Recent Posts
Emancipation: “All men are created equal, whether black or white”
Karl Frick was in his early twenties when he arrived in the United States from Germany just six years before the Civil War. He married…
True Valor at Gettysburg Monument in Lyons, New York
A new monument to a Civil War regiment, the 111th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was unveiled on August 22, 2026 in Lyons, N.Y.. This…
Historian Compares Resistance to ICE Raids with Resistance to Fugitive Slave Act
This article originally appeared on July, 2019. Kate Masur, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, is one of our country’s leading historians of the…
Drew Gilpin Faust Reviews Two Books on Political Education of Slaves and Interracial Relationships
The New York Review of Books has two reviews written by prominent Civil War historian Drew Gilpin Faust of new books on enslaved African Americans….
Preliminaries to Emancipation: Race, the Irish, and Lincoln
Lincoln’s September 22, 1862, Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery. It only announced that slavery would end in the Confederacy if the rebellion in the South…
NY Times Recalls the Search by Its Reporter for His Son at Gettysburg
Dan Barry, a modern reporter for the New York Times, has a story in today’s paper about a Times reporter on July 4, 1863 wandering…
Private Peter Welsh Joins the Irish Brigade
Peter Welsh was a married carpenter from New York when he went to Boston in 1862 to try to settle a dispute among his relatives. A…
The Irish Brigade at Antietam
Warning: This article includes historic photos of the dead at Antietam. The Battle of Antietam was the last act in the Confederate invasion of the North. After…
Interior Department Begins Process of Creating Signs in Washington Denouncing the Smithsonian
The Trump Administration continues to pressure the Smithsonian in its year-and-a-half campaign to change how American history is told. Over the Summer, the administration had…
President Grant’s Atonement to America’s Jews For His “Infamous Order” Expelling Them
In 1862 Union General Ulysses S. Grant perpetrated one of the most notorious official acts against Jews in United States history. He ordered the expulsion of…