Civil War social media “exploded” (in the words of one participant) at the start of June over a book review on the Emerging Civil War site! I have not provided links to all the pixels spilled in this modern civil war because not everything that was written falls under the title of “Best of Web.” However, if you go to the Blogs section of this post, you will find a link to Kevin Levin’s article, which includes links to other relevant articles, including the book review that started it all.
Blogs
Kevin Levin has a post that is critical of a book review by Stephen Davis. The review that started it all on the Emerging Civil War website is of a new book by Neils Eichorn on the Civil War in Macon, Georgia. The review was extremely negative and has been widely criticized on-line. If you want to read it, Kevin links to it. Kevin writes:
Davis…criticizes Eichorn for citing “Rebel twenty-two times, Confederate just three.” These types of criticisms constitute the brunt of the review. Let’s be clear, such criticisms have nothing to do with the book or the author and everything to do with Davis, who is in no position to accuse another author of “unseemly partisanship.”
One of Davis’s recent books is titled, “What the Yankees Did to Us.” Who exactly is “us”?
Levin also criticizes Emerging Civil War for publishing the review in the form that it appeared, saying it is a “stain” on an otherwise important site for Civil War scholarship.
[Disclosure: I write a monthly column for Emerging Civil War. I have no financial interest in the site.]
James Marten, one of the most prominent historians of the Civil War, has an enlightening article on Milwaukee’s Soldiers’ Home. The veterans’ homes were set up to shelter aged and disabled vets after the Civil War. Many fell into disrepair in the mid-20th Century as the old vets died. In Milwaukee, a local coalition of preservationists, community groups, and veterans organizations united to pressure the government to redevelop the old buildings as housing for today’s veterans and as a service center. In many ways it is now a living memorial to all the veterans who have passed through there over the decades.
Al Mackey has another discussion of Critical Race Theory, along with links for further study. I recall being introduced to an early version of CRT back in the 1980s and I am surprised that it hit the headlines in the 2020s! One can agree or disagree with its underpinnings or analysis, but banning it?
Damien Shiels is shaking up his esteemed Irish in the American Civil War website. Long a solo operation, it is now being turned into a team effort. He is bringing a couple of other scholars in to work with him. You can read all about it on his blog.
Professor Greg Downs reviews installation artist Isaac Julien multi-screen film exhibition “Lessons of the Hour,” which he calls “mesmerizing.” The installation follows the life of Frederick Douglass. Kyle Nappi has the detailed story of two brothers who deserted the Confederate Stonewall Brigade and joined the Union Army while being held as prisoners of war. Both articles are on the Journal of the Civil War Era blog Muster.
Emerging Civil War had a four-part series by Nathan Provost on the Overland Campaign-Part I and Part II and Part III and Part IV
Podcasts
Civil War Talk Radio features an interview with Kent Masterson Brown on his new book Meade at Gettysburg just in time for the anniversary of the great battle.
Gerry Prokopowicz has an interview with Larry Daniel on a perennial hot-stove topic: Why did the Confederate Army of Tennessee fail so badly in “The West”? Part of the reason was slavery. Deep South Confederates did not trust their non-slave owning Upper South comrades in arms. Those who did not own slaves were just not gray enough.
Heather Cox Richardson has a new podcast called Now & Then that discusses history topics. In June the podcast had an episode on Critical Race Theory. CRT comes out of legal scholarship examining structural racism. But if you watch Fox News you would think that every high school discussion of slavery or Jim Crow is Critical Race Theory.
Tweets
Clint Smith, the author of the New York Times Bestseller How the Word Was Passed Tweeted out a thread of 25 Books to read to support scholarship on Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Race. Click on the Tweet below and you will see the full list.
I’m so grateful for the way that HOW THE WORD IS PASSED has been received in the world. This book is only possible because of the historians whose scholarship has transformed my understanding of slavery in America. Here is a thread of some of their books. I hope you buy them 🧵:
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) June 16, 2021
Video
Heather Cox Richardson talked about Grant’s “Indian Policy” during Reconstruction.
Book Reviews
The Civil War Monitor’s book review blog has a very positive review of Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station: The Army of the Potomac’s First Post-Gettysburg Offensive, From Kelly’s Ford to the Rapidan, October 21 to November 20, 1863 by Jeffrey William Hunt. Reviewer Jonathan A. Noyalas writes:
While a bewildering number of books have been published about the Gettysburg Campaign and a considerable amount of ink has been spilled on the Wilderness Campaign, the absence of scholarship examining the intervening ten months is quite astounding. Historian Jeffrey William Hunt, director of the Texas Military Forces Museum, recognized this deficiency years ago and charted a course to rescue this neglected period. Beginning in 2017 with the release of his superb Meade and Lee after Gettysburg and followed two years later by Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station, Hunt has revealed the complex nature of the war in Virginia in the aftermath of the Army of the Potomac’s triumph at Gettysburg. Hunt’s latest volume, the third in a four-part series, brings clarity to a month of maneuvering and fighting in Culpeper County between late October and late November 1863.
Civil War Books and Authors offers a very favorable review of the same book. CWBA says “The author’s thorough knowledge and nuanced appreciation of the military challenges imposed by the area’s contested ground is readily apparent throughout the book, and detailed explanation of how terrain influenced operational and tactical decision-making during the campaign is one of the book’s chief strengths.”
David Dixon reviews The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage. The only slave ship captain ever hung in the United States for his crimes was executed in New York City by the Lincoln administration in 1862. The book explores the intimate ties between the city and the illegal slave trade. Dixon writes that the book “synthesizes the latest scholarship on the transatlantic slave trade and adds critical insight into how global capital markets, geopolitics, transnational criminal syndicates, and international espionage rings operated and exerted influence on U.S. events throughout the Civil War period in America.”
Civil War Monitor has a review of Embattled Capital: A Guide to Richmond During the Civil War by Robert M. Dunkerly and Doug Crenshaw. Reviewer Codie Eash gives the book high marks. According to the review “Embattled Capital provides proper context and reasoned interpretation to readers, rising above the realm of a “you-are-here” guidebook, and tending toward a more nuanced examination of why being “here” truly matters in the first place. Dunkerly and Crenshaw afford readers and visitors the opportunity to make connections to the events of generations ago while emphasizing Richmond’s timeless significance during the Civil War.”
The Monitor also reviews Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies by Earl J. Hess. Reviewer Evan Rothera says the newest Hess book is a “deeply-researched, well-written, and insightful volume.”
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
