Published: 10/31/11Voices From the Past: “I am truly thankful for the institution of ghosts…”By: Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line “You perceive that my idea of ghosts is not limited to graveyards and tombs, or the tenants thereof; indeed, so far from it, the most troublesome I have ever known...
Published: 10/31/11Voices from the Past – Out of That Silence Rose New Sounds More Appalling StillBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line The Battle of Fredericksburg (December 11-15, 1862) was a decisive loss for the Union army, crippling northern morale. The chilling quote below derives from Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s description...
Published: 10/28/11Are You Ready for Some (Civil War) Football?By: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line Winslow Homer’s depiction of Union soldiers playing “Foot-Ball” in camp. Looks harmless enough… Image credit: Library of Congress.
Published: 10/27/11Teaching Slavery as the Cause of the Civil WarBy: Andrew L. SlapCategory: The Front Line “What caused the Civil War?” Historians have killed forests trying to answer this deceptively simple question. In a recent essay in The Journal of the Civil War Era, Frank Towers...
Published: 10/25/11Respect My Heritage; You Can Stick YoursBy: Andy HallCategory: The Front Line 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: 10/24/11Voices From the Past: “An Inferior Force”By: Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line “Well, so far we seem to have applied a new maxim of war, always to meet the enemy with an inferior force at the point of attack.” —General George B....
Published: 10/21/11Ball’s Bluff RememberedBy: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line One hundred fifty years ago today, on October 21, 1861, Union troops suffered a humiliating defeat in what would come to be known as the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. After...
Published: 10/20/11Progress and Change and PreservationBy: Civil War MonitorCategory: The Front Line A few Fridays ago I took a short tour of the Chantilly, or Ox Hill, Battlefield. Short, of course, because aside from a five-acre section preserved within a county park,...
Published: 10/18/11“Coal for the Furnaces is as important as Gunpowder for the Guns”By: James M. SchmidtCategory: The Front Line “The Saltpeter is the Soule, the Sulphur is the Life, and the Coales the Body of it.” — John Bate, The Mysteryes of Nature and Art (1634) If cannon and...
Published: 10/17/11Southward BoundBy: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line One hundred fifty years ago today—October 17, 1861—25-year-old Lieutenant W. H. Timberlake of the 8th Maine Volunteers wrote the following letter from his regiment’s camp in Annapolis, Maryland. The men...