Blogs

Guy R. Hasegawa's "Matchless Organization" offers a clear, detailed, and thorough history of the Confederacy's military medical organization.

A historian offers his picks for the best novels about the Civil War ...

Michael J. Gerhardt's "Lincoln's Mentors" is an original and satisfying biography for readers who think there is nothing new to say about the sixteenth president.

How a word used to describe subpar cloth saw its meaning expanded during the Civil War

Published in 1890, "The Mountain Campaigns in Georgia"--a slim volume devoted to telling the story of the battles fought along the Western & Atlantic Railroad--boasted a number of detailed illustrations by leading artists of the day, including Alfred R. Waud and Thure de Thulstrup. Waud, boasted the book's author, had "personally visited all of the battlefields depicted," and all of the sketches...

William Barksdale's life is often reduced to a single episode...the charge his brigade made at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

"Buying & Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America" reveals how the war, in ways big and small, continued to annex ordinary lives at century's end.

A dual biography of George Custer and Wesley Merritt, Adolfo Ovies' "The Boy Generals" is based on an extensive array of primary sources.

"This Mr. Wales is a cold-blooded killer. He’s from Missouri where they’re all known to be killers of innocent men, women, and children.” That line from Clint Eastwood’s iconic 1976 film, The Outlaw Josey Wales, reflected—and in some cases still reflects—the three most enduring misconceptions about Civil War guerrillas. First was that irregular combatants were all bloodthirsty psychos....

In the January 21, 1865, issue of Harper's Weekly, the editors published a small story about a man from Nevada who had lost an election for city office—but gained national renown in the wake of his defeat:

Vanessa M. Holden's "Surviving Southampton" moves our attention from Nat Turner to his community at a time when the appeal for uncovering societies of resistance has never been more apparent.

The Battle of Chickamauga, fought on September 18–20, 1863, pitted the William Rosecrans Army of the Cumberland against Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee in the war's first major land battle in Georgia. The bloody fighting, a resounding Confederate victory that produced some 34,000 total causalties, was marked by a series of Rebel attacks: on the 18th, James Longstreet's corps exploited a gap...

"Lincoln and Citizenship" is a terrific addition to the Concise Lincoln Library series from Southern Illinois University Press.

In the Voices section of the Fall 2021 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by Union and Confederate soldiers about nicknames. Unfortunately, we didn't have room to include all that we found. Below are those that just missed the cut.

John Reeves' "A Fire in the Wilderness" captures well the horrors of the combat.

James P. Byrd's "A Holy Baptism of Fire & Blood" raises important questions about the Bible's place in the Civil War era.

Artillerists created an invaluable body of evidence relating to the Army of Northern Virginia. Though they made up only about 7.5 percent of the army’s strength, they figured prominently in almost every battle and decisively in a few.

Dwight Hughes' "Unlike Anything That Ever Floated" supplies an engaging narrative that is not short on technical detail.

Van Gosse's "The First Reconstruction" is an important work that provides a new interpretation of the politics of the early republic.

Matthew E. Stanley's "Grand Army of Labor" explores how the war's echoes both strengthened and constrained the labor movement.