Published: 12/12/11Voice from the Past: A Christmas BundleBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Good Morning! Today’s Voice from the Past is Julia Ellen LeGrand Waitz of New Orleans, Louisiana. The following excerpt is from a December 1861 diary entry. Just completed another bundle...
Published: 12/8/11Voice from the Past: The Hardest Calamities to BearBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Among the calamities of war, the hardest to bear, perhaps, is the separation of families and friends. Yet all must be endured to accomplish our independence and maintain our self-government....
Published: 12/7/11THOMPSON (ed.): Tejanos in GrayBy: William L. SheaCategory: Book Reviews Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri edited by Jerry Thompson (translated by Jose Roberto Juarez). College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011....
Published: 12/6/11Image of the Day: Hope That Thing Isn’t Loaded!By: Terry JohnstonCategory: The Front Line A Union volunteer strikes a (potentially tragic?) pose with a group of comrades. We hope those guys were friends! Image Credit: Library of Congress
Published: 12/5/11Voice from the Past – Christmasday!By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Good morning! To celebrate the holidays, all of the quotables this month will reference Christmas 1861. Our first voice from the past is Raphael Semmes, who wrote the following statement...
Published: 12/1/11Voice from the Past: 1861By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line ARM’D year! year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisp- ing cadenzas...
Published: 11/30/11URAL (ed.): Civil War Citizens (2010)By: James J. BroomallCategory: Book Reviews Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict edited by Susanna J. Ural. New York University Press, 2010. Paper, ISBN: 0814785700. $23.00. Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and...
Published: 11/30/11MCGINTY: The Body of John Merryman (2011)By: Michael S. GreenCategory: Book Reviews The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeaus Corpus by Brian McGinty. Harvard University Press, 2011. Cloth, ISBN: 0674061551. $29.95. Among the battles that Abraham Lincoln fought...
Published: 11/29/11A Second Helping of Civil War ThanksgivingBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, ate lots of turkey/tofurkey, and survived the chaos of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping. Since, we did not post our regular...
Published: 11/29/11Celebration or Riot?By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Upon hearing the news of General George McClellan’s appointment to chief commander of the Union Army, Washingtonians embarked upon a grand torch-light procession down Seventh Street. The “compliment” proceeded from...
Published: 11/28/11Voice from the Past: “The Best Man and the Best General”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line “I am very glad to learn that my order changed Gen. Scott’s feelings entirely, and that he now says I am the best man and the best general that ever...
Published: 11/25/11Voice from the Past – Thanksgiving is OverBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Happy Black Friday! We hope you all had a wonderful (and delectable) Thanksgiving. Our final “Voice from the Past” comes from the November 1861 diary of Lucy Larcom of Nordom,...
Published: 11/24/11Voice from the Past – Thankfully Keeping Thanksgiving DayBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Our Thanksgiving tribute continues. Today’s “Voice from the Past” is Wilder Dwight of the Second Massachusettes Infantry Volunteers. “Camp near Seneca, November 16, 1861. …The virtue of this military life...
Published: 11/23/11HARROLD: Border War (2010)By: Bonnie Laughlin-SchultzCategory: Book Reviews Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War by Stanley Harrold. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Cloth, ISBN: 0807834319. $30.00. In this well-researched and convincing work,...
Published: 11/23/11Voice from the Past – “Fleshing our teeth in a secesh gobbler…”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Good Morning! We continue our week long Civil War Thanksgiving celebration with an excerpt from William Wheeler’s November 11, 1861 letter to his mother: Camp Observation, Md., November 11, 1861....
Published: 11/22/11Voice from the Past – Thanksgiving SensationsBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Happy Thanksgiving! The following account of an 1861 Thanksgiving dinner amongst the Union army comes from a letter written by Wilder Dwight of the 2nd Massachusettes Infantry: Camp near Seneca,...
Published: 11/22/11Voice from the Past – A Thanksgiving Day ProclamationBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line While Americans had celebrated Thanksgiving since 1621, it was not until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the following Thanksgiving Day Proclamation. Only then, did the holiday became a national...
Published: 11/21/11Voice from the Past – The Customs of Our Puritan FathersBy: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line Good morning! To celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, The Front Line will be posting different “Voices from the Past” about Civil War soldiers’ Thanksgiving experiences. Our first quote comes from the...
Published: 11/17/11Voice from the Past – “Am afloat, adrift”By: Laura June DavisCategory: The Front Line “Am afloat, adrift, abroad, motion uneasy, “Inner man” “stomach” becoming so. I think I’ll try full-length. A cotton-bale & the open air on the for’ard deck. “Very grand.” The sea—if...
Published: 11/16/11MORSMAN: The Big House After Slavery (2010)By: Felicity TurnerCategory: Book Reviews The Big House After Slavery: Virginia Plantation Families and their Postwar Domestic Experiment by Amy Feely Morsman. University of Virginia Press, 2010. Cloth, ISBN: 0813930030. $45.00. Amy Feely Morsman’s The Big House After...