This was a good month for most Civil War and Reconstruction social media, but two of the most reliable podcasts put out nothing new this month. Hopefully next month will be a better time for those addicted to listening to the Battle of Gettysburg Podcast and other audio feeds.
By the way, if you want to listen to my own podcast on Reconstruction and the Civil War, just click here.
Blogs
has a horrifying look at comparative criminal justice in Confederate Richmond during the Civil War for the blog Muster. Using a new archive in Virginia, she examines a crime against property committed by Black men, and the murder of a Black child by white slave owners in 1864. The analytic tools offered by Critical Race Theory are not needed to understand the outcome of this case.
Nick Sacco at Exploring the Past has a post on his encounter with an AI chat bot playing the role of Robert E. Lee. We will soon see our gainfully unemployed Lost Cause Trolls replaced by even more dangerous AI Confederates. Read it to believe it!
I am a little late on referencing another post from Sacco, this one on an article I wrote about the most famous Political General of them all, Ben Butler. Like most folks, I am always interested in what others say about my work.
Joan Waugh of UCLA has risen in prominence over the last decade as a researcher and author. The Civil War Monitor has made her the subject of its latest The Books That Made Me series. All the books on her list are worth reading, but, as she is an expert on U.S. Grant, I take particularly important her recommendation of Brooks D. Simpson’s Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868. Waugh says reading Simpson’s book was a “revelation.” She describes it as “brilliant and meticulously researched.”
Irish in the American Civil War has an interesting letter from a soldier of the 69th New York Militia right before Bull Run.
The relatively new Bluejackets blog on Union men in the Civil War Navy, has a set of men one of its volunteers looked into the nativity of. Men from Cuba, Jamaica, Tobago, the Virgin Islands, Malta, and India are all identified. I knew that about four-in-ten navy men were foreign born, but the variety is spectacular. The same site has a list of men lost when the small Union schooner Annie went down in 1865.
At Emerging Civil War, historian Dave Powell wrote about Henry F. Vallette, a Union officer who disappeared during a battle, apparently due to cowardice. In fact, Powell says, suffered a concussion, a wound not apparent to his contemptuous comrades. At the same site, Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant wrote about Ulysses S. Grant’s son Fred. Fred Grant spent much of the Civil War at his father’s side during campaigns and battles. A twelve-year old at the front is appalling to even think about.
Sarah Kay Bierle is becoming a popular writer at Emerging Civil War. In February she wrote about James H. Foster, an enslaved man, and his actions in support of the Union army. He lived in Shenandoah County, Virginia, and he assisted Union forces in his area, and helped Loyalist civilians as well.
Historian Dave Powell has an interesting article on “Sherman’s Fixer” John Corse. Also at ECW, Tim Talbott had a nice series on enslaved men who were servants to Confederates at the start of the war, but became soldiers by escaping their enslavers-in-gray and joining the Union Army.
Al Mackey’s regular column on modern day Confederates talks about an effort to defund The University of Richmond after it changed the name of its law school. My own law school’s building is named after a certain member of the Kushner family.
Substack
Kevin Levin was on a Civil Rights Journey at the beginning of the month, a tour of Civil Rights sites. He started his Journey at a rest stop in Alabama where a monument that used to be under a Confederate Flag said “Alabama We Dare Defend Our Rights.” Levin writes that this “Defense of Rights” involved the right of whites to own Blacks. When Blacks were finally freed from slavery and won the right to vote, Alabama’s white majority fought to take the right to vote away. He writes that by 1901, “In the state as a whole only 3,654 Black voters remained of roughly 182,000, who had been registered in 1900. Roughly 10,000 Black residents of Dallas County were registered to vote in 1900, while only 52 Black residents remained on the voter rolls after the new state constitution was ratified.”
Levin also has commentary on Nikki Haley’s engagement with Confederate Memory. He has a good post on the now removed Confederate monuments of Charlottesville.
Book Reviews
The Tale Untwisted: General George B. McClellan, the Maryland Campaign, and the Discovery of Lee’s Lost Orders by Gene M. Thorp & Alexander B. Rossino was reviewed at Civil War Books and Authors (CWBA). The book is a new reexamination of an old controversy. Civil War Books and Authors says; “authors Gene Thorp and Alexander Rossino sharply and convincingly argue that McClellan responded to the Lost Orders both rapidly and with poised confidence, and his corps commanders, issued orders aggressive in tone and expectation, moved forward to engage the enemy as rapidly as one could expect given the bottlenecks and terrain obstacles ahead of them…Thorp and Rossino’s study shows how going about the process of changing minds influenced by generations of printed misinformation is properly done.”
