The Front Line
Our communal blog featuring the latest in Civil War news, research, analysis, and events from a network of historians
Published: 3/30/12
Song of a Southern Prisoner to the Ladies of Baltimore
Happy Friday! We close Women’s History Month with this song, entitled “Southern Prisoner. Gives His Thanks to the Baltimore Ladies.” I left Winchester Court-house, all in the month of May,...
Published: 3/27/12
Song of the Southern Women
Good morning! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is a poem written by Julia Mildred. Entitled, “Song of the Southern Women,” it is one example of how women struggled to help...
Published: 3/27/12
Then and Now: Pope’s Canal to New Madrid
One-hundred and fifty years ago, Brigadier General John Pope faced a tactical dilemma on the Mississippi River. Confederate batteries at Island No. 10 blocked passage through a complex series of...
Published: 3/26/12
Women’s Work
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is a Harper’s Weekly image entitled “Filling Cartidges at the United States Arsenal at Watertown, Massachusetts.” It is a reminder that the war...
Published: 3/23/12
A Slave and A Spy
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is of Mary Touvestre. Touvestre, a former slave, worked for one of the Confederate engineers transforming the USS Merrimack into the CSS Virginia....
Published: 3/21/12
“I will not attempt to hamper you with any minute instructions.”
On March 21, 1862, Major General Henry W. Halleck, commanding Federal forces in the Western Theater, sent this message to Major General John Pope, then commanding forces at New Madrid,...
Published: 3/20/12
Southern Belle or Female Rebel?
Good morning! In honor of Women’s History Month we thought we would share this Harper’s Weekly image (shown to the left). Along with the front page illustration the authors of...
Published: 3/20/12
The Infamous “Woman Order” of Occupied New Orleans
Good afternoon! Earlier today, we shared an image of a Baltimore woman flaunting her Confederate sympathies which drew parallels to the actions of the women of Union-occupied New Orleans. Therefore,...
Published: 3/19/12
Patriotic Mail
Good afternoon! Our Women’s History Month celebration continues with an image of one of the era’s patriotic envelopes. Used to both boost morale and support the war effort, envelopes like...
Published: 3/16/12
The Wild Rose of the South
Good afternoon! Today’s Women’s History Month tribute is of Rose O’Neal Greenhow—also known as “Wild Rose”—the famed Confederate spy. Born in Maryland in 1817, little is known of her early...
Published: 3/16/12
The Monitor, The Merrimack, and Me
Last week, I packed up my husband and my dog and headed north to Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia. We were bound for the Civil War Navy Conference at the...
Published: 3/15/12
A Lady and A Diary from Dixie
Good morning! Our Women’s History Month celebration continues with this tribute to Mary Boykin Chesnut. Mary Boykin Chesnut is perhaps the best known female diarist of the Civil War. Born...
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 history—quite...
Published: 3/12/12
The Women in Black
Last fall, J. David Hacker revealed that the number of Civil War dead is closer to 750,000 than the previously accepted number of 618,222. While not all of them were...
Published: 3/9/12
Voice from the Past: “How These Powerful Machines Are To Be Stopped Is A Problem I Can Not Solve”
Good morning! We continue our celebration of the Battle of Hampton Roads with another “Voice from the Past.” The following is Confederate Major General Benjamin Hunger’s report on the famed...
Published: 3/9/12
The Rebel Lady’s Boudoir
Happy Friday and Happy Women’s History Month! We continue our homage to Civil War women with this provokative—and morbid—drawing from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper: The corresponding commentary and caption read:...
Published: 3/9/12
Voice from the Past: “In the Monitor Turret”
Good afternoon. In honor of the Battle of Hampton Roads, we bring you another Voice from the Past—this time from the Union perspective. The following is Commander S. Dana Greene’s...
Published: 3/9/12
Voice from the Past: “It revolutionized the navies of the world”
We close our Hampton Roads sesquicentennial celebration with this one final quote about the famed clash of the ironclads: THE engagement in Hampton Roads on the 8th of March, 1862,...