The Front Line

Public history is presented in museums and historical societies; at monuments or national, state, and local parks. John Coski writes about how this public history message, particularly that of the Civil War, is changing.

In the aftermath of his army’s defeat at Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee welcomed a brother of Secretary of War James Seddon to Army of Northern Virginia headquarters. Curious

The Books & Authors section of our Winter 2017 issue contained our annual roundup of the year's best Civil War titles. As usual, we enlisted the help of a handful of Civil War historians and enthusiasts, avid readers all, and asked them to pick their two favorite books published in 2017. Below are their picks.

The Confederate monument controversy that has exploded in recent months raises fundamental questions about the American Iliad. The removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, is only the best known of several examples that place these questions before us.

On March 17, 1863, Josiah Marshall Favill, a young lieutenant in the 57th New York Infantry, was one of many soldiers in the Army of the Potomac to observe the elaborate St. Patrick's festivities being hosted by General Thomas Francis Meagher and the men of the Irish Brigade. When he returned to his regiment's camp later that day, Favill recorded the following observations in his diary: 

In the Voices section of the Spring 2018 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person quotes from Union and Confederate troops about the use of tobacco among soldiers and civilians. Unfortunately, we didn't have room to include all that we found. Below are those that didn't make the cut.   

While not commonly looked upon as part of the battlefield, the Eisenhower Farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, played a significant role during the second and third days of the fighting at Gettysburg.

Why is the Civil War mostly absent in one of our most beloved film and television genres?

During the early days of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, in the summer of 1864, 24-year-old Harvard-educated Union surgeon John Gardner Perry wrote a letter in which he recorded the following incident involving a brave, but reckless, young lieutenant. 

Little over a week after he participated in the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek—the first of the Seven Days Battles fought outside Richmond during General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign—Private Oliver Willcox Norton of the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry wrote home about his experiences ... and marvelled at how he was able to escape without serious injury.