Monthly Archives: May 2024
How Union Leaders Sought to Exploit Rebel In-Fighting After the Fall of Atlanta
This article comes from the Winter 2022 edition of America’s Civil War magazine. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D.C., September 17, 1864—10 a.m. Major-General SHERMAN: I feel great interest in the subjects of your dispatch mentioning corn and sorghumand contemplated a visit to you. A. LINCOLN. “This short, cryptic message says more than it seems. Two days before, […]
Lincoln on the Verge
This book by writer Ted Widmer follows President-Elect Abraham Lincoln on his thirteen-day journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, DC for his inauguration. While Lincoln was on his journey east, someone else was taking a journey similar to Lincoln’s. The seven states of the deep South, concerned that Lincoln’s election meant the eventual end of […]
Making Freedom
This is Professor Richard Blackett of Vanderbilt University discussing the Underground Railroad. The video’s description reads, “Vanderbilt University history professor emeritus Richard Blackett talked about Underground Railroad and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Virginia Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, hosted this talk.” https://www.c-span.org/video/?533569-1/making-freedom
CWTR Episode 1710: Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory
This is a pretty good conversation between host Professor Gerald Prokopowicz and his guest, Professor Robert May, about Professor May’s book, Yuletide in Dixie.
The Calculus of Violence
In this book, Professor Aaron Sheehan-Dean seeks to understand how the United States and the Confederacy justified their use of violence in the Civil War to make it the bloodiest war in American History, and how they simultaneously limited the amount of violence used in the war. He says, “In order to understand this puzzle–a […]
Moral Contagion
In the years prior to the Civil War, South Carolina and other Deep South states passed laws that mandated any African Americans aboard ships that docked in their ports had to be jailed if they came ashore, and in some cases were auctioned off into slavery. In this video, Michael Schoeppner discusses his book on […]
He Was A New Union Lieutenant at Shiloh. The Horrors He Witnessed Left Scars That Never Healed.
This article from the Winter 2022 issue of Civil War Times magazine contains an account from Lieutenant Ephraim Cutler Dawes, brother of Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, of the battle of Shiloh. “With his army paused at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., in early April 1862, waiting the arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos […]
They ‘Literally Ate Crow’: How Starving Confederate Troops Made It Home After the Civil War
This article by Professor Caroline Janney is from the Winter 2022 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “Shortly after the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms on April 12, 1865, thousands of Confederate veterans began heading back to their homes. Throughout the Carolinas and into Georgia and beyond, they clambered onto railroad cars. Railroad travel proved […]
Civil War Anesthesia Wasn’t Just a Slug of Whiskey: Inside the New 19th-Century Science of Battlefield Painkillers
This article is from the February 2022 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “‘See here, Doc, if you’re goin’ to take that leg off, you’d better be about it—I’m comin’ to.’ Those were the frustrated and possibly fearful words of a wounded soldier in the aftermath of the July 1863 Battle of Honey Springs. The unidentified soldier […]
Student of the American Civil War 
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