Blogs

"Lincoln and Citizenship" is a terrific addition to the Concise Lincoln Library series from Southern Illinois University Press.

In the Voices section of the Fall 2021 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by Union and Confederate soldiers about nicknames. Unfortunately, we didn't have room to include all that we found. Below are those that just missed the cut.

John Reeves' "A Fire in the Wilderness" captures well the horrors of the combat.

James P. Byrd's "A Holy Baptism of Fire & Blood" raises important questions about the Bible's place in the Civil War era.

Artillerists created an invaluable body of evidence relating to the Army of Northern Virginia. Though they made up only about 7.5 percent of the army’s strength, they figured prominently in almost every battle and decisively in a few.

Dwight Hughes' "Unlike Anything That Ever Floated" supplies an engaging narrative that is not short on technical detail.

Van Gosse's "The First Reconstruction" is an important work that provides a new interpretation of the politics of the early republic.

Matthew E. Stanley's "Grand Army of Labor" explores how the war's echoes both strengthened and constrained the labor movement.

"The Bonds of War" represents a significant addition to the literature on immigrants in United States service....

With "No Place for Glory," Robert Wynstra has established himself as one of the Gettysburg Campaign's most capable modern scholars.

"West of Slavery" by Kevin Waite weaves together the stories of the South and the West to tell a continental narrative of political ambition, economic striving, and social transformation in the Civil War era.

On July 20, 1863, Lewis Douglass, 22, a member of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry—and son of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass—wrote the following letter to H. Amelia Loguen of Syracuse, New York. The previous evening, Douglass and the 54th had participated in the failed Union attack on Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina. He would have written this letter only hours after battlle...

On July 18, 1863, Union troops commanded by Brigadier General Quincy Gillmore launched an attack on Fort Wagner, the Confederate bastion that protected Morris Island, located south of Charleston Harbor—part of the larger Federal attempt to capture the city of Charleston. While the assault failed, the men of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the African-Americann regiment commanded by Colonel ...

How a word with rough origins came to represent good times to the troops.

Jack Trammell and Guy Terrell's "Civil War Richmond" is the latest in a recent spate of monographs, essay collections, and guidebooks pertaining to the city.

Joseph Stahl and Matthew Borders' "Faces of Union Soldiers at South Mountain & Harpers Ferry" achieves very well its objective of personalizing and picturing, literally, the reality of the Civil War for the common soldier during the critical Maryland campaign of 1862.

Mark F. Bielksi's "A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy" engages debates about where the Civil War was won and lost.

Between fall 2013 and summer 2016, I contributed seven short essays to The Civil War Monitor as “Voices From the Army of the Potomac.” Collectively, they examined more than two dozen titles about the largest and most famous Union army. This essay begins a comparable series on the Army of Northern Virginia that will also discuss primary accounts of various kinds and include a few secondary...

"Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama" suggests the historical and military importance of Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan.