Blogs

A case study in the negative impact of dysfunctional command relationships ...

Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser's "Elusive Utopia" merges social, gender, political, and economic history while foregrounding the voices of Black and white Oberlinians.

Several European journalists and military officers wrote about their experiences with the Army of Northern Virginia. Almost all of them, it is important to acknowledge, adopted a very favorable stance toward Robert E. Lee and his soldiers. The most quoted by far is Arthur James Lyon Fremantle,

"Civil War Witnesses" collects eight, carefully crafted and extensively researched essays.

In the Voices section of the Spring 2022 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by and about famous Civil War nurse Mary "Mother" Bickerdyke. Unfortunately, we didn't have room to include all that we found. Below are those that just missed the cut.

In "Ends of War," Caroline Janney examines the uncertainties surrounding Confederate surrender.

Chris Bagley's "The Horse at Gettysburg" is a solid study by a licensed battlefield guide.

Jack Noe's "Contesting Commemoration" explores the complex realities of post-war reunion.

In his 1948 novel Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner famously describes a Mississippi boy playing soldier—pretending to be the entire Rebel army, as it were—in the minutes preceding the disastrous Pickett-Pettigrew assault at the Battle of Gettysburg. For a fleeting moment, before James Longstreet has given the word and “it’s all still in the balance,” the boy reimagines the battle...

Alexander B. Rossino's "Their Maryland" is a lively account that challenges prevailing orthodoxy.

In "Bulldozed and Betrayed," Adam Fairclough skillfully guides readers through numerous twists and turns, outsized personalities, and charges and counter-charges of fraud, conspiracy and skullduggery.

"My Work Among the Freedmen" is simply worth reading to meet Harriet Buss and her students.

Kathleen Liuleviciu's "Rebel Salvation" is an important contribution to our understanding of the contested notions of peace that developed across the South in the wake of the Civil War.

"Untouched By the Conflict" supplies a welcome peak into a still mostly hidden world.

Christopher Grasso's "Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy" is a dazzling piece of historical detective work.

In the spring and early summer of 1862, Union general George B. McClellan’s attempt to capture the Confederate capital by advancing up the Virginia Peninsula involved the largest amphibious operation of the war, saw perhaps Robert E. Lee’s best chance to destroy the Army of the Potomac, and included frontal assaults that dwarfed the size of Pickett’s Charge. Its results led to President ...

On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation—which declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free"—went into effect. Drafted the previous summer, and announced shortly after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, the proclamation—an executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln—changed the legal status of enslaved people...

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation—which declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free"—went into effect. Below are the words Lincoln used in his declaration. The more frequently he used a word, the larger it appears.

J. Matthew Gallman's "The Cacophony of Politics" reports that most Northern Democrats were not traitorous Copperheads.

"Rites of Retaliation" by Lorien Foote is an excellent study, written in a clear and graceful style.