Blogs

Bierle never loses sight of the fact that the battle did not occur in some remote hinterland, but rather in a larger community.

Chickamauga was a grim first outing for the Alabamians.

Anyone who has spent considerable time in research libraries or logging onto digital archives knows what it feels like to come to the end of an evidentiary road. A promising file of letters reveals huge gaps in the writers’ correspondence. A tantalizing detail in a census record leads nowhere. A diary entry ends with a page torn out. Historians must make what they can of such incomplete evidence...

In July 1861, only months after the outbreak of the Civil War, Belle Boyd—the 17-year-old daughter of a prosperous family in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia)—experienced a traumatic event that helped spur her to become a spy for the Confederacy. Boyd told the story of the incident—excerpted below—in her 1865 autobiography, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, a book considered by...

Reidy does not see a single point, a single event, or a single historical figure as responsible for emancipation.

Unable to compel Sherman to attack, Hood trundled west into Alabama and changed his objective.

The author shows how a superior general staff...helped wrest the initiative away from Lee's army as the war in the Eastern Theater dragged on.

[S]tands at the edge of a field of historical inquiry that is sure to gain greater currency among historians...

Between July 25 and July 1, 1862, George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia battled on the outskirts of Richmond. The fate of the capital of the Confederacy lay in the balance. A decisive Union victory could have resulted in the capture of Richmond—and likely the end of the rebellion. But Lee's outnumbered Rebels outperformed their opponents during...

Much like Alcott's work, Seiple's narrative leaps off the page.

...a marvelous book that contains fascinating analysis about French diplomacy...demonstrates how historians have too long made France into a junior partner of Great Britain.

We recently asked a panel of Civil War historians a series of questions about Major General James Ewell Brown "J.E.B." Stuart—a way of assessing the flamboyant cavalier's record and legacy today. And while the results were published in our Summer 2019 issue (“Dossier: J.E.B. Stuart,” Vol. 9, No. 2), space prevented us from providing all of our panelists’ answers in full detail. Below are...

Weaver's writings provide rare insight into the complexities of the prisoner of war experience.

We have lost a singular voice in the field of popular history.

For our recent newsstand-only special issue The Civil War Almanac, we asked a number of Civil War historians for their opinions on a variety of popular topics, including the war’s most overrated and underrated commanders, top turning points, and most influential women. Space constraints prevented us from including the full answers to one of the questions: What are the 10 best Civil War movies? ...

Reveals a new perspective on pro-Union southerners....draws sensible conclusions from the evidence it uses.

Take a mini tour of the newly opened American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia.

On December 16, 1864, Union General George Thomas accomplished a goal that Civil War field commanders found to be unobtainable: the climactic destruction of an enemy army.

This Union officer sporting stylish spectacles with tinted glass and a second pair of lenses is Captain Thomas Bartlett Griffith, a prosperous furnace manufacturer from Carver, Massachusetts. Griffith’s striking supplementary lenses could have been used for extra sun protection, as bifocals, or simply for decoration. Because a postwar portrait shows him wearing traditional glasses, this set was...

Longacre has breathed new life into Custer's career...