Blog
Published: 4/6/12
The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
Duke Library One of the legends of Shiloh was of a young drummer boy who died on the battlefield. Cast as a young lad who had run away from home...
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Published: 4/5/12
“Life Studies of the Great Army”
At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibit of 1876, Edwin Forbes, renowned for his work during the Civil War as a “special artist” for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, displayed a collection of...
Published: 4/4/12
The Grand Design (2010)
In The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, Donald Stoker answers a question that few historians have asked: Did the leaders on either side of the Civil War...
Published: 4/4/12
A Tour of Reconstruction (2011)
Anna Dickinson got right to the point during her travels through the South in 1875. The landscape she encountered in North Carolina was “nothing but dreariness, dirt, poverty, brutishness, &...
Published: 4/2/12
Three Hundred Thousand More
Good afternoon! Today we bring you an 1862 song written by John S. Gibbons, to aid Lincoln’s call for 300,000 more Union troops. It first appeared in the New York...
Published: 3/30/12
Song of a Southern Prisoner to the Ladies of Baltimore
Happy Friday! We close Women’s History Month with this song, entitled “Southern Prisoner. Gives His Thanks to the Baltimore Ladies.” I left Winchester Court-house, all in the month of May,...
Published: 3/28/12
The Civil War in Georgia (2011)
In 1998 leaders of the Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press convened a meeting of about a dozen librarians, historians, curators, and other scholars to discuss the...
Published: 3/27/12
Song of the Southern Women
Good morning! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is a poem written by Julia Mildred. Entitled, “Song of the Southern Women,” it is one example of how women struggled to help...
Published: 3/27/12
Then and Now: Pope’s Canal to New Madrid
One-hundred and fifty years ago, Brigadier General John Pope faced a tactical dilemma on the Mississippi River. Confederate batteries at Island No. 10 blocked passage through a complex series of...
Published: 3/26/12
Women’s Work
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is a Harper’s Weekly image entitled “Filling Cartidges at the United States Arsenal at Watertown, Massachusetts.” It is a reminder that the war...
Published: 3/23/12
A Slave and A Spy
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is of Mary Touvestre. Touvestre, a former slave, worked for one of the Confederate engineers transforming the USS Merrimack into the CSS Virginia....
Published: 3/21/12
The Reconstruction of Mark Twain (2010)
As his title and subtitle suggest, Joe Fulton has constructed a conversion narrative for Mark Twain in which he manages to offer a variety of fresh insights into a life...
Published: 3/21/12
“I will not attempt to hamper you with any minute instructions.”
On March 21, 1862, Major General Henry W. Halleck, commanding Federal forces in the Western Theater, sent this message to Major General John Pope, then commanding forces at New Madrid,...
Published: 3/20/12
Southern Belle or Female Rebel?
Good morning! In honor of Women’s History Month we thought we would share this Harper’s Weekly image (shown to the left). Along with the front page illustration the authors of...
Published: 3/20/12
The Infamous “Woman Order” of Occupied New Orleans
Good afternoon! Earlier today, we shared an image of a Baltimore woman flaunting her Confederate sympathies which drew parallels to the actions of the women of Union-occupied New Orleans. Therefore,...
Published: 3/19/12
Patriotic Mail
Good afternoon! Our Women’s History Month celebration continues with an image of one of the era’s patriotic envelopes. Used to both boost morale and support the war effort, envelopes like...
Published: 3/16/12
The Wild Rose of the South
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is of Rose O’Neal Greenhow—also known as “Wild Rose”—the famed Confederate spy. Born in Maryland in 1817, little is known of her early...
Published: 3/16/12
The Monitor, The Merrimack, and Me
Last week, I packed up my husband and my dog and headed north to Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia. We were bound for the Civil War Navy Conference at the...