Note: You can now access my own Civil War/Reconstruction podcasts here.
The last month has been a uniquely vibrant one on Civil War and Reconstruction social media. I rarely see this many great pieces in just thirty days!
Blogs
Gerald J. Prokopowicz always gets a mention in this monthly roundup, usually in the podcasts section. This month his blogging at Civil War Monitor is also very good. Gerry is a history professor at East Carolina State University and an expert on Lincoln and the Civil War. This month he posted a blog on the five best books on “Lincoln and His Military Commanders” that is well-worth reading. His five best are:
Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams
Lincoln’s Generals edited by Gabor Boritt
Lincoln and the Military by John F. Marszalek
Lincoln’s Political Generals by David Work
Lincoln and His Admirals by Craig L. Symonds
The Monitor also has a blog interview with the PR Director at the American Civil War Museum on the sites newly opened theater.
The Monitor reprints a New York soldier’s writing in 1862 on ticks in camp. It also has a first-person account of the fighting at Cold Harbor in 1864.
Historian Daniel Koch makes the argument on the blog Muster that the Civil War belongs to the Age of Revolution. He is not claiming that it is part of the American Revolution of 1776. Instead, he believes that it is part of British historian Eric Hobsbawm’s international Age of Revolution which saw massive challenges to autocracy and hierarchy in Europe and the Americas. Koch writes that “if we consider a revolution to be something that achieves profound and fundamental change, then the Civil War should be seen as a revolution that was far more successful than any other in its age.”
Harry Smeltzer at Bull Runnings has a fascinating recalculation of Union strength at Matthews Hill during the First Battle of Bull Run. Smeltzer also offers a brief history of the 14th Brooklyn Volunteer Infantry Regiment. If you have visited the Brooklyn Academy of Music you have likely seen the Fowler Square statue of the commander of this urban regiment. The old armory in Park Slope was the post-war headquarters of the regiment.
Al Mackey at Student of the American Civil War looks at the effort in Louisiana to remove Confederate holidays from the state calendar. He also describes the new display of Jefferson Davis’s Richmond statue at the Valentine museum in that city. The statue is depicted as it looked after it was torn down and defaced.
Over at Muster, Kevin Adams has an interesting piece on an “insurgency” in Seattle in 1886. White working men had risen up against Chinese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest and engaged in violence to drive them out of Seattle. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic president since the Civil War, sent an army regiment into the city to suppress the rebellion. Adams looks at how the experience of the Civil War two decades earlier influenced how the Federal government approached the insurgency.
This last set of blog posts all come from Emerging Civil War. That site published dozens of posts every month from many different authors.
Richard Abramson has a post on the house he grew up in on Route 22 in Westchester, N.Y. Whenever I head up to Albany from Long Island I take a moment to think about whether I have enough time to ride on Route 22. The road is a little two lane or four lane route that is next to the New York border with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont all the way from New York City to Canada. Abrahamson’s post talks about how his father revealed his house’s role as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Kristen Trout writes about the history of Bleeding Kansas and ways the University of Kansas uses the Free State’s history during the Civil War Era in building the school’s identity through its sports teams. With football workouts starting soon, check out the Jayhawks reason for being.
Chris Mackowski, who directs Emerging Civil War, has a post on the Official Records and what didn’t get in. This is part of a series at the blog on unpublished sources.
Sheritta Bitikofer writes in the same series about a Louisianan from a slave-owning family who was drafted and kept an unpublished diary during the war. Max Longley has a nice piece on unpublished sources in Notre Dame’s library.
Sarah Kay Bierle writes about Union soldiers who escaped from their Confederate captors and brought word of Emancipation to enslaved African Americans in South Carolina in 1864.
Sheritta Bitikofer wrote one of my favorite articles last month on the racist icon Birth of a Nation. The film was the first “BLOCKBUSTER” and it influenced how people thought about Reconstruction for five decades.
Finally, here is a discussion by historians of the writings of women who experienced the Civil War.
Substack
This was another hectic month at Kevin Levin’s (relatively) new Substack. Kevin posted fifteen new articles in June, many quite substantial. While most of his Substack posts have been on Civil War Era history, his decision to deactivate his Twitter account in the third week of June attracted a lot of attention. Kevin first made a national name for himself as a blogger on Civil War Memory shortly before the start of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Then, in 2016, even though he continued blogging, he became a major force in Civil War Twitter.
