Blog
Published: 8/15/22
Major Knipe Winging a Secessionist
Joseph F. Knipe Library of Congress The following news item and image about an incident involving Union officer Joseph Knipe ran in Harper’s Weekly on July 20, 1861—the day before...
Published: 8/10/22
Dreams of Victory (2022)
Among Southerners of the Civil War generation, no Confederate general inspired as much debate and strong feelings as Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard; he was either loved or hated. History, however,...
Published: 7/27/22
A Failed Vision of Empire (2022)
In 1870, an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal provided an overview of the history of manifest destiny.[1] Orators, the author commented, used to speak “earnestly of the ‘manifest destiny’ of our Republic...
Published: 7/22/22
Quick Picks: First Bull Run Books
Library of Congress The Battle of Bull Run Looking to do some reading on the First Battle of Bull Run? We asked Harry Smeltzer, proprietor of the website Bull Runnings,...
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Published: 7/21/22
First Bull Run
On July 21, 1861, Union and Confederate forces clashed just north of Manassas, Virginia, in the war’s first major land battle. The engagment brought together inexperienced northern and southern volunteers,...
Published: 7/20/22
All for the Union (2022)
In what can only be described as a labor of love, John Simpson provides readers with a detailed glimpse of the climactic eastern theater of the rebellion through the lens...
Published: 7/13/22
In The Houses of Their Dead (2022)
The same afternoon actor Edwin Booth was laid to rest in New York City, more than twenty federal workers perished at Ford’s Theater—the place where, nearly three decades before, his...
Published: 7/11/22
Extra Voices: Salt Pork
Library of Congress In the Voices section of our Summer 2022 issue we highlighted quotes about one of the more common foods consumed by soldiers on both sides: salt pork....
Published: 7/6/22
To Walk About in Freedom (2022)
In the middle of the Great Depression, the federal government launched an ambitious effort to interview surviving ex-slaves. Employees for the Federal Writers’ Project scoured the South and produced reams...
Published: 6/29/22
Gettysburg (2022)
No military engagement in American history (and perhaps few in all of world antiquity) has received more attention than the Battle of Gettysburg. One recent bibliography of the war’s bloodiest...
Published: 6/22/22
CARROLL: Invisible Wounds (2021)
Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Civil War Soldiers by Dillon J. Carroll. Louisiana State University Press, 2021. 978-0-80716-9667. $45.00. Historians of the Civil War have been fascinated by mental illness...
Published: 6/21/22
The Five Best Books on Lincoln and His Commanders
Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln was not a military man, yet in March 1861 he became commander in chief of forces that would soon face the task of suppressing an...
Published: 6/15/22
Spectacle of Grief (2022)
Early on the morning of Sunday, January 15, 1893, several thousand people huddled outside of Huntington Hall in Lowell, Massachusetts, undeterred by the biting winds that squalled across New England....
Published: 6/14/22
Grand Opening of American Civil War Museum’s Robins Theater
American Civil War Museum We recently asked Jeniffer Maloney, director of marketing and public relations at American Civil War Museum, about their new Robins Theater opening this month. She gave...
Published: 6/13/22
Ticks in Camp
The Diary of a Young Officer Serving with the Armies of the United States During the War of the Rebellion (1909) Josiah M. Favill, 57th New York Infantry Josiah M....
Published: 6/8/22
Gettysburg’s Lost Love Story (2022)
History is replete with heart-rending stories of star-crossed lovers. Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex, Admiral Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton, General John Reynolds...
Published: 6/3/22
Eyewitness to Cold Harbor
Meade’s Headquarters, 1863–1865 (1922) Colonel Theodore Lyman Between May 31 and June 12, 1864, the armies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee clashed near Mechanicsville, Virginia, in the...
Published: 6/1/22
Love & Duty (2022)
Historian Angela Esco Elder’s debut monograph joins a growing body of scholarship probing the lived consequences of the Civil War. Complementing recent work by Diane Miller Sommerville, Brian Craig Miller,...