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Dr. Adam H. Domby Profile picture
Dr. Adam H. Domby
@AdamHDomby
Historian & Associate Professor at Auburn University, Author of #TheFalseCause. Views are my own.
2 subscribers
Dec 12, 2021 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
In light of American Conservative’s terrible article on Reconstruction I thought I’d share some of what Simon Lewis & I say about similar bad takes in the intro to “Freedoms Gained & Lost: Reconstruction and Its Meanings 150 Years Later” published last week. So some excerpts:🧵1/ Image Reconstruction memory isn’t just about historiography but about modern politics is one argument of our intro. This is part of a fight over how we got where we are today and who we are as a nation (and who gets included). Here is what Lewis and I had to say about it…2/ Image
Sep 10, 2021 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
I kind of wish I lived in Virginia so I could have a vanity plate with Lee on it... you can make your own and see if it’s available here: dmv.virginia.gov/dmvnet/plate_p… License plate with Robert E Lee that says Tr8torLicense plate with Robert E Lee that says LoserLicense plate with Robert E Lee that says BadmanLicense plate with Robert E Lee that says SLAVER So many options
Sep 8, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Tell me you’re not a historian of Reconstruction without saying you’re not a historian of Reconstruction. Image As to the claim that Lee helped reconciliation here is some info on that...
Jul 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Something tells me this isn't legit am I right @RideCannondale? I am surprised @Facebook allows this advertisement...
Jul 6, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Listening to a donor who gave 25 million to UNC ensured Nikole Hannah-Jones went elsewhere. Meanwhile @nhannahjones & Howard have already raised 20 million dollars for her new center & is still fund raising. Listening to one set of donors alienated another.ncpolicywatch.com/2021/07/06/nik… I bet she gets at least 5 million more. And in contrast UNC will have trouble accessing Mellon funds in the future. Indeed, they lost 1.5 million due to the Silent Sam give away. Howard on the other hand got 5 mil from Mellon and 5 mil from MacArthur wral.com/silent-sam-dea…
Jun 3, 2021 • 35 tweets • 7 min read
In light of a few egregious book reviews I want to give you all my rules for writing good book reviews that I share with my students. A Thread: Key things you might want to mention in your review:
1. What is the main thesis/argument of the book (this is usually spelled out in the preface or introduction)? 2) What is the author’s purpose in writing the book?
3) where does it fit in the historiography
Jun 2, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
John is right. This is the sort of book review I would make my graduate students rewrite. Personal attacks, clearly has an axe to grind about the field but is taking it out on one author, & clearly he really wants to write about Confederate monuments being kept up. How many times can you say you dislike a book? We get it dude, you’d rather read Pollard’s Lost Cause. Go write a post about how monuments are good and you’re mad at @ArmyUPress for their new standards.
May 15, 2021 • 24 tweets • 10 min read
Just a reminder, black Confederates aren't a thing. But I figured a few more receipts might help. So I did a long thread using just one story to help us understand what these pensions being cited as proof actually represent. First some background: Some SC state legislators led by @BillChumleySC want to put up a monument to Black Confederates. So I wrote an OpEd when they introduced a bill in 2017. It sums it up pretty well. Key take away: no black Confederates & CSA veterans would hate the proposal thestate.com/opinion/op-ed/…
Feb 1, 2021 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Now you know I love to sh-t in Harvard. But I also like accuracy. So I decided to go look at Harvard’s catalog to see its lack of military history that this article describes (they only teach history of pets it claims) and what I found shocked me! Shocked me! A thread: 1/ First off, Harvard students literally have multiple sections of military history that they can take listed. (It appears these ones are taught at MIT, so they might have to walk down the street for these) but... 2/
Dec 9, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
He’s ignoring a key point: It was too big a win this time to pull off a cheat. Had it been by one state and 5,000 votes this might have come out differently. The court won’t touch it because it wouldn’t shift anything. They can’t overturn three states won by 40,000 votes. Next time the voter suppression might be enough to get it within the margin that it could shift things and they may weigh in. They are keeping their powder dry to maintain the court’s legitimacy. They won’t waste it now.
Dec 7, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
If you missed the @MHS1791 history conference on the 19th Amendment, not to worry. They recorded it & it's online; the highlight of my session might be me telling an originalist that originalism is BS. Constitutional expert Akhil Amar didn't agree with me. Akhil Amar & I had fun discussing originalism. Sadly, no one recorded our phone conversation after where we continued to discuss Originalism for like two hours. Actually, probably for the best, for although we had fun, we got really into the weeds & no ones wants to hear that.
