The Single Coolest Series in the History of Newspapers

I realized this morning that I have been remiss in failing to recommend to all and sundry the following Mountain of Awesome:

Starting late last October, the New York Times has been running a (nearly) daily series of blog posts under the title Disunion.

These are essays by eminent historians and authors on the events of each same date in the United States as it was 150 years ago. Many of the entries read like news reports on the events leading up to the American Civil War; others take a broader look at how what happened on that date reflected the nation as it was in those days. All of them rely heavily upon what historians call "primary sources" — diaries, letters, news reports and photographs of people who were there and who did that.

Just this past week, Maj. Robert Anderson and his adjutant, Lt. Abner Doubleday (yeah, the inventor of baseball), brought their tiny force (less than six dozen soliders, but including many of their wives and families, including Mrs. Doubleday, and a brass band) from the indefensible sham that Fort Moultrie had become,  in a desperate night crossing under South Carolinian guns, to an unfinished-but-serviceable Federal fort on an island in the mouth of Charleston Harbor.

An editorial in the next day's Charleston Courier began with these ominous words: "Maj. Robert Anderson, U.S.A., has the unenviable distinction of opening civil war between American citizens by gross breach of faith."

Just this morning (January 1, 1861), the headline of the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer read as follows:

"A WARNING TO THE SECESSION TRAITORS IN OUR MIDST. Western Virginia will Secede from Eastern Virginia, if she Secedes from the Union."

If your political convictions forbid reading the New York Times, you can also join Disunion on Facebook.

Go forth.