Blog
Published: 4/29/20
Confederate Soldiers in the American Civil War (2019)
Savas Beatie has continued to solidify its reputation as a premier military and general history publishing company by adding Mark Hughes’s Confederate Soldiers in the American Civil War: Facts and...
Published: 4/22/20
The False Cause (2020)
Historians have long understood that the Lost Cause, the memory of the Civil War nurtured by white Southerners, rests on a loose reading of the historical record. The Lost Cause...
Published: 4/15/20
In Their Letters, In Their Words (2019)
Editor Mark Flotow’s inspiration for this book was a previous project that had him scouring the letters of Illinois soldiers to understand their wartime experiences. Realizing the impact of the...
Published: 4/9/20
Lee Bids Farewell
Makers of the World’s History and Their Grand Achievements (1903) Robert E. Lee bids the men of the Army of Northern Virginia farewell at war’s end. On the night of...
Published: 4/8/20
Gold and Freedom (2015)
The title of Nicolas Barreyre’s book, Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction, refers to “the intersection of two major post-Civil War debates: one about the economic consequences of...
Published: 4/3/20
The “Hero” of Castle Thunder
On June 3, 1865—only a few weeks after the surrender ceremonies at Appomattox Court House—Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran the following article about the former Confederate-run prison in Richmond called...
Published: 4/1/20
Mississippi Bishop William Henry Elder (2019)
Ryan Starrett has produced an excellent, if limited local history. Starrett writes about the life and work of William Henry Elder, a Catholic Bishop in Confederate Mississippi. His narrative relies...
Published: 3/25/20
Caught in the Maelstrom (2019)
The Civil War was fought over the future of the continental West. Would conquered territories of indigenous people be cultivated by enslaved Africans, or exploited by white immigrants? It is...
Published: 3/18/20
Imperfect Union (2020)
Steve Inskeep is a U.S. journalist who hosts NPR’s Morning Edition and Up First; he prides himself on promoting lesser-known stories.[1] In Imperfect Union, Inskeep “aims to bring the Frémonts back into view through the...
Published: 3/16/20
History in the Digital Age
Michaela Levin Historian Kevin M. Levin In November 2005 I created the website Civil War Memory, which included a blog. I had recently completed a master’s degree in history and...
Published: 3/13/20
Extra Voices: Payday
National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History A Civil War greenback In the Voices section of the Spring 2020 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted quotes by...
Published: 3/11/20
The Last Battleground (2019)
Philip Gerard’s The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina originated as an extensive series of articles in Our State: Celebrating North Carolina magazine commemorating the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. There is...
Published: 3/6/20
The Fashion Trends of 1864
On February 27, 1864, Harper’s Weekly published the following illustration—”a few of the various styles of garments manufactured by” New York City–based clothing wholesalers Kirkland, Bronson, & Co. “New York...
Published: 3/4/20
Vicksburg (2019)
Civil War historians have long made much ado about July 1863. Generations of scholars and writers have argued that the war reached a turning point with Robert E. Lee’s defeat...
Published: 2/26/20
Congress at War (2020)
The history of Civil War politics has often been focused on Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanship, management of his feuding Cabinet, and ability to steer the country towards emancipation. Fergus M. Bordewich...
Published: 2/20/20
A Goodbye Gift
While attending services at St. Paul’s Church in Richmond on Sunday, April 2, 1865, Confederate president Jefferson Davis received word that Confederate forces had begun evacuating Petersburg in the wake...
Published: 2/19/20
Rebel Guerrillas (2018)
In a narrative history of the Civil War’s western and eastern theaters, Paul Williams studies three of the Confederate Army’s most prominent irregular warriors: John Mosby, William Quantrill, and “Bloody...
Published: 2/12/20
Armies of Deliverance (2019)
As a National Park Service interpretive ranger and now as a college educator, I have been asked innumerable times to recommend the best one-volume book on the Civil War. Without...