Note: You can now access my own Civil War/Reconstruction podcasts here.
New Website
A new website that looks at Civil War naval forces got started over in the United Kingdom by well-known historian David Gleeson and newly-PhDed Irish scholar Damian Shiels, among others. Called Civil War Bluejackets it is focused on discovering the stories of those who served. If you are a student of naval operations, check it out.
Blogs
Al Mackey has a long article on Nathan Bedford Forrest as a military commander. Al uses an analysis by Dr. Christopher M. Rein, a military historian with the Combat Studies Institute, as the undergirding to his article.
Over at the Bluejackets Project Blog, Damian Shiels had a harrowing description of the disastrous sinking of the Monitor-class U.S.S. Tecumseh in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The ship lost 80% of its crew when it went down.
At Emerging Civil War, Sean Michael Chick has an article on the Unification Movement of Louisiana during Reconstruction. Former Confederate General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard was a prominent figure in the bi-racial movement. Many African Americans saw the Unification effort as an attempt to divide their community and draw votes from the Republicans. Whatever his motives, Beauregard openly supported Black suffrage and officeholding. Unification never happened and Reconstruction in Louisiana was resisted by White supremacist violence throughout the 1870s.
At the same site, Katy Berman has a detailed article on how Nevada became a state in 1864 as part of the effort to abolish slavery.
Dave Powell, a very well-known military historian, has a fascinating piece on Union General Henry Judah’s failure at Resaca in 1864. Judah was a West Pointer and friend of Ulysses S. Grant, yet he was removed from commanding his division because his performance was so rash.
Steve Davis has a piece on the newspaperman John H. Steele, editor of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer. Davis is the co-author of a book on the newspaper. Steele was a “dedicated Confederate propagandist,” according to Davis.
Chris Mackowski has a What If piece. “What if Longstreet had not been wounded at the Wilderness.” Since Longstreet was moving forcefully against Federal forces at the time, could his wounding have altered the battle’s outcome?
Ronald Coddington, an accomplished historian of photography during the Civil War, discusses three essential books to read on the subject at Civil War Monitor.
Substack
Kevin Levin is keeping up his torrid pace on Substack. If you like his work, you should subscribe. It is free and you will get a note every time he posts a new article.
A lot of folks have been reading Kevin’s discussion of Ken Burns’s Civil War series from PBS. I remember watching it when it was first released and then shown night after night. A lot of what I most remember is the discussion of African Americans as slaves, abolitionists, and Union soldiers. Kevin discusses what a revelation this was for Americans who were not part of the academic establishment. Kevin also has a post focusing on historian Barbara Fields. As Kevin says, she was the first Black woman historian to get a lot of air time on national TV to discuss the Civil War.
Those of us who watched the Burns series recall it as an engaging work of art, different from anything we had seen on television before. Afterwards we heard the criticism and, for the most part, accepted the critique. Kevin writes about coming to terms with the terrible flaws in the series as well as the love it inspired in many for the subject.
On a different subject, Kevin writes about a school district in Virginia that got rid of the name “Stonewall Jackson High School” two years ago. Now it is considering restoring the name. Levin writes that the high school was erected in the 1950s, primetime for naming schools after Confederates. The Brown v. Board of Education decision meant that schools would soon be integrated, and naming them after Confederates was a tactic of “Massive Resistance” to Blacks entering formerly all-White spaces.
Book Reviews
Al Mackey reviews Lincoln and the Immigrant, one of my favorite recent books on Lincoln. Mackey writes that “The book is really well done, and I can recommend it for students of the war.”
Over at LSU’s Civil War Book Review, Meg Groeling’s First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero is reviewed by Gerry Prokopowicz. This is a book that is getting good reviews and I liked it when I read it. Prokopowicz writes:
This is a fine book. It takes a minor but well-known story, amplifies it with new
evidence, and enhances its meaning by connecting it to larger social and political trends. The
biographical text is supplemented by several intriguing appendices, including one on the rival
Confederate memory of May 24, 1861, that focuses on Ellsworth’s killer as hero and martyr.
Every era of history has its professors and university press books; students of the American Civil
War are fortunate also to have talented authors outside of academia like Meg Groeling, and
publishers like Savas Beatie giving them a voice.
