As we enter May, 2021, I am working on a podcast of my own that I call Civil War Reconstruction. It will be a monthly and will be a bit out of character for my regular readers. Instead of providing a detailed history of an immigrant regiment or presenting a Reconstruction Era primary source, I will pick a topic each month that may be controversial and give an original take on it. I hope you will at least check it out each month. I am likely to begin release of the podcast this summer. The first installment is on Patrick Cleburne and the Black Confederates.
Podcasts
The lads over at The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast had two outstanding shows recently on Medical Care at Gettysburg. Most tourists visiting Gettysburg for the first time are surprised by how many homes there have signs marking them as hospitals. Here is the story behind the signage. Fran Feyock and Rick Schroeder, both medical professionals and Licensed Battlefield Guides, join the hosts to talk about everything from the experience of being wounded, to medical practices of the 1860s, to the types of medical facilities at the battlefield. I am not a huge fan of super-long podcasts, but the hours you spend listening to these two episodes will be worth your time. Hosts Jim Hessler and Eric Lindblade have big personalities but they are particularly good at asking intelligent questions and then getting out of the way while their guests answer them.
Part 1
Part 2
History Today has an interview with National Book Award-winner Annette Gordon-Reed discussing her new book on Juneteenth. Gordon-Reed grew up in Texas and she frames her book as a memoir of her family’s experience of the holiday.
Civil War Talk Radio had a very good month yet again. First up was William Marvel discussing the perennial controversy over the court martial of Fitz John Porter. If you like these sorts of military soap operas, check this one out.
Pulitzer Prize winner John Matteson talks to Gerry Popokowicz about his new book on the Battle of Fredericksburg. Matteson looks at the impact of the battle on the lives of five people involved in it.
We all know that soldiers “fraternized” with their opponents during the Civil War, but no one has ever written a whole book about it. Gerry interviews Professor Lauren Thompson on her inspired work. These informal truces took place often throughout the war, according to Professor Thompson. Were they just about the the trading of tobacco for coffee, or was something more being exchanged?
Blogs
Lots of good blogging recently.
Brooks Simpson provides a list of books essential to studying the Reconstruction Era. To the list should be added Professor Simpson’s own Library of America book of Reconstruction primary sources.
Russell McClintock offers a list of books on the Coming of the Civil War, just in time for the 160th Anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter.
Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War writes about Grant’s aide Adam Badeau and what he told Henry Adams about the great general. According to Adams; “He said that neither he nor the rest of the staff knew why Grant succeeded; they believed in him because of his success.”
Chris also has a post on Henry Adams’s thoughts on his schoolmate Rooney Lee. I am guessing he is reading, or re-reading, The Education of Henry Adams. Here is Adams’s description of the son of Robert E. Lee; Tall, largely built, handsome, genial, with liberal Virginian openness towards all he liked, he had also the Virginian habit of command and took leadership as his natural habit. No one cared to contest it. None of the New Englanders wanted command. For a year, at least, Lee was the most popular and prominent young man in his class, but then seemed slowly to drop into the background. The habit of command was not enough, and the Virginian had little else. He was simple beyond analysis; so simple that even the simple New England student could not realize him. No one knew enough to know how ignorant he was; how childlike; how helpless before the relative complexity of a school.
Meg Groeling writes a column Weekly Whitman on the ECW site with selections from the Long Island poet. Last month she reprinted a Whitman poem on the Irish volunteers in the Union Army.
Civil War Books and Authors has a favorable review of the newest book in the Emerging Civil War Series, this one on the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac (Virginia). The review points out that while the book is the 35th installment in the Emerging Civil War Series, it is the first ECW book on a naval aspect of the war! According to the review: “In terms of the quality of its writing and extent of its informational content, Unlike Anything That Ever Floated resides in the top rank of ECW series volumes.”
Al Mackey has a blog post on the fake controversy about the decision by the Army University Press to use the term “United States Army,” rather than “Union Army,” to refer to the Federal forces in the Civil War. I am pretty agnostic on this editorial question. I don’t use the term “Northern Army” for a variety of reasons of historical accuracy, but I do sometimes refer to the “Union Army.” For a press associated with the United States Army, I can see why there would be a concern to use the official name of the entity. Of course the far-right trolls who populate corners of the Civil War netscape are describing this as a manifestation of “Cancel Culture,” even though it is unlikely the Army University Press will ever try to cancel the Army!
A discussion of the change in terminology on the Humanities message board H-CivWar sees a comment by historian Niels Eichorn who says:
I also like to point to Steven Hahn’s thought-provoking A Nation Without Borders. He explains part of his language in that he did not use “American Civil War” or “Civil War” but instead the terminology used by individuals at the time, which was “War of the Rebellion.” Similarly, he wrote that he treated the “Confederate States of America” as a “rogue state rather than a legitimate state,” which meant he often used rebellious states to describe that fledgling state…I find Hahn’s suggestion of a War of the Rebellion convincing as at the time and in the post-war years U.S. soldiers often referred to their opponents as rebels. He is also right in that the rebel states never received international recognition (aside from belligerent status) so it is a rogue state.
The collective blog Civil Discourse seemed to go silent at the end of last year. I was worried that this worthy site had fallen prey to the “Decline of the Civil War Blogs” that Nick Sacco discussed on his own blog a couple of months ago. I am happy to report that new posts are again going up on the site. The newest, by Zac Cowsert, looks at a single-issue newspaper published by Union troops occupying Lewisburg in western Virginia. The troops confiscated a printing press and ran off their own newspaper. Zac tells a fascinating story of what the soldiers said in its pages.
Phil Gast tells us about an effort to improve commemoration of the Sultana Disaster.
The Muster blog discusses research at the University of Virginia into United States Colored Troops from Albemarle County.
Facebook Lives
Reconstruction Era National Historical Park has been putting up more and more videos. Last month there was an interesting discussion of Frederick Douglass at Cedar Hill in Washington. This chat features the passionate Ranger Kevin Bryant, of Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. There are a few tech problems, but otherwise this is great.
Ranger Chris was looking particularly quarantined in this discussion with Megan Kate Nelson on her books “The Three Cornered War” and her new book on Yellowstone as a Reconstruction Era park. Nelson’s “This Strange Country: Yellowstone and the Reconstruction of America” looks at why the Reconstruction Congress created the first National Park. BTW, I vote for Ranger Chris keeping his quarantine hair and beard.
Videos
Damian Shiels talks about the participation of Irish from the Albany and Troy Capital Region in New York in the Civil War. Troy was a great center of the Irish working class in the region. Damian’s talk is based on his massive research into the letters that Irish immigrants in the armies wrote to their families.
All in all, the last month was one of the best for Civil War and Reconstruction history on social media. Really, the pickings were so good I had to leave some worthy efforts out. Now that many parks and historic sites are starting to resume something resembling normal operations, I hope that the great online offerings will not disappear.
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