Blog
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Published: 10/9/13
Wounded Warriors: Civil War Amputation
Learn about the realities of Civil War amputation and the difficult decisions doctors faced on the battlefield.
Published: 10/9/13
WESLEY: The Politics of Faith (2013)
The Politics of Faith During the Civil War by Timothy L. Wesley. Louisiana State University Press, 2013. Cloth, ISBN: 0807150002. $45.00. The past fifteen years or so have witnessed renewed scholarly...
Published: 10/9/13
The Wound Dresser
During the Civil War, renowned poet Walt Whitman served as a nurse. His battlefield medical career began at Fredericksburg, where he tended to wounded soldiers—including his brother. Deeply moved by...
Published: 10/9/13
Civil War Amputation…In Their Own Words.
Throughout the Civil War, surgeons performed approximately 60,000 amputations—the most common battlefield operation. Such drastic measures were a consequence of the damage caused by Minié balls, which often shattered and...
Published: 10/9/13
Civil War Medical Remedies
While these nineteenth century remedies might not cure what ails you, they make an intriguing read. For Dysentery Dissolve as much table salt in pure vinegar as will ferment and...
Published: 10/2/13
KEEHN: Knights of the Golden Circle (2013)
Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War by David C. Keehn. Louisiana State University Press, 2013.Cloth, ISBN: 0807150047. $39.95. Historians have long delved into the dynamics of...
Published: 9/30/13
The Civil War’s French Accent
In October 1862 during a wide-ranging meeting, the French Emperor Napoleon III asked Commissioner John Slidell why the Confederacy didn’t have a navy capable of breaking the blockade. The two...
Published: 9/25/13
The Petersburg Campaign (2012)
The siege of Petersburg remains one of the most understudied campaigns in the American Civil War. Although one can point to several fine studies of individual operations and a few...
Published: 9/20/13
An Interview with Ben Wright and Zach Dresser
Our interview with Ben Wright and Zach Dresser, editors of “Apocalypse and the Millennium in the American Civil War Era,” forthcoming from LSU Press. In the conversation, Wright and Dresser...
Published: 9/18/13
The World’s Largest Prison (2012)
A military prison need not have operated for long to warrant remembrance. That is the primary premise from which John K. Derden begins to record the short history of Camp...
Published: 9/13/13
An Interview with Margaret Humphreys
Our conversation with Margaret Humphreys, the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University and author of Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American...
Published: 9/11/13
Disunion (2013)
In the fall of 2010 The New York Times marked the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s election and the commencement of the Civil War by launching “Disunion,” a daily feature on its “Opinionator”...
Published: 9/6/13
An Interview with Cate Wyatt
Our conversation with Cate Wyatt, President of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership. In the interview, Wyatt discusses the extensive work of the partnership over a 180 mile stretch from...
Published: 9/4/13
Remembering the Civil War (2013)
For ten years, the study of the historical memory of the Civil War has been dominated by David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion. New scholarship has filled in gaps and...
Published: 8/28/13
The Battles That Made Abraham Lincoln (2012)
The “battles” referenced in the title to this book are not Gettysburg, or any of the famous military showdowns of the Civil War. Larry Tagg instead examines the various ways...
Published: 8/21/13
Blood and Daring (2013)
Like a traveler without a passport, John Boyko’s Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation finds itself intellectually detained at the border. Solid enough...
Published: 8/19/13
Of Eyes and Teeth: The Trial of George Maddox, the Raid on Lawrence, and the Bloodstained Verdict of the Guerrilla War
Just after seven o’clock on the night of April, 2 1867, George Maddox slipped out the backdoor of the Ottawa, Kansas, courthouse, hopped on his horse, and rode for Missouri....
Published: 8/14/13
Guerrilla Hunters in Civil War Missouri (2013)
Although historians once dismissed Missouri as the “sideshow” of the Civil War, it has since become notorious as the scene of a long, brutal, and divisive guerrilla war. In fact,...