People
Published: 1/18/17
Extra Dossier: Robert E. Lee
Library of Congress For the Dossier section of the Summer 2015 issue of The Civil War Monitor, we asked a panel of Civil War historians a series of questions about...
Published: 12/1/16
Extra Voices: Curses
In the Voices section of the Winter 2016 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person quotes about some of the colorful oaths uttered by soldiers and civilians...
Published: 9/15/16
Extra Dossier: Stonewall Jackson
For the Dossier section of the fall 2016 issue of The Civil War Monitor, we asked a panel of 20 Civil War historians a series of questions about Confederate general...
Published: 6/9/16
Extra Voices: Souvenirs
In the Voices section of the spring 2016 issue of The Civil War Monitor, we highlighted first-person quotes about the quest—by soldiers and civilians—for battlefield souvenirs. Unfortunately, we didn’t have...
Published: 3/25/16
How do the myths about Sherman’s March line up with the historical realities?
Sherman’s March remains one of the contentious and mythologized events of the Civil War. Learn about how some of these myths line up with the realities in this interview with...
Published: 6/1/15
Trial of a Confederate Terrorist
John Yates Beall’s friends stirred up a hornet’s nest of protest over the death sentence he had been given by a military commission sitting on Governor’s Island in New York...
Published: 11/21/14
An Interview with Stephen Cushman
Our conversation with Stephen Cushman, the Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia and recent author of “Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped...
Published: 11/14/14
An Interview with Glenn LaFantasie
Our conversation with Glenn LaFantasie, the Robert Frockt Family Professor of History at Western Kentucky University. In this interview, we discuss Dr. LaFantasie’s most recent article entitled “Broken Promise” that...
Published: 11/7/14
An Interview with Jonathan White
Our conversation with Jonathan White, an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and author of “Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln,” published by...
Published: 11/3/14
Yankee Runaways
Major Charles P. Mattocks and his two comrades, Captain Julius P. Litchfield and Lieutenant Charles O. Hunt, were on the run. The three Maine Yankees, each the member of a...
Published: 10/13/14
The Death of Roger B. Taney
Throughout the Civil War, the highest judicial officer in the United States, Roger Brooke Taney, held sympathies for the Confederacy. In June 1861—before the first major battle of the war—Taney...
Published: 9/26/14
An Interview with Graham Dozier
Our conversation with Graham Dozier, the Managing Editor of Publications at the Virginia Historical Society and recent editor of “A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas...
Published: 7/21/14
Terry’s Texas Rangers
It had been just one month since the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, launching the Civil War. Texas and ten other states seceded from the Union and then...
Published: 6/9/14
Hunter Davidson and the “Squib”
Hunter Davidson understood the Union Navy, having been in Federal service since 1841 as a teen-aged midshipman, a graduate of its Naval Academy and an instructor there, an officer who...
Published: 3/24/14
The Death of Jim Jackson and the Oxymoron of “Postbellum” Missouri, 1865-1866
In June 1865, Jim Jackson—one of Missouri’s more notorious Confederate guerrilla commanders—made haste for the Illinois line. The Confederate experiment to which Jackson belonged had recently ended in disaster. On...
Published: 3/17/14
Reconsidering the “Myth” of the Black Union Soldier
It’s hard to believe that 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the Hollywood movie Glory. Twenty-five years later it is also difficult to remember that for many...
Published: 2/10/14
The Civil War on the Great Lakes
When President Jefferson Davis refused to sanction a plot to take the American Civil War to the Great Lakes in the winter of 1863, Confederate Navy Lieutenant Robert D. Minor...
Published: 12/6/13
An Interview with Diane Sommerville
Our conversation with Diane Sommerville, an associate professor of history at Binghamton University and author of a recent article entitled “‘A Burden Too Heavy to Bear’: War Trauma, Suicide, and...