Published: 3/16/20History in the Digital AgeBy: Kevin M. LevinCategory: The Front Line Michaela Levin Historian Kevin M. Levin In November 2005 I created the website Civil War Memory, which included a blog. I had recently completed a master’s degree in history and...
Published: 3/13/20Extra Voices: PaydayBy: The Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History A Civil War greenback In the Voices section of the Spring 2020 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by...
Published: 3/11/20The Last Battleground (2019)By: Steven E. NashCategory: Book Reviews Philip Gerard’s The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina originated as an extensive series of articles in Our State: Celebrating North Carolina magazine commemorating the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. There is...
Published: 3/6/20The Fashion Trends of 1864By: The Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line On February 27, 1864, Harper’s Weekly published the following illustration—”a few of the various styles of garments manufactured by” New York City–based clothing wholesalers Kirkland, Bronson, & Co. “New York...
Published: 3/4/20Vicksburg (2019)By: Robert GlazeCategory: Book Reviews Civil War historians have long made much ado about July 1863. Generations of scholars and writers have argued that the war reached a turning point with Robert E. Lee’s defeat...
Published: 2/26/20Congress at War (2020)By: Nicole EtchesonCategory: Book Reviews The history of Civil War politics has often been focused on Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanship, management of his feuding Cabinet, and ability to steer the country towards emancipation. Fergus M. Bordewich...
Published: 2/20/20A Goodbye GiftBy: The Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line While attending services at St. Paul’s Church in Richmond on Sunday, April 2, 1865, Confederate president Jefferson Davis received word that Confederate forces had begun evacuating Petersburg in the wake...
Published: 2/19/20Rebel Guerrillas (2018)By: Scott ThompsonCategory: Book Reviews In a narrative history of the Civil War’s western and eastern theaters, Paul Williams studies three of the Confederate Army’s most prominent irregular warriors: John Mosby, William Quantrill, and “Bloody...
Published: 2/12/20Armies of Deliverance (2019)By: Glenn David BrasherCategory: Book Reviews As a National Park Service interpretive ranger and now as a college educator, I have been asked innumerable times to recommend the best one-volume book on the Civil War. Without...
Published: 2/5/20British Blockade Runners in the American Civil War (2019)By: J. Ross DancyCategory: Book Reviews On April 19, 1861, less than a week after the cannon roar in Charleston harbor that marked the opening of U.S. Civil War had ceased, President Abraham Lincoln announced a...
Published: 1/29/20When It Was Grand (2020)By: Allen C. GuelzoCategory: Book Reviews The term radical originated with the Latin radix, or source, and it has always had popular connections with the steely determination to tear-up obnoxious ideas or movements by their roots. It came...
Published: 1/26/20“What will not the human body endure?”By: James K. HosmerCategory: The Front Line Harper’s Weekly Union soldiers march through Baton Rouge in May 1863. While on furlough in Baton Rouge in May 1863, Corporal James K. Hosmer of the 52nd Massachusetts Infantry volunteered...
Published: 1/22/20Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (2019)By: Thomas R. FlagelCategory: Book Reviews In many ways, the United States is a warrior nation. With bases across the globe and currently involved in multiple conflicts, it has a national anthem (officially adopted in 1931)...
Published: 1/21/20Grant and Lee at AppomattoxBy: Mark GrimsleyCategory: The Front Line Library of Congress The McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, where Robert E. Lee met with Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, to discuss terms of surrender. In...
Published: 1/15/20Living By Inches (2019)By: Brian Matthew JordanCategory: Book Reviews Despite many gloomy predictions, the sesquicentennial hardly proved the twilight of Civil War scholarship. To the contrary, the field may be entering its most fecund period to date as historians...
Published: 1/11/20Badge QuestBy: Jenny JohnstonCategory: The Front Line On a Saturday morning this past April, a tiny compact car pulled into the parking lot at the Gettysburg National Military Park’s visitors center. Out of the car popped four...
Published: 1/8/20“Our Little Monitor” (2018)By: Dwight HughesCategory: Book Reviews Why another Monitor book? In Our Little Monitor, authors Anna Holloway and Jonathan W. White demonstrate that a fascinating subject is never exhausted. Cutting-edge maritime archaeology and thorough historical research combine to produce an engaging...
Published: 1/1/20Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy (2019)By: Thomas A. HorrocksCategory: Book Reviews As we come to the end of the decade following the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, there is no discernable slowdown in the publication of books on the sixteenth president....
Published: 12/30/19The Best Civil War Books of 2019By: The Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line The Books & Authors section of our Winter 2019 issue contains our annual roundup of the year’s best Civil War titles. As usual, we enlisted the help of a handful...
Published: 12/25/19Bicycling Gettysburg (2019)By: Codie EashCategory: Book Reviews The battle fought on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, in Adams County, Pennsylvania, “has brought the name of Gettysburg from rural obscurity, to world-wide celebrity,” wrote historian and landscape...