Here is some of the best of Civil War and Reconstruction social media from the last month. One disappointment last month was the continued silence from The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast. The boys have not put up a new episode since July, and I am sure I am not the only listener who misses the convivial banter and deep-dive history. Also, they were in the middle of two series, one on Longstreet and the other on Chambersburg, that have been hanging for the last three months. Summer is the busy season for Licensed Battlefield Guides, so lets hope that after Remembrance Day this month they will be back in front of the microphone.
Blogs
Nick Sacco tackles the Lost Cause claim that people who did not have Confederate ancestors have no right to an opinion on Confederate statues in public spaces. This is one I have heard a lot. I have even seen lawmakers in Southern cities denounced by Lost Causers if they are of recent (nonwhite) immigrant stock. Nick is responding to a Tweet from David Reaboi of the Claremont Institute. If you are not familiar with that group, one of its members, John Eastman, was the intellect behind the false idea that Mike Pence had the power to alter the outcome of the 2020 election! Nick says “I find these comments to be troubling, possibly nativist, and “gross…”
Al Mackey makes book suggestions for those who want the intellectual ammunition to counter Lost Cause distortions.
Emerging Civil War had several articles on The Red Badge of Courage. SarahKay Beirle explores whether the book is set at Chancellorsville. Jon Tracey writes about “What Happened to Henry Fleming.”
Chris Mackowski offers a video tour of Red Badge of Courage sites.
Jon Tracey writes about another literary Civil War veteran, this one real, in his retelling of the experience of Mark Twain as a Confederate militiaman.
Meg Groeling is finishing up her year of weekly writing on Walt Whitman soon. Last month she focused on a Whitman poem on coming to terms with the breakneck pace of change in the modern world. By the way, Meg’s new bio of Elmer Elllsworth was just released.
Over on Muster, Lawrence Powell makes the case for a long-delayed Medal of Honor for André Cailloux, “a Black captain of infantry in the U. S. Army… He was killed on May 27, 1863, leading a foredoomed assault against impregnable Confederate works at Port Hudson, Louisiana, just upriver from Baton Rouge.”
Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. tells the story of Jasper Gray, a highly mobile Black man who joined the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War.
Video
Here is Coffee With a Ranger on the Women of Gettysburg.
The keynote of the #MoreHistory Day in September has been posted by Gettysburg National Military Park. As many of you know, I have been involved in these events both years they were held. I am happy to see that this year the National Park Service has embraced this effort to expand the story of the Civil War. Here is Professor Hillary Green’s talk on showcasing the African American remembrance of Gettysburg and the Civil War.
Richmond National Battlefield Park has a produced video on the Confederate hospital at Chimborazo.
The Smithsonian has a very brief thirty second video recreating a portion of a religious service after the Civil War in a freedpeople’s community.
Finally, from Smithsonian, is a two-minute history of Blackface in American entertainment.
Podcasts
Christopher C. Moore, author of “Apostle of the Lost Cause: J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory” talked to Gerry Prokopowicz on Civil War Talk Radio. This was one of the most interesting interviews I have heard in the last year. J. William Jones was a pioneer in uniting the Lost Cause with White Southern Protestantism. Don’t miss this one.
Book Reviews
David Dixon reviews a new edition of a very old book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass. Dixon writes “No understanding of the Civil War period is complete without some knowledge of Frederick Douglass. To read him tell of his experiences as an enslaved person and share his hardship, hopes, and setbacks is a moving exercise in fathoming what the publisher calls “the waking nightmare of American slavery.””
Brian Matthew Jordan reviews Buying & Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America edited by James Marten and Caroline E. Janney. Jordan calls this an “important new volume.” He writes that The editors have assembled fifteen essays that, taken together, suggest how historians of consumerism, advertising, material culture, and lived experience can reenergize the study of Civil War memory. Examining how “merchants, entrepreneurs, printers, and advertising agencies capitalize[d] on the war’s lingering effects”—and how Gilded Age Americans “consumed” the conflict—the contributors illustrate the war’s “tangible presence in the lives of many for years and even decades after Appomattox.”
Sarah Handley-Cousins has a generally favorable review of Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department by Guy R. Hasegawa. She writes:
While most recent studies on Civil War medicine offer broader analysis and contextualization, Hasegawa sticks to an administrative history. It’s clear that Hasegawa has set out to write the authoritative text on the subject, marshalling more sources than Cunningham was able to access and including valuable appendices and detailed notes. The result is an eminently useful book, one that I know I will reach for when writing a class lecture. But it also left me wanting more. Hasegawa is a booster, convinced that the organization is worthy of praise. In the book’s final paragraph, he writes that, “in light of conditions under which it operated, it is fair to characterize the Confederate Medical Department’s performance as above any reasonable expectation and eminently worthy of study” (183). I completely agree that the Confederate medical department is worthy of study, but Hasegawa doesn’t go much further than giving us an introduction to the organization. I wanted analysis of the economic strife and political failings that held the department back, as one example, and desperately wanted to know more about the handful of women who worked in the Surgeon General’s office. Nevertheless, this is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Civil War medicine.
Civil War Books and Authors reviews Lincoln and Native Americans by Michael S. Green. This is part of the Concise Lincoln Series. According to the review; In his very brief yet fine summary of topically relevant wartime events in the Pacific Northwest, California, Utah, Colorado, the Desert Southwest, and Minnesota, Green notes that Lincoln’s personal involvement in military and political affairs in most of those places was minimal. However, the author does reasonably maintain that the president bears leadership responsibility for the litany of mistreatment and abuse conducted by or facilitated through his patronage appointments.
The same blog also reviews another brief book, Grant’s Left Hook: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, May 5-June 7, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick. According to the review:
Covering a relatively large military campaign composed of numerous skirmishes and battles in little more than one hundred pages of narrative (while also sharing space with illustrations on every page) is a difficult task, and Chick carries it off with uncommon skill.
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Thanks for the nod to Emerging Civil War–the best of the best, IMHO. We have no plans of slowing down any time soon, so keep reading. Thanks.
Great. Something good to read there every day.
“Nick Sacco tackles the Lost Cause claim that people who did not have Confederate ancestors have no right to an opinion on Confederate statues in public spaces.”
Democracy doesn’t work that way.