Blog
Published: 8/6/12
John Sherman and the Would-Be Thirteenth Amendment of 1861
John Sherman was a rising Republican star. A prominent member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was on the cusp of a long Senate career. Everyone knew the man...
Published: 8/1/12
Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia (2011)
Richard Newman and James Mueller’s Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia assembles a collection of insightful scholarly essays pivoting Philadelphia as the ideological, legislative, and social activist epicenter of the national abolitionist...
Published: 8/1/12
John Dooley’s Civil War (2011)
For years, historians have found the diary of Second Lieutenant John Edward Dooley, of Company C of the First Virginia Infantry Regiment, a valuable resource. What they did not know,...
Published: 7/30/12
Munson Monroe Buford’s Unfinished Civil War
In late March 1885, South Carolinian Munson Monroe Buford wrote to famed Confederate general and now prominent political figure Wade Hampton. Buford had served for the war’s duration in the...
Published: 7/25/12
George Henry Thomas (2012)
While historians of the American Civil War have by no means ignored him, they have not lavished as much attention on George Henry Thomas as one might expect, considering his...
Published: 7/23/12
Fantasizing Lee as a Civil Rights Pioneer
Over at Civil War Talk, there was a discussion recently about a story about Robert E. Lee, and an incident that allegedly occurred soon after the end of the...
Published: 7/18/12
Letters From the Storm (2010)
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War has recently incited a number of historians—academic and popular alike—to revisit the battlefields, the letters, the Blue and the Gray. Letters from the...
Published: 7/18/12
Refugitta of Richmond (2011)
Constance Cary Harrison’s accounts of Civil War Richmond have supplied many a historian with an insider’s view of life in the Confederate capital. Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention: Women...
Published: 7/11/12
The Lincoln Assassination (2010)
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday in 1865 shocked the nation, elevated the fallen President to martyrdom, immediately inspired mythmakers, and intrigued historians for years. Contributors to The Lincoln Assassination:...
Published: 7/11/12
Giant in the Shadows (2012)
Abraham Lincoln’s only surviving son has long been a hard fellow to like. For one thing, he was much more like his presumptuous mother than his endearingly modest and sublimely...
Published: 7/2/12
War Upon the Land (2012)
Lisa Brady could have opened her book with a relevant might-have-been story. Fort Pickens in Pensacola nearly trumped Fort Sumter as the birthplace of the Civil War. Washington simultaneously dispatched...
Published: 6/29/12
Dark Artillery
Happy Friday! Today’s Civil War cartoon is a Frank Leslie drawing entitled “Dark Artillery” or “How to make the contrabands useful.” Published in 1861, the cartoon is a commentary on...
Published: 6/27/12
John Brown Still Lives! (2011)
The catalysts, conduct, context, and consequences of the Civil War era continue to resonate through American intellectual and popular life. Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and to a lesser extent,...
Published: 6/26/12
The Intrepid
This week marks the sesquicentennial of the Seven Days’ Campaign. As such, we thought we would bring you this image of the Intrepid—one of the Union Army Balloon Corps’ aerial...
Published: 6/22/12
The Railsplitter
Today, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter officially hits movies. As such, we thought it fitting to pay tribute to the original Railsplitter—as opposed to the axe wielding vampire killer. The Railsplitter...
Published: 6/22/12
The New Orleans Plum
Happy Friday! This week’s Friday Funny is an 1862 cartoon entitled, “The New Orleans Plum.” A contemporary take on the famous Mother Goose tale, “Little Jack Horner,” this illustration casts...
Published: 6/20/12
The Revolution of 1861 (2012)
Perhaps the oldest and most out of favor interpretation of the American Civil War was formulated by Karl Marx who saw it as only one aspect of an international revolution...
Published: 6/20/12
Marching With Sherman (2012)
By now most accounts of Sherman’s war-altering campaigns across Georgia and then up through the Carolinas follow the same well-trod paths. Many books, like Noah Andre Trudeau’s Southern Storm, give...