Blog
Published: 6/8/12
Masterly Inactivity
Good afternoon! This Frank Leslie cartoon parodies the extended military standoff between Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of Potomac and Confederate General P.G.T Beauregard’s Army of the Shenandoah during...
Published: 6/6/12
Views from the Dark Side of American History (2011)
And there it was. The question I knew she would eventually ask, this undergraduate who writes for her campus newspaper. “So why did you become interested in the Civil War?”...
Published: 6/6/12
Battle Hymns (2012)
In Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War, Christian McWhirter analyzes the role music played in dividing the nation in 1860-1861, in sustaining civilian and...
Published: 6/1/12
Sinbad Lincoln and the Old Man of the Sea
Good Morning! Today’s Friday Funny is Frank Leslie’s “Sinbad Lincoln and the Old Man of the Sea.” A clear critique of Gideon Welles, the Union Secretary of the Navy, this...
Published: 5/31/12
Form follows Function: Changing Audiences Bring Changes to Interpretations
Most visitors to Spotsylvania Court House enter the battlefield via the suggested tour route off Brock Road. At the turn onto Grant Drive, several public displays—interpretive and memorial—greet the visitor....
Published: 5/30/12
With a Sword in One Hand… (2012)
New scholarship is most often produced through new interpretations of familiar evidence. Less often, historians discover and present genuinely new information. Even more rarely, scholars force us to completely reassess...
Published: 5/27/12
Nathan Bedford Forrest, Reconstructed
Today, Nathan Bedford Forrest is more popular than ever among the fans of the Confederacy. No doubt because he’s come to represent unyielding defiance, whether in victory or defeat, in...
Published: 5/25/12
Neutrality or Death?
Good Morning! Today’s Friday Funny comes to us from the June 29, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly. The caption reads, “Governor Magoffin’s neutrality means holding the Cock of the Walk...
Published: 5/23/12
Second Manassas (2011)
The fighting around Manassas Junction in northern Virginia during the late summer of 1862 is often hailed by students of the Civil War as one of Confederate General Robert E....
Published: 5/21/12
Lorena
One of the most popular Civil War songs was Lorena. Reverend Henry D. L. Webster first penned the lyrics in 1856 after his fiancé— Ella Blocksom—ended their engagement. However, in...
Published: 5/18/12
Why Don’t You Take It?
Good morning! Today’s Friday Funny is an 1861 Currier & Ives sketch commenting on the Union’s substantial advantage in terms war materiel. The above cartoon illustrates the might of the...
Published: 5/16/12
The Allstons of Chicora Wood (2011)
The Allstons of Chicora Wood is an interesting and frustrating book. What began as a standard biography of antebellum South Carolina governor and rice planter Robert F.W. Allston, evolved over the...
Published: 5/16/12
Ministers and Masters (2011)
Over the last several decades, scholars of the antebellum South have deepened our understanding of the influence of honor and masculinity on the region’s history. Their studies have not only...
Published: 5/15/12
The Battle of Drury’s Bluff
The morning of May 15, 1862 set up to be another feather in the cap of the U.S. Navy following her victories at Port Royal, South Carolina (November, 1861) and...
Published: 5/15/12
John Mackie: The Man and the Memory
One rarely thinks of the United States Marine Corps and the Civil War in the same thought. Given their small size and limited service, this is not really surprising. And...
Published: 5/14/12
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
The following Walt Whitman poem—“Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”—reminds us of the tangible, human costs of war. Whitman often found the indiscriminate carnage and wholesale anonymity...
Published: 5/11/12
The “Light Guard”
Good Morning! Today’s Friday Funny is an 1861 Harper’s Weekly cartoon. Entitled “Costume Suggested for the Brave Stay-at-Home Light Guard,” this sketch mockingly questions the masculinity of Union men who...
Published: 5/9/12
A Secret Society History of the Civil War (2011)
When historians of the Civil War think about wartime “secret societies,” various fundamental questions commonly emerge: Who were these people? How numerous were they? What did they believe? What was...