A lot of my readers are fascinated by the 19th Century paintings depicting Civil War combat. CWBA reviews The Antietam Paintings by James Hope by Bradley M. Gottfried & Linda I. Gottfried. The Gottfrieds are well-know to students of the Civil War. James Hope was a Scottish immigrant who served in the Union army during the Civil War. He later painted scenes of battle. According to CWBA this book is “A welcome break from the norm, this volume is highly recommended for anyone interested in nineteenth-century Civil War art and the Battle of Antietam.”
Civil War Books and Authors also reviewed From the Mountains to the Bay: The War in Virginia, January-May 1862 by well-known military historian Ethan S. Rafuse. The period covered is dominated by the Peninsula Campaign, but this new volume expands coverage to examine actions by multiple Union armies in the state. According to the review; “From the Mountains to the Bay: The War in Virginia, January-May 1862 is highly recommended.”
Jennifer Andrella at Knox College reviews I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction by Kidada E. Williams which has become the most talked about Reconstruction book so far this year. The new book by Kidada Williams is is “a powerful reflection of her commitment to uncovering how post-emancipation violence transformed one’s identity, livelihood, and sense of belonging,” according to the review at Civil War Monitor.
Jonathan M. Steplyk at the Monitor reviews Hamilton Newsome’s new book Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond. According to the review:
Thousands of books have been written about the Gettysburg Campaign, yet talented scholars with fresh insights continue to prove the last has not been said about our most studied military campaign. In Gettysburg’s Southern Front, Hampton Newsome takes readers beyond the fields of Pennsylvania to examine Union efforts to threaten Richmond and its vital railroads in June and July 1863. In doing so, he offers a masterful campaign narrative of understudied military actions, squarely integrating them in the wider scope of the war.
Evan C. Rothera at the Monitor reviews Administering Freedom: The State of Emancipation after the Freedmen’s Bureau by Dale Kretz. This looks like one I need to read. Rothera writes that:
Administering Freedom begins where some scholars have ended their accounts: the shuttering of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872. From there, the book examines freedpeople’s interactions with the Freedmen’s Branch and the Pension Bureau; it analyzes how freedpeople, especially freedwomen, negotiated and influenced the rapidly expanding administrative state. This deeply researched volume will appeal to anyone interested in the history of race and racism; state building and nation building; citizenship, gender, or the memory of the U.S. Civil War.
Bert Dunkerly, like all other reviewers I have read, offers a very positive review of Hampton Newsome’s Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond. Dunkerly praises “the author’s magnificent effort to weave together the events in Pennsylvania, Union raids in western Virginia and North Carolina, and decisions made in Richmond and Washington. Gettysburg’s Southern Front is thoroughly researched, well written, and a pleasure to read.”
Podcasts
The Addressing Gettysburg Podcast has been posting the Gettysburg Winter Lecture Series on its site. In this edition, archeologists discussed what they found while exploring Little Round Top during the site closure over the last year.
The next Winter Lecture posted by Addressing Gettysburg is John Hoptak of Gettysburg National Military Park spoke about “The First Defenders” of Washington. These Pennsylvania companies were attacked by mobs in Baltimore in 1861 while travelling to defend the Capital. The first man wounded was Nick Biddle, a Black orderly in the unit. I learned a lot from this.
Barbara Sanders from Gettysburg National Military Park gives a Winter Lecture on what the people of Gettysburg did during and after the battle.
Gerry Prokopowicz talks to Eric Michael Burke, author of “Soldiers from Experience: The Forging of Sherman’s Fifteenth Army Corps, 1862-1863,” at Civil War Talk Radio. This is a great book and a good discussion of Burke’s unique approach.
Ed Achorn, author of “The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History,” talks about the political maneuvers that led to Lincoln becoming the Republican nominee for president.
One of the best known scholars of the Civil War, Gary Gallagher, talks with Gerry about Bruce Catton’s famous Army of the Potomac trilogy which he edited for the new Library of America Edition. Gallagher is always an engaging conversationalist and he and Gerry have a great discussion on a widely read work.
Emerging Civil War’s Chris Mackowski spoke with Kris White about Mobile Bay during the Civil War, how it was defended and how the battle went down.
Nick Sacco is one of my favorite historians to listen to. Emerging Civil War’s Chris Mackowski talked to him about his new exhibit for the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site that explores the fascinating connection between Grant and slavery.
Camp Nelson National Monument was the final subject for Emerging Civil War last month with Chief Interpreter Steve Phan discussing the Kentucky site, its connection to the United States Colored Troops and the mistreatment of Black refugees there in 1864.
Video
Chris Mackowski spoke with Kevin Levin on the attack on Black History:
Chris also talked with National Park Service Historian Nick Sacco about U.S. Grant and Slavery:
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