and hence it's known that Lafayette's forces encamped at the site where we stood--around the new West Woods dorms and near the Commons dining hall.
wm-gis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant...
The supposition we made is that the site where Lafayette's American forces encamped in the weeks before Yorktown, was probably the site of the by-then-bygone College Camp, which had been heavily used ca. 1775-78, before they built a barracks elsewhere, and before the capital moved to Richmond.
We tried to find the real site of the College Camp, a Williamsburg place now on William & Mary's campus, where thousands of Virginians (free, enslaved, indigenous, some women camp followers) trained and served in the era of the revolution. This place must have been nuts.
news.wm.edu/2026/01/30/p...
One of the reasons this is so under-appreciated is that our university presidents have been & continue to be almost totally absent from the public square in loudly & collectively condemning this existential assault on our institutions & our industry coming from the far right authoritarian party.
“Trump invaded Venezuela, kidnapped its president, stole a bunch of its oil, sold it, and stashed the money in banks in Qatar” is a stone-cold CLASSIC of this genre
Lincoln: Whenever I hear a man defend slavery, I have the worst urge to see it tried out on *him*.
Wonder what he'd think of the defenders of masked unidentified officials shooting the faces of people who don't comply?
Hard to say which defense lacks more instinct for self-preservation.
JD Vance tweet: I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice presidemt, and the entire administration stands behind them. To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we're going to work even harder to enforce the law.
As a government employee, my salary, my employment records, my research notes, even my email – all are public record.
Meanwhile this upholstery enthusiast thinks that simply revealing the identities of his goons is a crime.
New at the Free Press: A College Student Interrupted My Talk On Why Colonialism Was Good For A Solid Minute - Here IS Why That Is The Biggest Threat to Free Speech in America
yep. i can identify any number of structural issues but at the end of the day the basic problem is the republican party. this has been apparent for at least 20 years. it is also an incredibly unpopular observation to make among “serious” people.
People are here for the funeral of the penny
A “celebration of life” sign
People are sitting down
An obituary that reads “Rest in Pence”
Currently at the funeral for the penny, happening at the Lincoln Memorial:
This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...
"the issue isn’t that we need more 'boy-friendly' reforms. It’s that boys are socialized to compete only with boys and to read girls’ success as illegitimate or emasculating. The result is dissonance, resentment, and disengagement for boys—and hostile climates for girls."
time.com/7335723/auto...
What the hell is the point of the filibuster if not to prevent something like this? I'm at a loss for words.
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
I’ve come to believe that we need to gather considerable forces and a campaign to demand the removal of face masks by ICE, Border Patrol, FBI and police.
It is a practice in conflict with the principles of transparency & accountability that are central to the concept of democracy.
yeah, the idea that Trump will stop Boko Haram types by ending aid to the Nigerian federal government is as confused as the idea that he is actually interested in the welfare of the same Nigerian Christians he put on a categorical travel ban 5 years ago
news-archive.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/03...
