Articles
Published: 1/21/20
Grant and Lee at Appomattox
Understanding the mythic importance of the event that represents the end of the Confederacy.
Published: 1/11/20
Badge Quest
On a Saturday morning this past April, a tiny compact car pulled into the parking lot at the Gettysburg National Military Park’s visitors center. Out of the car popped four...
Published: 6/14/19
Extra Dossier: J.E.B. Stuart
Historians weigh in on Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart's best and worst qualities as a leader.
Published: 5/9/14
An Interview with Nicholas Marshall
Our conversation with Nicholas Marshall, an associate professor of history at Marist College and recent author of “The Great Exaggeration: Death and the Civil War,” featured in the March issue...
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Published: 6/1/13
Badge of Honor: Becoming a Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide
Think getting into Harvard is tough? Try gaining entry into Gettysburg’s elite cadre of licensed battlefield guides. Here’s a look inside the grueling guide test that so few pass, despite years—even decades—of trying.
Published: 11/26/12
“Not Since the Days of William the Conqueror” – Anti-War Democrats of Ohio in their Own Words
For me, one of the great joys of researching and writing about Civil War history is “reading other people’s mail.” Whether in archives, digitized sources online, or in books, reading...
Published: 3/15/12
How I tried and failed to escape the Civil War
My interest in the Civil War should have been a wonderful accident of birth and geography. I was born, raised, studied, and worked around key sites in that event’s...
Published: 10/25/11
Respect My Heritage; You Can Stick Yours
Several news stories appeared in the media recently updating recent developments in a neighborhood dispute in South Carolina that’s been brewing for about year now. The brief recap is that...
Published: 10/13/11
Bolting On the Civil War Navy
Several months back, my friend Matthew Eng, coordinator at the Hampton Roads Navy Museum, asked me why the naval aspects of the Civil War tend to stand off from the...
Published: 9/29/11
A War of Words
There’s a lot that remains unsettled about the Civil War: “Manassas” or “Bull Run”? “Civil War” or “War Between the States”? Forget the big questions about what the war was...
Published: 9/27/11
Texas SCV Calls for a New Strategy
Recently Mark Vogl, Lieutenant Commander of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called for a shift strategy in that organization’s approach to “heritage defense,” away from throwing...