Welcome to the fourth installment of This Week in Southern History. I am glad to be back on schedule with these. The weeks between August 12 and September 2 will be covered next year at those times.
SEPTEMBER 2
1864: Union troops led by infamous General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta during the American Civil War. The city would be burnt to the ground about a month later before Sherman’s army set off on the “March to the Sea.”
SEPTEMBER 3
1783: The American Revolutionary War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The war’s latter half, fought extensively in the American South, had been particularly destructive, bloody, stubbornly contested, and fought. The end of the war led to the independence of the United States, and with it the severing of America’s connection to Great Britain.
SEPTEMBER 4
1950: The Darlington Raceway, in Darlington, South Carolina, (also known as “The Track Too Tough to Tame”) was the site of the first 500-mile NASCAR race. There were twenty five thousand in attendance, with U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond as official marshal.
The Darlington race was unique in that it was a professional affair, on asphalt roads that were in better
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(The opinions in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Southern Nation News or SN.O.)