January was a little depressing because I am a Buffalo Bills fan. Still, I got to write a lot of new posts last month, and so did other folks having recovered from Holiday Revels. By the way, thanks to Emerging Civil War for highlighting my work in their end of the year wrap-up.
By the way, if you want to listen to my own podcast on Reconstruction and the Civil War, just click here.
Blogs
The collective blog Muster was silent in December, but it is back now with a new post by Nick Sacco. Sacco writes that Abolitionist William Sill compiled extensive information on nearly a thousand Blacks escaping slavery who he helped. Sacco put the data onto an excel spreadsheet that can now be accessed online.
Our friends over at Civil War Bluejackets have a post that will interest naval students. They look at Civil War Landsmen. This was the lowest rank on a ship for freeborn men. This was the rank of many of the men we routinely think of as “sailors.”
Irish in the American Civil War has the story of an immigrant who survived the Great Hunger but did not survive Andersonville.
Emerging Civil War (ECW) started the year with Sean Michael Chick’s article on how the January 2, 1863 Battle of Stones River has been remembered. At the time, it was hailed as a great Union victory. Grant told Lincoln it was of no consequence a couple of years later. Ken Burns didn’t even mention it.
Chris Mackowski at ECW has a piece on the eradication of thousands of buffalo by the United States army after the Civil War as part of its effort to destroy the food source of the Plains Indians. This killed the animals, and the Native Americans.
At the same blog, Sarah Kay Bierle wrote about the work of General Milroy to use his Union soldiers to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in the days after it was signed on January 1, 1863 in Winchester, Virginia.
Sarah Kay Bierle has an article on General Barlow and his horses. Pretty much any article on Barlow is going to make this monthly list. His dad was the pastor of my wife’s church!
R. Michael Gosselin at ECW writes about reading A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Charles S. Wainwright, 1861-1865 which he finds funny and insulting.
Kevin Donovan at ECW writes about the court martial of Major General Fitz John Porter for his actions at Second Bull Run. Donovan writes that the court’s decision was improper and he goes in extensive detail to make his case. Those interested in Porter, Second Bull Run, or the military justice system will find this article fascinating.
Angela Zombek has an interesting piece about how Union soldiers occupying Key West tried to make sense of death in an area of operations without major battles.
Carol VanOrnum has another article in her ECW series on Civil War Round Tables. This one focuses on how to treat a guest speaker. The same site has an article on an early War Cartoonist, Frank Beard, by David Dixon.
Tim Talbott at ECW has a detailed exploration of the life of a Union soldier in the United States Colored Troops. Obadiah Triford died fighting at New Market Heights in Virginia.
Well-known historian George Rable has an article in Civil War Monitor on the books that built him.
Al Mackey is keeping up his commentary on the efforts to revive “Confederate Heritage.”
Substack
Kevin Levin got 2023 off strongly on his Substack stack! He started with his thoughts on Will Smith’s new film Emancipation. Levin sees some insight in the movie’s slavery context: “One of the things I was most impressed with is the movie’s depiction of slavery in the Confederate military itself. Most Hollywood movies set the institution of slavery on a plantation, as this one does in the beginning, but it quickly moves to the construction of a military railroad by the Confederate military. This particular setting offers an important reminder that enslaved labor functioned as the “cornerstone” of the Confederate army and military operations throughout the South. Every Confederate soldier, regardless of whether he owned one hundred or no slaves at all, was invested in maintaining slavery.”
Levin also has an article on the mistaken impression that the memory of the Civil War is dramatically more salient in the South than the North. A third article looks at the memory of the Civil War during the Woodrow Wilson Administration and the conflict generated by the white reconciliation of the 20th Century.
A high school history teacher for many years, Levin took up the banning of AP African American studies from Florida Schools by the de Santis Administration. Levin writes:
Anyone who has experience teaching an AP history course will immediately see through this ruse. The College Board is far from a radical organization bent on teaching white students to hate themselves and the United States or radicalizing Black students. First and foremost, the College Board is a business. The last thing it wants to do is rock the boat and I suspect that this concern has been front and center in the development of this new course.
Book Reviews
A.J. Blaylock at Civil War Monitor reviewed Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell: The Battle of Secessionville, June 16, 1862 by James A. Morgan III. This is a battle that a lot of Civil War readers have heard of, but most of us know little about. According to Blaylock; “Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell provides a readable and compelling examination of an otherwise neglected Civil War battle. Professional historians may bridle at Morgan’s refusal to engage deeply with historiography or at his occasional lack of nuance. However, Morgan seeks only to “clarify some aspects of the story and draw further attention to this small, but potentially very significant, fight and give readers a fuller understanding of what took place” (xxv). In that endeavor, he succeeds mightily.”
Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein has gotten quite a few reviews in the year since it was published, and now Civil War Monitor’s Gordon Berg has a review. Berg writes that “Lowenstein has turned his considerable talents to a heretofore underappreciated aspect of the Civil War: namely, how the government of Abraham Lincoln, totally unprepared for a conflict of such magnitude, managed to raise unprecedented amounts of money to pay for it—and, in the process, initiated a revolution in government that laid the groundwork for the nation’s modern economic state.” Berg praises the writing on the dismal science as narrative that “flows with a confident grace, guiding readers through myriad financial schemes, government policies, and political intrigue with a minimum of technocratic jargon or cliché-ridden truisms.”
The dean of Civil War book reviewers, Brian Matthew Jordan, has a review of the new Savas Beatie offering The Tale Untwisted: General George B. McClellan, the Maryland Campaign, and the Discovery of Lee’s Lost Orders by Gene M. Thorp and Alexander B. Rossino. This book is a study of the well-known discovery of Lee’s orders prior to the Battle of Antietam by Union soldiers. The accepted narrative for decades held that George McClellan, even when he knew Lee’s plans, moved slowly in pursuit of the Confederates. Professor Jordan writes that this book is “a narrative that foregrounds their astute historical detective work and careful sequencing of evidence, the authors argue convincingly that McClellan moved with purpose and alacrity to check Lee’s invasion.” Jordan says “All future scholarship on the Maryland Campaign must account for these authors’ critical findings. This is an essential addition to any Antietam bibliography.”
Thirteen Months in Dixie, or, The Adventures of a Federal Prisoner in Texas by W. F. Oscar Federhen, edited by Jeaninne Surette Honstein & Steven A. Knowlton is reviewed on Emerging Civil War by Phill Greenwalt who describes it as a “Civil War adventure tale.”
Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood by Catherine V. Bateson got reviewed at ECW by Meg Groeling. I have been hearing about this book for a while and I was glad to see it got a very positive review. According to Groeling:
“Bateson has thoroughly interpreted Irish lyrics and explained the multiple usage of specific Irish tunes. She has shown how the importance of Fenian sentiments was woven into songs calling for freedom from oppression in general, and she has enhanced a reader’s understanding of the place Irish music has in the development of American music, from very early vaudeville to today’s obsession with Irish pub music.”
Podcasts
Chris Mackowski discusses history with Emerging Civil War’s new chief historian Cecily Nelson Zander.
Chris White talks about the Mud March of the Army of the Potomac with Chris Mackowski.
Steven Cowie, author of “When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and its Impact on the Civilians Who Called it Home” talked to Gerry about the massive problems that civilians were confronted with after the deadliest day of combat in American history took place in their town.
I enjoyed Hampton Newsome’s new book “Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond” and I was happy to hear him talk about it.
The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast is back with a second episode on Bad Gettysburg History, taking apart some nonfactual stories from the final day of battle.
