Blog
Published: 7/2/20
Agenda: July 2020 Events
Library of Congress The view from Little Round Top on the Gettysburg battlefield. Looking for a Civil War event—virtual or in person—to attend in July? Below are some very good...
Published: 7/1/20
The Three-Cornered War (2020)
Since the origins of the Civil War were rooted in discussions over western territory, one would think scholarship on the ensuing conflict might keep the American West in view. Yet...
Published: 6/24/20
Grand Army Women (2020)
As the largest fraternal order for Union veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic has invited much attention from historians. Stuart F. McConnell, Mary R. Dearing, and Barbara A. Gannon—among...
Published: 6/17/20
Targeted Tracks (2019)
The Civil War is often considered a “modern” war for its use of such technologies as photography, telegraphic communication, aerial reconnaissance, steam-powered and ironclad vessels, repeating rifles, and strategic use...
Published: 6/15/20
Extra Voices: Camp Sports
Library of Congress Union prisoners play a game of baseball while in confinement at Salisbury, North Carolina. In the Voices section of the Summer 2020 issue of The Civil War...
Published: 6/12/20
History’s “Grant” Considered
History.com Long anticipated and much ballyhooed, History Channel’s May 2020 release of Grant, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Grant’s most recent biographer, Ron Chernow, as executive producers (no Lin-Manuel Miranda here),...
Published: 6/10/20
How the South Won the Civil War (2020)
At the Neshoba County Fair in 1980, Ronald Reagan “brought the South and the West together to take over national politics” (185). Reagan, wearing a cowboy hat—a regular feature of...
Published: 6/3/20
Rebels in the Making (2020)
Rebels in the Making, writes author William Barney, offers “for the first time, a one-volume narrative history of secession in all the fifteen slave states” (3). In the ensuing 315...
Published: 5/29/20
The Best Books About Ulysses S. Grant
We recently asked a number of top Civil War historians to let us know their favorite books about Ulysses S. Grant. The results are below. The books are ranked in...
Published: 5/27/20
Abraham Among the Yankees (2020)
In September 1848, a virtually unknown, thirty-nine-year-old Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln lurched north on an urgent political errand. Only weeks before, his Whig Party had nominated General Zachary Taylor—a...
Published: 5/22/20
The Rable Method—Time and Again
Bryan Hester, The University of Alabama Historian George C. Rable Few scholars have produced as many groundbreaking works as Civil War historian George C. Rable. Since his retirement from teaching...
Published: 5/20/20
Pinkertons, Prostitutes, and Spies (2019)
John Stewart seeks to unravel the complexity of Hattie Lawton and Timothy Webster’s clandestine operations in Richmond, Virginia. The author begins his narrative with a prologue that introduces his main...
Published: 5/18/20
The Greatest Bards: Part 1
Alamy Author Shelby Foote Asked to name the writer whose work had the greatest influence on their early love for the Civil War, most lay students of the conflict would...
Published: 5/15/20
The Five Best Books on Civil War Combat
Library of Congress “Spare Cartridges” by Alfred R. Waud In considering the vast literature on combat in the Civil War, one is hard-pressed to limit a selection of the best...
Published: 5/13/20
“Lee Is Trapped, and Must Be Taken” (2019)
Historians have parsed virtually every aspect of July 1-3, 1863. Yet far fewer scholars have explored the Gettysburg Campaign as a whole with the same level of detail and analysis....
Published: 5/6/20
Iowa Confederates in the Civil War (2019)
By most estimates, approximately three million soldiers served during the Civil War. The border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri—which remained devoted to the Union while keeping slavery intact—famously...
Published: 4/29/20
Confederate Soldiers in the American Civil War (2019)
Savas Beatie has continued to solidify its reputation as a premier military and general history publishing company by adding Mark Hughes’s Confederate Soldiers in the American Civil War: Facts and...
Published: 4/22/20
The False Cause (2020)
Historians have long understood that the Lost Cause, the memory of the Civil War nurtured by white Southerners, rests on a loose reading of the historical record. The Lost Cause...