Blogs

Tony Silber's "Twelve Days" is a deeply researched, propulsive narrative of Washington, D.C., in April 1861.

In "The Governor's Pawns," Randall Gooden opens a new perspective on the formation and early years of war-torn West Virginia.

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of ...

Jonathan W. White offers an enthralling and deeply researched account of the astonishing career of Appleton Oaksmith, a Civil War era sea captain, slaver, and politician.

Fitzhugh Brundage's "A New History of the American South" delivers a sweeping synthesis and historiographical review of southern history.

How did a state born of Unionist loyalties come to revere one of Lee's lieutenants?

The contruction of my historiographical self began on a rainy afternoon in fifth grade. There was no chance for outdoor romping, or venturing through the deluge to a friendʼs house to play after school. Instead, I ran to my room with a library copy of a gray-bound book for young readers, MacKinlay Kantorʼs Gettysburg (1952). I plopped onto my bed and soon lost myself in a story that, I can see...

"July 22" is a carefully crafted battle narrative written by Earl Hess, one of the Civil War's most talented chroniclers.

In "Sand, Science, and the Civil War," Scott Hippensteel addresses the geological factors that shaped virtually every facet of the conflict.

William L. Shea's "Union General" is a sympathetic biography of an important U.S. general whose embrace of emancipation earned him enemies.

On October 26, 2023, The American Civil War Museum (ACWM), in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, will host its first annual Lincoln Prize Lecture, where guests will hear from the winner of this year’s Lincoln Prize, which was awarded at a ceremony in New York City on April 11, 2023.

Charles Reagan Wilson pours a career's worth of research, observation, and expertise into "The Southern Way of Life."

Fredette's "Heartsick and Astonished" contains important insights into the home lives of ordinary individuals caught up in one of the nation's most extraordinary moments.

Putting this series together has been enjoyable but also frustrating. None of the retrospective literature created by soldiers in the ranks made the cut, including classics such as Carlton McCarthy’s Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1865 (1882) and John O. Casler’s Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade (1893). But so it goes with efforts such as mine...

Across a career spanning nearly six decades, historian William C. Harris has produced important books on virtually every facet of the sixteenth president’s life.

The Soldier in Our Civil War, a multi-volume work about the Civil War published in 1893, showcases many of the illustrations that appeared during the conflict in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Collectively, the editors boasted that these visuals would impact both young readers and old—especially former soliders, who they insisted "will turn these pages and be vividly reminded of a...

Emily Owens's "Consent in the Presence of Force" offers both a cultural history of violence in the antebellum U.S. South and an intellectual history of Black women’s survival.

Sharon A. Roger Hepburn has undertaken an extremely challenging task and performed it superbly in "Private No More."