Blogs

Published 2/9/2012

Black Soldiers and Lady Liberty

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Our Black History Month celebration continues with this 1865 drawing of a wounded Union soldier by Thomas Nast.

Published 2/8/2012

Roanoke Island...150 Years Ago

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Roanoke Island showing the position of Confederate Batteries

Published 2/8/2012

ABRUZZO: Polemical Pain (2011)

By: James Hill Welborn III Category: Book Reviews

Long before Americans, North and South, commenced to shooting each other over slavery and the state of the nation, a related battle raged over the definition of humanitarianism; one that increasingly involved the burgeoning sectional crisis and its debate over slavery. Margaret Abruzzo centers this battle in her cross hairs as she outlines the origins, evolution, and disparate impacts of American...

Published 2/8/2012

MARSHALL: Creating a Confederate Kentucky (2010)

By: Anne Sarah Rubin Category: Book Reviews

Nowhere is the cliche that the North won the Civil War while the South won the peace more true than in Kentucky. Historian Anne E. Marshall's elegantly crafted Creating a Confederate Kentucky tells us exactly how that happened...

Published 2/7/2012

The Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Roanoke Island

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

February 7th and 8th mark the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Roanoke Island. A lesser known battle, Roanoke Island was part of Brigadier General Ambrose E. Burnside’s North Carolina Expedition and its successful outcome allowed the Union to...

Published 2/7/2012

Voice from the Past: "The Right to Citizenship"

By: Laura June Davis Category: Quotables

Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.

Published 2/7/2012

Camp Life for African American Regiments

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Army of the Potomac-Scene in camp of Negro regiments-Method of punishment of Negro soldiers for various offences.

Published 2/6/2012

Voice from the Past: "We Had Held Out for Over Two"

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

On the 4th of february the Federal fleet of gun-boats, followed by countless transports, appeared below the fort. Far as eye could see, the course of the river could be traced by the dense volumes of smoke issuing from the flotilla-indicating that the long-threatened attempt to break our lines was to be made in earnest. The gunboats took up a position about three miles below and opened a brisk...

Published 2/6/2012

Aboard a Gun Deck During the Battle of Fort Henry

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Gun-Deck of one of the Mississippi Gun-Boats Engaged in the Attack on Fort Henry

Published 2/6/2012

Voice from the Past: "The 6th Dawned Mild and Cheering"

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

The following is Rear Admiral Henry Walke's recollection of the Battle of Fort Henry.   

Published 2/6/2012

The Battle of Fort Henry Sesquicentennial

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Today marks the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Fort Henry, a Confederate earthern fort on the Tennessee River.

Published 2/6/2012

Honoring the 107th U.S. Colored Infantry Band

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Our Black History Month Celebration continues...107th U.S. Colored Infantry Band at Fort Corcoran in Arlington, Virginia, November 1865

Published 2/2/2012

Voice from the Past: Rallying with the Hearts of Lions

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

The following letter is from Samuel Cabble, a private in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry, to his wife. Cabble was a slave before he joined the army at twenty-one years of age.

Published 2/2/2012

Preparing to See the Elephant

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Preparing the Negro Soldiers to Use the Minie Rifle - Our Black History Month Celebration Continues.

Published 2/1/2012

Honoring African American Veterans for Black History Month

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

Happy Black History Month! Today and throughout the month of February, we honor those African Americans who fought in the Civil War.

Published 2/1/2012

WILSON: The Business of Civil War (2010)

By: Brooks D. Simpson Category: Book Reviews

Readers will find Wilson's deeply-researched account well worth the investment as a study of wartime political economy. It explores areas hitherto mostly neglected and rarely explored...

Published 1/30/2012

Inboard the USS Monitor

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

The above image is the USS Monitor's general plan featuring an inboard profile of the ironclad. First published in in 1862, the plan features hull cross section views, as well as views of the engine, boiler spaces, and areas below the upper deck.

Published 1/30/2012

The Launching of a Legend...the USS Monitor

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

150 years ago today, the Union Navy launched the USS Monitor, its first ironclad, from the Continental Iron Works, at Greenpoint in Long Island, New York. Construction of the Monitor began in the fall of 1861 and Swedish engineer John Ericsson was responsible for her conception and design

Published 1/26/2012

The Mighty Mississippi

By: Laura June Davis Category: From the Archives

General View of the Mississipii River from Cairo, Illinois to the mouth of the river.

Published 1/25/2012

GINGRICH (et al): The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

By: Craig A. Warren Category: Book Reviews

In recent months, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has sprinkled the campaign trail with promotional events for the books he published last year, including the Civil War novel The Battle of the Crater. Politics and marketing aside, how does the new book stand up within the genre of Civil War fiction? And what vision of the war emerges from its pages?