People
Published: 1/19/18
Close Calls at Beaver Dam Creek
Army Letters, 1861–1865 Oliver Willcox Norton as he appeared in 1863 Little over a week after he participated in the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek—the first of the Seven Days...
Published: 1/12/18
Extra Voices: Dog Days of Summer
Library of Congress Union soldiers bask in the sweltering summer sun in camp In the Voices section of the Summer 2015 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person...
Published: 10/20/17
A Ball’s Bluff Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society Captain Caspar Crowinshield, 20th Massachusetts Infantry On October 21, 1861, Union forces crossed the Potomac River to attack what they thought was a Confederate camp near Leesburg,...
Published: 9/23/17
Extra Voices: Sounds of War
Library of Congress Alfred R. Waud’s depiction of the Battle of Fredericksburg In the Voices department of our summer 2014 issue (Vol. 4, No. 2) we featured soldiers’ quotes that...
Published: 9/15/17
The Search for Orville Wheelock
The Boys in White Julia Wheelock One hundred fifty-five years ago this month, 28-year-old Michigan resident Julia Wheelock learned that her brother, Orville, a soldier in the 8th Michigan Infantry,...
Published: 9/8/17
Robert E. Lee, Confederate Memorials, and the Burden of the Past
By Cville dog – Own work, Wikimedia Commons The Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park On August 13, a statue of Robert E. Lee took center stage in...
Published: 8/11/17
A Bad Day on the March
Wisconsin Historical Society Surgeon Alfred Lewis Castleman, 5th Wisconsin Infantry After it was thwarted in its attempt to capture Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign in the summer of 1862, the...
Published: 7/28/17
Extra Dossier: Grant
Library of Congress General Ulysses S. Grant In 2014, we asked a panel of leading Civil War historians a series of questions about General Ulysses S. Grant—a way of assessing...
Published: 7/21/17
Eyewitness to Bull Run
War Letters of William Thompson Lusk (1911) William Thompson Lusk, 79th New York Infantry A week after the Battle of Bull Run—a humiliating defeat for Union forces—23-year-old officer William Thompson...
Published: 7/3/17
News from Gettysburg
Library of Congress Lieutenant Waters Whipple Braman, Co. C, 93rd New York Infantry During the Battle of Gettysburg, First Lieutenant Waters Whipple Braman, 23, and his regiment, the 93rd New...
Published: 6/23/17
Extra Voices: Bad Officers
Library of Congress Confederate general John C. Pemberton In the Voices section of the Spring 2017 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person quotes about some Union and...
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...