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[ This originally appeared on Lauren Johnson's blog on October 21, 2013 ] Lauren Johnson Much has been written about the violence of the Wars of the Roses. Civil conflicts inevitably leave a deeper scar than international ones, and this 15th-century combat has lived on in collective memory. Anne of York and her second husband, Thomas St. Leger. However, until recently, one group whose fortunes were  closely affected by the Wars has been overlooked: the noblewomen involved. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of medieval history will know why this is. Chroniclers write about the public deeds of noblemen, surviving records document the actions and decisions of that group because they were the ones who attended Parliament and fought in battles. Finding information about women – even the richest, most influential women – is hard work. And it is only with the increasing interest in social and gender history in the late 20th century that the difficult sleuthing necessary to unrave...

Heather Cox Richardson Last week the U.S. Navy began the process of salvaging the CSS Georgia . There were two Confederate ships that bore this name. One was a raider; this one was an ironclad battery moored before Savannah to protect the city. Confederates scuttled it in a channel of the Savannah River in View from Fort Jackson of the buoy marking the wreck of the CSS Georgia. December 1864 to keep it out of the hands of General Sherman’s advancing troops. Next year, 150 years after it went down, it will come back into daylight. Although the CSS Georgia was placed on the National Historic Register in 1987, it had no great military significance. It might have slowed down the taking of Savannah; too slow to maneuver, it might not have. Indeed, in its twenty months of operations, the CSS Georgia never fired a shot. It shows up only rarely in records: there are no existing plans for its construction. We don’t even know how big it was; sources say anything from 150 to 250 feet long. It i...