Blog
Published: 1/18/22
Essential Reading on the Peninsula Campaign
anne s.k. brown military collection George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on the move during the Peninsula Campaign In the spring and early summer of 1862, Union general George B....
9
Published: 1/14/22
The Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation—which declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free”—went into effect. Drafted the previous summer, and...
Published: 1/13/22
Word-clouding the Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation—which declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free”—went into effect. Below are...
Published: 1/12/22
GALLMAN: The Cacophony of Politics (2021)
The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War by J. Matthew Gallman. University of Virginia Press, 2021. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0-8139-4656-6. $35.00. When Roy Franklin Nichols penned the...
Published: 1/5/22
Rites of Retaliation (2021)
By the fall of 1862, Jefferson Davis believed he had found a way to control the Union Army. That summer General John Pope had led an army into Virginia, issuing...
Published: 1/4/22
Seeing the Elephant
Union soldier Francis M. Ingram “did not enjoy the 6 of April as well as I hav enjoyed some Sundays.”[2] On the banks of the Tennessee River, the “Rebel tide...
Published: 12/29/21
Stephen A. Swails (2021)
Among the many shelves of biographies chronicling the exploits of Civil War Americans, there are precious few treatments of Black soldiers or sailors. This is just one reason that students...
Published: 12/28/21
Benjamin F. Butler and Military Emancipation
National Archives Major General Benjamin F. Butler What if? This is the eternal question that so often confounds students of Civil War military history, and leads to groundless flights of...
Published: 12/22/21
Robert E. Lee (2021)
“How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” asks Allen C. Guelzo, Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University and the distinguished author of some of this century’s...
Published: 12/17/21
Extra Voices: War’s Grisly Toll
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War In the Voices section of the Winter 2021 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by Union and Confederate soldiers about...
Published: 12/15/21
Searching for Irvin McDowell (2021)
While there are shelves of books about Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, dozens of Civil War generals have not yet scored biographers. One name that falls into this...
Published: 12/8/21
Worthy of a Higher Rank (2021)
On October 22, 1864, three days after a remarkable Union victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek, The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer reported the grim news that one of that community’s most...
Published: 12/6/21
The Best Civil War Books of 2021
The Books & Authors section of our Winter 2021 issue contains our annual roundup of the year’s best Civil War titles. As usual, we’ve enlisted a handful of Civil War...
Published: 12/1/21
Rebel Correspondent (2021)
In 1901, Arba F. Shaw began writing a series of war reminiscences that were published in serialized form in his local newspaper. What began as a brief commentary turned into...
Published: 11/30/21
Prison Tales
Library of Congress Andersonville Prison in 1864 Looking to learn more about Civil War prisons and prisoners of war? We asked historian Brian Matthew Jordan to suggest a handful of...
Published: 11/24/21
The Summer of ’63: Vicksburg & Tullahoma (2021)
On July 7, 1863, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, anxious to maintain Union initiative following pivotal victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, sent a perplexing telegraph to one of his...
Published: 11/17/21
Passing Through the Fire (2021)
Savas Beatie’s popular Emerging Civil War series presents concise titles suited for both enthusiasts and novice students of military history. Increasingly, these brief but detailed studies have shifted away from...
Published: 11/10/21
The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg (2021)
The Summer of ‘63 is an engaging and diverse set of works exploring the Battle of Gettysburg. Regarded by many as the turning point of the Civil War, Gettysburg still...