Jul 14, 2020 • 9 tweets • 11 min read
So I finally got the #SlaveRolls index up for anyone to use. Civil War historians who study a specific region or place can now easily zero in on rolls from that area. @Patriot_Pat1 and I worked hard to get these indexed so we hope you find it useful.

adamhdomby.com/slaverolls It is not a perfect dataset yet (and we hope to add features in the future) but it will help historians find useful documents so it is time to let folks use it. We look forward to hearing what you find. It's in excel for now but we hope to create a standalone site eventually.
Jun 5, 2020 • 31 tweets • 11 min read
Seems like today is one of those days we need a reminder that Robert E Lee was not a nice guy. In fact he was kind of a jerk. He supported slavery. He fought for slavery. He was cool with enslaving people. He was cool with war crimes too. Let's take it apart (with receipts) 1/ Lee was not known as a good slave owner. In fact he was known as a cruel one who separated families. Here is in account of him having people whipped and separated from families. 2/ fair-use.org/national-anti-…
Feb 12, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
In light of the news coming out of North Carolina, if anyone has questions about the history of #SilentSam let me know. I literally wrote the book on that monument. 1/ amazon.com/False-Cause-Fa… To briefly summarize. The UDC offered to cover around a third of the cost of the monument but failed to meet their planned amount. They refused to sign any contract that would make them fiscally responsible for #SilentSam. Instead they let @UNC's President take responsibility 2/
Feb 10, 2020 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
Excited that #TheFalseCause officially releases this week. To mark the occasion I want to thank folks who made the book better. Historians often write alone but we don’t edit alone. Here’s a thread on some who helped make it a better book&their own work/1
m.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-false-ca… First I got to thank @HilaryGreen77 who was my first test reader & helped me realize what I was missing. She’s an amazing scholar. Read Educational Reconstruction if you haven’t. Her next book is going to blow apart the field of Civil War memory. /2 amazon.com/Educational-Re…
Jan 29, 2020 • 27 tweets • 14 min read
Today’s #SlaveRolls thread looks at Nathan Bedford Forrest. While indexing @Patriot_Pat1 found roll 2476 listing laborers employed by that Forrest's Cavalry in October 1863. (Patrick collaborated on the research but most of the interpretation below is my own so don't blame him) Both enslaved persons and free persons (probably whites) are listed. This roll is for a unit which are pretty rare in the #slaveroll. General Forrest owned all six of the slaves listed on the roll who were working as teamsters. So his unit was paying Forrest for their labor.
Apr 19, 2019 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
This isn’t the only way that @Ancestry whitewashes slavery. In the past year they also changed their search engine. It used to be if your ancestor owned slaves it would pop up when you searched their name. That’s no longer true. The slave censuses are no longer name searchable. This change means you won’t ever know your ancestor was a slave owner unless you specifically go looking and do a keyword search specifically on the slave census. Even then it’s harder to find them as it doesn’t look for common misspellings or initials anymore.
Mar 11, 2019 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
This is terrible. The writers’ representation of Wade Hampton and that monument is so backward it hurts. It is factually inaccurate and he should know better. @postandcourier postandcourier.com/opinion/commen… At the dedication of the Hampton monument Samuel Mitchell spoke. Not surprisingly given the audience & the celebratory nature of the monument, Mitchell focused not on wartime defeat but on Hampton’s postwar career as the leader of the South Carolina Red Shirts and Rifle Clubs.
Mar 1, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I think its worth considering who we are writing for when we "Dunk" on D'Souza (I have seen some people complaining it just gives him attention). He has over a million followers so if all of my followers decide to go look at his feed it doesn't drastically increase his exposure. Quite the opposite. If he replies to us, it increases our exposure ten fold. Far more people will read my tweets than will read my academic writing. Yes, he is an easy target (almost a straw man), but that doesn't make it any less useful as an outreach tool to teach with.
Feb 28, 2019 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
So a real quick mention of some problems with @DineshDSouza. @KevinMKruse took him apart already but I have a book coming out next year that addresses how Democratic politicians fabricated a past to justify racist policies in Jim Crow North Carolina so I take this one personally. It sort of reminds me of what @DineshDSouza & the some in the GOP do today. They fabricated a past through a selective use of decontextualized facts, willful amnesia to evidence that challenges their narrative, and straight up lies to justify a world view that skewed reality.
Dec 26, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As someone who actually studied Winston Salem’s Civil War for both his PhD & MA I have thoughts. Some of the community in 1865 would have approved of the vandalism. There was so much anti-Confederate dissent during the Civil War that the CSA sent front line troops to suppress it. For example, in Feb/Mar 1865 around 50 deserters and draft dodgers (recusant conscripts) were rounded up and sent to the front lines. Five men were summarily executed without a trial by a CSA Captain. He was later charged with murder but received a post war amnesty.