History Twitter is Good II
Twitter is often a hellscape of pile-ons and bad opinions, but once you find your people, there’s nothing like it. Here are the most thoughtful, vexing, delightful tweets I bookmarked from historians over the last couple of weeks.
By the numbers: In 1897, Helen Dortch, 34, married Longstreet, 76. The Civil War ended in 1865. She was a widow from 1904-1962, more than half of her 99 years. They had no children.
Imagine rushing to a bookstore on pub day, hurriedly opening it up to the chapter about you, and seeing this.


Don’t get John Locke started on sourdough starters.


File under “I had no idea!”





When Americans are chiller than the French.


There’s this.


On a related note.



Elmo’s politics are right.


I’ve never read anything like this. Historians rarely talk about the stories we tell while living our own, particularly early in our career, when we’re under such intense pressure and scrutiny.


Recent history. Imagine if he’d incited an insurrection!
Don’t read, don’t vote, let us get away with anything.





Facial hair was a flex.


Chaotic good.


This feels true for many of us.
Did you know founding father Henry Knox was a bookseller before the Revolution? I’ll forever be indebted to him for writing detailed letters to his wife, which I quoted heavily in You Never Forget Your First.


Archives are essential to my work, and most have been closed or inundated with requests for almost two years. They were just reopening or were scheduled to be…but this keeps happening.


50% of tweets fall under “you do you.”




On a related note:
I look forward to reading Tiya Miles’ All That She Carried, excerpted in The Atlantic in June.
My great grandmother Rose
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
Ruth Middleton
1921
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