It’s been more than 140 years since the guns fell silent, but the U.S. Civil War apparently still has the power to provoke. According to this story in American Libraries Online, a thief recently stole two Civil War Era documents from an exhibition at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The article states that the library estimated the combined value of the two documents at only $400; other, more valuable items were passed over by the thief. Removed from the exhibition case were a confederate soldier’s furlough and the medical examination certificate of a slave. “Retired police captain Walt Hilderman, who loaned the documents to the library, said that the thief could have been motivated by controversy stemming from his split with the group Sons of Confederate Veterans…”
“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” –Henry Miller