On June 22, when he deactivated his account, Levin had 45,000 followers on Twitter. That did not surprise me. He was one of the most-read historians on Twitter. What surprised me was that he had Tweeted 65,000 times! In his Substack explaining his decision to step away from Twitter, Kevin wrote; “it has become increasingly clear that there was a price to be paid for this success. For me, that price was addiction.” I am going to write more about this decision by Kevin Levin to leave Twitter, but I will do it in a separate post.
Kevin’s Substack discussed a lot besides Twitter. One post was on the half-millennium old technology of the printed book, specifically C. Van Woodward’s The Burden of Southern History published in 1960. The post looks at Black voting rights during Reconstruction. Black voting rights were won at the cost of blood and treasure, but they were then lost. Levin writes that the Civil Rights achievements of the second half of the 20th Century may also be destroyed. He says “Woodward reminds us that our nostalgic views of the past—regardless of the form it takes—obscure a more complex and perhaps disturbing reality. Nothing is permanent and nothing is inevitable.”
Levin does not just read books, he writes them too. He is working on a biography of Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the subject of the movie Glory. With the rededication of the Boston monument to the regiment and Shaw in May, Levin wrote down his reflections. Levin says:
The memorial forces you to stop and reflect. Augustus Saint-Gaudens captured more than just a moment in time—namely the regiment’s march through Boston on May 28, 1863. There is purpose in the determination of Shaw and his men as they march forward to a fate that we know awaited them on that sandy beach outside Charleston Harbor on July 18, 1863. These men embodied the very question that the war eventually forced the nation to confront: Would the United States continue to exist free or slave.
Levin was a history teacher before he became a published author and he has a lot to say about how parents really feel about the way history is taught in their children’s schools. The political attacks on schools and teachers have already begun to drive some of our educators out of the field.
Kevin Levin also revealed that he is considering writing a book on enslaved Black men used in support roles by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. There were no “Black Confederates” but there were slaves used as cooks, teamsters, and in other positions.
Book Reviews
Salmon Chase is a central figure in the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. Over at the Civil War Monitor Caleb W. Southern reviews the new Chase bio Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival by Walter Stahr. According to the review “In this engaging biography, Stahr rescues Chase from Lincoln’s shadow, arguing that “Chase ranks as one of the great Americans of his generation.” Chase was an anti-slavery lawyer before the Civil War. Caleb Southern writes that “Chase was on the frontline of the fugitive slave issue. During his time as a lawyer, he became known as the “attorney general for the fugitive slaves” because of his work in defending freedom-seeking enslaved persons against the claims of their former masters.” Chase was a driven man, and the new biography argues that the proliferation of deaths in Chase’s immediate family may have impelled Chase to pursue his ambitions relentlessly.
Stahr is an experienced biographer. He has already written biographies of Seward and Stanton. According to Caleb Southern:
Stahr’s biography of Chase is an admirable treatment of an oft-forgotten nineteenth century politician who, during the first two decades before the Civil War, “developed arguments that turned the Constitution into an antislavery charter”. Stahr’s book focuses extensively on Chase’s political career, with events from his private life interspersed. Better synthesis of Chase’s private and public lives might have made Chase a bit more “accessible” and relatable. Still, Salmon P. Chase is an excellent account of the man who set the nation on a firm financial footing during the Civil War and rendered consequential decisions as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Also at Civil War Monitor well-known historian Brian Matthew Jordan reviews Love & Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss by Angela Esco Elder. This new book focuses on women who lived in a gender-structured society where the public roles of women were sharply constrained. When the war began and their husbands left for the front, some found themselves suddenly thrust into the central role in maintaining the family economy, including in some cases supervision male slaves. Over the next four years they saw the material underpinnings of the White South collapse. When their husbands died, they were left alone in a revolutionized world in which a quarter of the young men they had known were now dead. According to the review:
Elder recovers the welter of raw and conflicting emotions expressed by Confederate widows. “From shock to denial, depression to acceptance,” the author writes, “wives came to terms with their new identity as widows in different ways and at different speeds.” Elder tallies the diverse ways women grappled with the loss of a loved one—from social functions and scrapbooking to child-rearing and remarriage. As the author writes, “exploring the varied emotional responses of Confederate widows during the war, alongside the expectations place upon them, reveals the complicated politics of mourning that lay beneath official tributes to women performing that work.”
Brian Matthew Jordan reviews another book on death this month Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era by Sarah J. Purcell. The book examines nine public funerals of the Long Civil War Era beginning with Henry Clay’s 1852 public funerals. Elmer Ellsworth’s funeral at the start of the Civil War and Robert E. Lee’s funeral half-a-decade after Appomattox are among the public grievings looked at for a sense the social and political roles of public grief. Brian Matthew Jordan writes that “Spectacle of Grief is…essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the paradoxes of American nationalism, either in the Civil War era or today.”