Stephen Cushman’s The Generals’ Civil War, What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today is a literary analysis of the memoirs of Confederate and Union generals. In his review, Wesley Moody describes the book:
Cushman examines the memoirs of six generals, three Confederates, and three Union.
The ones he chose have all been examined by Civil War historians, but they treat the memoirs as
belated after-action reports. Cushman treats them as pieces of literature. He discusses the postwar book market, the styles of the authors, as well as their overall arguments. He also looks at
the literary and classical references they use, something most Civil War historians miss.
Cushman’s book gets a strong recommendation:
For the professional Civil War historian, the graduate student, or the casual learner, I
highly recommend reading Stephen Cushman’s The General’s Civil War before tackling any of
the great memoirs. I wish it had been around when I used those books for my graduate research.
A new book on anti-immigrant political violence in Philadelphia in the 1840s gets a good review in the LSU Civil War Book Review. The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots
Over the Soul of a Nation is by Zachary Schrag. According to the review:
In May 1844, political and religious conflicts between the native- and foreign-born
residents of Philadelphia boiled over into violence. American-immigrant tensions ran especially
high in the Third Ward of Philadelphia, which included a large number of Irish Catholics and
happened to fall outside city police jurisdiction. According to Schrag, the 1844 riots manifested
existing tensions regarding citizenship, immigration policy, and religion and compelled a
national conversation about the respective roles of the police, the militia, and the military in
urban America.
The Civil War Books and Authors site reviewed Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War by Sean Chick. According to the review:
Sean Chick’s Dreams of Victory is a very solid introduction to the life and Civil War career of General P.G.T. Beauregard. It’s a thoughtful foray that successfully invites readers to rethink opinions (formed either through self-study or passively gained through the literature) on one of the war’s most controversial, and perhaps most misunderstood, generals. This brisk narrative’s able chronicling of Beauregard’s many significant victories and defeats, both on and off the battlefield, also serves as a powerful reminder of the need for a new major biography. Recommended.
Chick writes often for Emerging Civil War.
The same site reviewed Fortress Nashville: Pioneers, Engineers, Mechanics, Contrabands & U.S. Colored Troops by Mark Zimmerman and said:
Meticulously detailed and densely packed with visual aids of all kinds, Fortress Nashville ranks among the most compelling descriptive and illustrated histories of major Civil War fortification networks. Readers of this study will also gain a keen appreciation of the multitude of factors underpinning Nashville’s central role in sustaining the Union war effort in the West.
Podcasts
Gerry Prokopowicz interviewed Earnest Dollar on his new book Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil Wars Final Campaign in North Carolina.
I really paid attention to Gerry’s discussion with Gene Eric Salecker, author of Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History. I have been reading about the Sultana for years and still learned a lot.
Another great interview was with Tim Talbott, on the Battle of New Market Heights Memorial and Education Association. This was a great discussion of a battle that my friends and I had never heard of when we “read everything about the Civil War” back in the 1970s. Gerry has toured the battlefield and he and Tim Talbott have an interesting discussion of the Black Union troops who fought there.
Civil War Talk Radio also has an interesting interview with Michael Somerville, author of Bull Run to Boer War: How the American Civil War Changed the British Army. As Somerville explains, the British sent a hundred officers to observe the war at various times. The British army studied the Civil War because it was seen as an early example of “modern” industrial warfare.
Video
Our friend Damien Shiels has a new series of videos of his exploration of the cemetery at the site of Andersonville Prison. He takes us to the graves of Irish immigrants who died while imprisoned. There are a half-dozen of these that can be accessed at his website. Below is the first video giving an explanation of the project.
The National Park Service has a new video describing sites where you can learn about Ulysses S. Grant.
The video of the commemoration of the Ulysses S. Grant Bicentennial at Grant’s Tomb has been posted. It shows the full ceremony, including the West Point Color Guard. The keynote address by award-winning historian and Grant Biographer Brooks Simpson begins at 20:50 in the video. It is very good. Watch it below.
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How can you not include “Checkmate Lincolnites!” It is hilarious and instructive at the same time. More history media should be like this.
I usually only put up material released the month prior. If something new comes out, let me know!