Confederate States of America

  South Carolina’s State House building in Columbia is the seat of the state’s government, and also a site of controversy regarding the racist past of the Confederate flag. While the flag has since been removed from atop the State House dome, it still flies on the building’s grounds despite criticism from those who feel […]

After the Civil War ended, the prison system in the former Confederate states was under pressure to figure out how to house convicts. Most of their prisons had been destroyed in the war. As an answer to the problem, Southern states invented the convict lease system. In this new system, convicts would be leased out […]