Jonathan S. Jones, who teaches at VMI, reviews Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Civil War Soldiers by Dillon J. Carroll for the Civil War Monitor. According to Jones, “Invisible Wounds is a fascinating study that unequivocally illustrates the links between the Civil War and mental illness while expanding historians’ understanding of the lived experiences of mental health for soldiers and veterans.”
Codie Eash at Civil War Monitor reviews a short and well-illustrated book on Gettysburg aimed at general readers. Gettysburg: Remembering the Civil War’s Most Decisive Battle: Three Days that Saved the United States edited by Ben Nussbaum is only 96 pages long, but it gives someone new to the battle a reliable guide to the military aspects of the July, 1863 fight, according to Eash. The review says:
The finished product is visually appealing, utilizing a mix of period photographs, drawings, and other forms of art, as well as clear and concise visuals including historical artifacts, charts, timelines, and maps. Several infographics contextualize concepts such as chain of command, army organization, numerical strengths of forces, and the volume of casualties. Such resources provide effective aids for new audiences.
Civil War Books and Authors reviews Hidden History of Civil War Florida by Robert Redd. The Hidden History series has been somewhat uneven according to reviewers, but this new volume get a good review from the well-regarded blog. According to Civil War Books and Authors, “Combining sound research with engaging content presentation, Robert Redd’s Hidden History of Civil War Florida ranks among the best of the Civil War-related entries in the series.”
True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Clayton J. Butle gets a fine review from Civil War Books and Authors. Here is what the review concludes:
A creative blend of military, political, and social history, True Blue insightfully reintroduces the Deep South Unionist minority to the modern reader, explaining their background, their motivations, their wartime service, and their key involvement in the contingent twists and turns of Reconstruction and Redemption. Supplying an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to improving our understanding of that small group’s outsized influence on the American experience of the latter half of the nineteenth century, this volume establishes author Clayton Butler as a major new voice in the evolving interpretation of the nature and historical impact of Civil War-era southern unionism more generally. Highly recommended.
Robert Conner’s new book, James Montgomery: Abolitionist Warrior, is described by Civil War Books and Authors as the first biography of the well-known Union general that covers the entire span of Montgomery’s life. According to the review, “A comparatively short-length study based on published sources, Conner’s biography leaves room for a more exhaustive future treatment that casts a wider research net. Until that time, which may or may not ever arrive, in Robert Conner’s James Montgomery readers can be satisfied in finally having a solid introductory history, warts and all…”
Meg Groeling reviews A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter Edited by John David Smith and William Cooper, Jr. for Emerging Civil War. Groeling likes the diary, writing that it “is a valuable addition to the published diaries and letters currently available. The young author seems so fresh and natural that she could be a current neighbor…”
Steve Davis reviews the new book The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War at Emerging Civil War. It is a good review but the book’s price is high.
Podcasts
The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast is back with a new season of programs. This is one of my favorite podcasts hosted by two Licensed Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg, Jim Hessler and Eric Lindblade . This episode looks at weather in Gettysburg during the battle. Jeff Harding, a Licensed Battlefield Guide, and Dr. Jon Nese from Pennsylvania State University have been researching this topic for years and have a lot to say about it. I was surprised at the temperatures during and right before the battle.
A second episode from the same podcast has Meade at Gettysburg author Kent Masterson Brown talking about the surprising way Major General George Gordon Meade took command of the Union Army of the Potomac just days before the Battle of Gettysburg.
If you have not gotten enough of Jim Hessler and Eric Lindblade on their Battle of Gettysburg podcast, you can listen to their retelling of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, on the Addressing Gettysburg podcast!
Gerry Prokopowicz of Civil War Talk Radio spoke with Elizabeth D. Leonard, author of “Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life,” about that fascinating Union general. I read the book and enjoyed the podcast.
Gerry did another great interview with Sarah J. Purcell, author of “Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era.” This book is getting a lot of attention and sounds worth reading.
Gerry wrapped up his 2021-22 season with a series of interviews with participants at the Gettysburg Civil War Institute.
Video:
The popular series Checkmate, Lincolnites! spends an hour debunking (and mocking) the Lost Cause myth that the South seceded because of states’ rights. Thanks to Adriana Pena for sending this my way.
Nick Sacco of the National Park Service talks with historian Marvin Alonso-Greer about Black soldiers at St. Louis.
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