March was a most unusual month for me. I spent the last third of it hospitalized at the NYU hosital in Mineola, on Long Island. My long health care detention gave me plenty of time to follow the fine blogs, podcasts, and other Civil War and Reconstruction social media.
Substack
For more than a decade Kevin Levin has been one of the most popular Civil War bloggers. He has now all but closed down his blogging in order to create a free Substack outlet. You an visit the site to see the archive of his new writing, and sign-up for his newsletter. Levin had blogged almost daily for years, but he had cut his writing back to just a few times each month over the last year or so. Now he is posting five or six articles on Substack each week. His first article explains what he hopes to accomplish with the new format. Other articles follow public controversies over history, like Critical Race Theory. Another article discusses how the National Park Service can interpret the roles of enslaved Black men serving the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Check out the new format and see how it works for you.
Blogs
The month began with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. A number of writers on the Civil War explored comparative lines of study of the new conflict in Eastern Europe. Emerging Civil War had a piece by Neil Chatelain that found similarities in how the Union and the Ukrainian national government portrayed themselves. Chatelain writes that: “The U.S. Civil War became the first conflict extensively photographed, where citizens on the home front could see the carnage and battlefields firsthand. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is likewise the first major conflict being extensively documented by individuals tied into a globally connected high-speed internet.”
Chatelain has another article on Emerging Civil War that uses the newly available desk log of the U.S.S. Minnesota to describe the Battle of Hampton Roads during which the ironclad C.S.S. Virginia challenged the Union blockading squadron athwart the Peninsula in Coastal Virginia. The desk log has, of course, always been available in the archives, but it is now accessible online.
Kevin Pawlak has an interesting article in Emerging Civil War discussing post-war assertions by Lee’s family that the Union general he considered the most talented was George B. McClellan.
For Women’s History Month Emerging Civil War facilitated a discussion among some of its women writers on their historical influences.
Al Mackey writes about the closing of some sections of the western portion of the Gettysburg Battlefield for restoration and safety repairs beginning this month on his blog.
Nick Sacco writes about the story of Mattie Jackson, and enslaved St. Louis Black woman who sought freedom.
Book Reviews
Day By Day through the Civil War in Georgia by Michael K. Shaffer is reviewed by Emerging Civil War as the new go-to book on the war in Georgia. According to reviewer Stephen Davis: “Shaffer’s approach is novel: tracing Georgia’s wartime experience not so much with his own narrative as by following it through the words of the folks back home—in letters, newspapers, diaries, memoirs and a rich array of other sources, such as Sam Richards’ well-known diary.”
Carol Faulkner’s Lucretia Mott’s Heresy is a decade old book on a central figure in the Quaker struggle over abolition. You might not expect to see a review of this 2011 volume in 2022, but reviewer Mark Harnitchek says that as a boy growing up in Philadelphia he had been surprised by the lack of scholarly biographies of a woman who seemed to him to be among his city’s most ardent advocates of freeing African Americans from bondage. He saw Faulkner’s book as an engaging cure for years of neglect of a woman who was born a few years after the United States. Quakers at the time of her birth in the 1790s were not unified in anti-slavery convictions, and Mott as a young woman worked within her own church to place her Meeting and the Quaker faith on the side of Black freedom. The review says that:
Quakers…were radically different. They eschewed formal clergy, local meetings were governed by consensus, women had an equal role in ministry and matters of faith, and the Bible was not the authoritative source for conduct and belief. Instead, Quakers relied on “the divine light of God (that) was in every human being.” Faulkner uses this divine or inner light as a theme to show how Mott’s own sense of right and wrong, not the Bible’s or clerical authority’s, governed her actions. This commentary is emblematic of how she charted her own course, “I cannot accept its (the Bible’s) inspiration as a whole…let us recognize revelation and truth wherever we find it…love, and justice, and mercy, and right” are “innate, self-defined.” Mott would channel this inner light to reform her own religion as well.
The book also highlights Mott’s role as an organizer of the Seneca Falls women’s rights conference of 1848.
In Slavery: Interpreting American History, editors Aaron Astor and Thomas C. Buchanan “have compiled an impressive volume that succinctly explores the changing interpretations of slavery,” writes reviewer Jon Tracey, “This is not so much a history of American slavery as it is a history of how it has been written about. From early authors who downplayed the brutality of slavery to those who fought to correct the record and modern authors that continue in-depth research, the changing interpretations are all found within these pages.”
