Monthly Archives: October 2023
This Civil War Weapon Changed the Face of Warfare
This article comes from the June 2023 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “The breechloading seven-shot, metallic-cartridge rifles invented by Christopher Miner Spencer were the most innovative and reliable repeaters of the conflict. The deadly weapons were the precursor to modern assault rifles. Spencer was born in 1833, and grew up in Connecticut, a hotbed […]
Gas Balloons: View From Above the Civil War Battlefield
This article is from the September, 2001 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “On the afternoon of June 17, 1861, a keen-eyed observer surveyed the scene before him and then dictated to a telegraph operator by his side. ‘This point of observation commands an extent of country nearly 50 miles in diameter,’ he said, and […]
Teaching the History Wars
Professor Megan Threlkeld contributed this essay to the American Historical Association’s “Perspectives on History” blog. “For more than a century, academics, policymakers, politicians, and pundits have waged the seemingly endless ‘history wars’ over what students should learn about our nation’s past. But students themselves have been largely absent from these debates. While William Randolph Hearst’s […]
Prelude to Greatness
This book by Professor Don E. Fehrenbacher gives us seven essays considering different aspects of Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. He writes, “The center of my attention in each of these seven essays is the relation between a man’s rise to power and the historical process in which he was involved. … The essays are […]
Civil War Talk Radio Episode 2004: I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign
In this terrific episode, host Professor Gerald Prokopowicz talks with Scott Hartwig about Scott’s new book closing out his study of the 1862 Maryland Campaign, I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign. Scott is an outstanding historian, and has a lot of good information […]
How a Steamboat Saved a Confederate Army
This article comes from the June, 2023 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “On January 19, 1862, a Confederate army led by Brig. Gen. George B. Crittenden suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Mill Springs. Fought in south-central Kentucky, the loss shattered the right flank of a defensive line that the Confederate army […]
Why Are Gettysburg Monuments Placed Where They Are?
This article by Scott Hartwig appeared in the February 2023 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “The battlefield we see today with its orderly placement of monuments evolved over many years. The park was officially created by congressional legislation in 1895, but most of the regimental monuments were erected in the 1880s, before the U.S. […]
Student of the American Civil War 
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