Blogs

Provide[s] the Civil War community with a better understanding of the complexities and dangers faced by scouts, guides, couriers, and escorts throughout the conflict

In the Voices section of the Spring 2019 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person quotes about the quest for reading materials among Union and Confederate troops. Unfortunately, we didn't have room to include all that we found. Below are those that didn't make the cut.

...offers much or those looking to master the narrative of the second costliest Civil War clash.

Showalter's "was the name that became most associated in California with treason after the outbreak of the American Civil War."

"An army marches on its stomach." Variations of this statement have been attributed to great historical leaders, including Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, over the last 150 years. The sentiment certainly held true during the Civil War, during which hundreds of thousands of hungry Union and Confederate soldiers required sustenance on any given day. Below are images that reflect the...

The Civil War Monitor is proud to sponsor The American Civil War Museum’s upcoming Emerging Scholars Program. As part of the museum’s grand opening events on May 4, a series of pop-up talks will highlight the work of the next generation of Civil War-era thinkers. Each talk will be short and informal and include time for questions.

On March 6, 1865, two days after he delivered his second inaugural address to a massive crowd gathered on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, Abraham Lincoln hosted a "Presidential Inaugural Ball" in Washington, D.C. As evidenced by the event's "Bill of Fare," shown below, diners had quite a variety of options to choose from.

Destined to become a staple for anyone seeking a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the Gettysburg Campaign's opening weeks.

Singelyn and Barnard have produced a useful volume of letters that detail an officer's perspective about military life and Custer.

Blount's dynamic prose moves with the celerity of Wilson's mounted columns.

The Dunker Church on the Antietam battlefield is one of the most iconic and distinctive buildings of the American Civil War.

Villard's newspaper dispatches are a rich resource for students of the Secession Winter.

A top-notch operational study that benefits from Gottfried's judicious insights and experience as a military historian.

Teters parses and explains well the complexity of how emancipation played out on the ground, making his book a valuable contribution to the literature.

On New Year's Eve 1862, 24-year-old William Thompson Lusk, a captain in the 79th New York Infantry—a regiment known as the "Highlanders" for its predominently Scottish-American makeup—penned the following letter to his sister Lillie at the family home in Connecticut. In his ambivalence about the year gone by and the one to come, Lusk was not unlike countless thousands of other Civil War...

...immediately takes its place on the short shelf of indispensable Civl War reference works.

[R]eveals how two members of the Civil War generation struggled with imprisonment...including that which did not take place behind prison walls.

One weekend last October, my husband and I drove several hours to Portland, Maine, to see a play about lawyer and Civil War general Benjamin Franklin Butler. The stage was stacked with moving boxes, a rolled-up rug, several pieces of unhung artwork, and a large desk piled with papers. Brickwork archways soared overhead, bolstering the stage roof. Ben Butler, by playwright Richard Strand and staged...

Editor Timothy Roberts deserves high marks...makes for good reading, and researchers will find it equally rewarding.

With the help of a handful of Civil War historians and enthusiasts, here is our compilation of their favorite Civil War books published in 2018.