A lot of bloggers have been writing about George Custer recently. While we are still four years from the infamous anniversary of Little Bighorn, bloggers seem pretty fixed on retelling parts of the Custer story now. Al Mackey, for example, reviews Edward Longacre‘s book Custer: The Making of a Young General on his blog. According to Mackey; “Custer liked to have fun and determined to have as much pleasure in life as he could, and certainly, T. J. Stiles shows, Custer did his best to be close to powerful superiors who could influence his career, but Custer’s rise, Longacre shows us, is because his hard work brought him to the attention of those powerful superiors. “His durability and willingness to take on any assignment no matter how demanding were coming to the attention of his superiors.” [p. 69] Also, “Refusing to remain inactive, he made himself available for scouting missions and larger-scale reconnaissance no matter the degree of danger.” “
The Civil War Monitor offers a list of the five best books on Civil War Memory. Before 2001, the issue of how the war was remembered was only an occasional subject of Civil War scholarship. As the 21st Century began, David Blight’s RACE AND REUNION: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN MEMORY became a seminal work on how the memory of the war was molded to facilitate the political agendas of rival interest factions within American society. THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR: MEDITATIONS ON THE CENTENNIAL by Robert Penn Warren and GHOSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY: DEFEAT, THE LOST CAUSE, AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE NEW SOUTH by Gaines Foster, and CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC: DISPATCHES FROM THE UNFINISHED CIVIL WAR by Tony Horwitz are three important antecedents to Blight’s book that make the list. Anne Marshall’s 2010 book CREATING A CONFEDERATE KENTUCKY: THE LOST CAUSE AND CIVIL WAR MEMORY IN A BORDER STATE looks at how a state which gave most of its resources to the Union war effort, joined the Confederacy after the war!
The Monitor also reviews Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South by Jack Noe which looks at the 1876 100th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the theme of national reconciliation that informed the Philadelphia centennial exposition. According to the review by Meredith Barber, “Event organizers used the Centennial to flaunt American technological success and emphasize reunion after the Civil War. Jack Noe draws on the incredible scope of the Centennial to examine how a diverse group used the event to find meaning in their identity as Americans after the Civil War.”
Jeffry D. Wert reviews The Horse at Gettysburg: Prepared For The Day of Battle by Chris Bagley at the Monitor. According to Wert, there were 80,000 horses and mules supporting the armies in the Gettysburg Campaign. Wert writes that “In this new study, author Chris Bagley, a horse owner and Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg, offers the first detailed work on the subject. The author recognizes that a relatively miniscule number of contemporary Americans either own a horse or mule—or understand the necessary care of the animals. His book is as much of a primer on horses as it is an account of their roles during the battle.”
Shae Smith Cox of the Monitor also reviews a new book that I liked a lot, Ends of War: The Unfinished Flight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney. The book describes the experiences of Confederate soldiers in the weeks after Lee surrendered. Cox writes, “This beautifully written and engaging book will make an excellent addition to any graduate or undergraduate classroom. It is a valuable contribution to the military and political history of the Civil War.”
Elusive Utopia: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Oberlin, Ohio by Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser is reviewed by Cassandra Jane Werking. The book looks at Oberlin Ohio, dominated by the college of the same name. While the school was devoutly antislavery, it did not always live up to its reputation as the most antislavery community in the North. Werking writes of the new study, “Elusive Utopia should be regarded as the archetype for well-researched monographs that remain accessible and engaging for a wide readership. Like their previous works, the authors continue to advance our knowledge of the long nineteenth century and the intersectionality of race, gender, and class, providing important historical context for Americans asking similar questions today.”
Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John M. Sacher is reviewed at Civil War Books and Authors. According to the review, “Strongly opposing the view that conscription was a popularly reviled war measure that eroded the Confederate war effort from within, Sacher’s research strongly suggests that conscription was instead widely accepted by critics and supporters alike as a wartime necessity.” CWBA says that this book is the “new standard history and analysis of Confederate conscription,” and says that “this fine new study is worthy of the highest recommendation.”
CWBA also reviews First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero by Meg Groeling. CWBA says that “Though unabashedly celebratory, Groeling’s narrative is never uncritical and is clearly supported by exhaustive research. First Fallen is unquestionably the new standard history of Elmer Ellsworth’s life, his impact on popular antebellum martial culture, his close association with Abraham Lincoln, his tragic death, and his status as the first martyr to the Union cause. Highly recommended.”
Podcasts
Gerry Prokopovitz has a fascinating interview with Lorien Foote, author of “Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the American Civil War”
Gerry also discussed the Confederate Army of Tennessee with Christopher Thrasher, author of “Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville.”
Gerry has a nice discussion of the financing of the Civil War with Roger Lowenstein, author of “Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War.”
Video
Last month saw a lot of new videos on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Gettysburg National Military Park has been having its winter lecture series. This talk, Gettysburg Roots: A Family, a Farm, and the Fight for Freedom by Professor Jared Frederick of Pennsylvania State University – Altoona on Warfield Farm at Gettysburg and the Warfield family. The Warfields were African Americans who faced kidnapping and enslavement if caught by the Confederates occupying their home.
The next winter talk is Gettysburg’s Rebel Commissioner: The Life and Legacy of William Robbins Christopher Gwinn at Gettysburg National Military Park. Robbins fought at Little Round Top.
Gettysburg Supervisory Park Ranger Angie Atkinson discusses the early purchase of land for the National Cemetery and the acquisition of land for the Gettysburg park.
Over at Civil War Monitor, Kevin Levin is interviewed about the mythical “Black Confederates.”
Professor Anne Sarah Rubin discusses how a real event, Sherman’s March to the Sea, became enshrouded in myth.
My First Podcast
I launched my new new monthly podcast on the Civil War and Reconstruction. The first Episode looks at Confederate General Pat Cleburne and the “Black Confederates.” These podcasts will be a half-hour long, so you can listen to a whole episode on the way to work. I expect to publish Episode 2 later in April.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
