Welcome back to our survey of the best of social media on the Civil War and Reconstruction over the last month. There was a big uptick in both blog posting and podcasts as summer ended, and quite a bit of it was very good. This month I have posted links to more stuff than ever before just because there was such a high volume of quality writing and recording!
By the way, if you want to listen to my own podcast on Reconstruction and the Civil War, just click below.
Blogs
Tim Talbott discusses the capture of Walt Whitman’s brother by the Confederates in September, 1864 outside of Petersburg. Walt and his brother George Washington Whitman grew up not far from where I live on Long Island and I have been reading about the poet since I was a boy. Still, there was much in this article that I did not know.
Al Mackey is back with his discussion of what he calls “Confederate Heritage.” In an article at the start of September is the story of how two women are working to recover the memory of a Black community in Virginia. The same article discusses a lawsuit by the United Daughters of the Confederacy seeking reparations from the city of Winston-Salem for a Confederate statue removed three years ago.
Sheritta Bitikofer has an interesting overview of “Hispanics” in the Civil War at Emerging Civil War. I don’t agree with her characterization of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants to the U.S. as “Hispanic,” but I won’t quibble. At the same site, Sarah Kay Bierle writes about a Union soldier who may have been a crewman on the infamous slave ship Wanderer. She has an interesting quote from an Irish soldier who was a friend of the alleged former slaver crewman.
Another Irishman is central to an Emerging Civil War article by Ryan Quint. Confederate Michael O’Keefe of the 1st Louisiana became famous for shouting out “Boys, give them the rocks!” when his unit ran out of bullets at the Second Bull Run. According to Quint, O’Keefe joined the police force in New Orleans and he was killed during the White Supremacist coup attempt in that city in 1874 in what has become known as “The Battle of Liberty Place.”
Kevin Pawlack writes about an unfortunate officer whose men were among the “Harpers Ferry Cowards” who surrendered in September of 1862.
Hugh Goffinet describes an incident in Vicksburg, Mississippi in December of 1865, half-a-year after the Confederate surrenders, in which white men attacked a Black soldier. According to Private Berry Brown’s statement:
I was coming a cross the road up toward the country and three white men were going along the road, one of them was ahead of the other two. And as I crossed the road he tripped me up. I then got up and asked him what he meant by tripping a person up when he was not meddling with him. He then said “you god damn black yankee son of a bitch I will cut your damn guts out” and drew out his knife. He further said “in a few days we will have you just [as] we want you. The yankees can fool us now, but in a few days we will have you just as we want you.”
Goffinet says that this document gives a sense of what service was like for African American soldiers in the occupation forces. Whether defending Southern civilians from terrorists or being themselves attacked by former Confederates, this was dangerous and difficult service. Goffinet writes that their experiences are largely neglected by scholars.
Sherita Bitikofer visited the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. She writes that most plantations:
usually center their tours around the history of the home and the white families who lived in the “Big House”. There’s usually a cursory mention of the enslaved blacks, specifically how many were held in bondage to drive home the wealth and prestige of the families who kept them as forced labor on the property. If there’s an interesting story about one enslaved worker, then the tour guide may take a couple of minutes to talk about them. However, most of the time, the cumbersome and controversial nature of slavery can make visitors uncomfortable, so it’s omitted from the tours.
Whitney does not fall into line with the whitewashing of the Black history of the site. Bitikofer’s description of the site is one of the longest she has written for Emerging Civil War, and it is one of her best.
Most of my readers know that Mark Twain wrote about his (brief) experience as a Confederate soldier. Kristen M. Trout has a good piece at Emerging Civil War that looks at Twain’s The Private History of a Campaign That Failed which she says “successfully conveyed the complex nature of loyalty, sectionalism, soldiering, and combat in Missouri.”
Carol VanOrnum has begun writing a series at Emerging Civil War on Civil War Roundtables. These Roundtables had tremendous growth during the Civil War Centennial in the 1960s and a renaissance period when Ken Burns’s Civil War aired on PBS. These are typically local groups that meet regularly to listen to speakers and hold discussions on the Civil War and related topics. There was an expectation that there would be a new expansion during the Sesquicentennial, but the results were mixed. VanOrnum is the Civil War Round Table Congress Vice President and her articles are intended to help Round Tables move forward. Her latest is promoting something the CWRT Congress is calling the Sustainability Challenge. This is basically the compiling of info from Round Tables about what they have tried and what has worked. If you are in a Round Table you may want to take a look.
Civil War Picket provides news on Civil War sites around the country. Last month it looked at new interpretation of a costly skirmish in Smithfield, Virginia. The same source has an article on the two time capsules found when a Confederate statue in Macon, Georgia was relocated.
Harry Smeltzer at Bull Runnings has been posting photos of soldiers who fought at Bull Run. Rather than link to specific pictures, here is a link to his blog where you can find a different photo practically each day last month.
Civil War Monitor has an interesting story of an enslaved Black man who aided Union troops in Louisiana.
Meg Groeling talks about the hidden treasures of unpublished sources she has worked with in an article for Civil War Book Review.
Tom Desjardin has studied Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain for years, and he offers his take on whether the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment “saved the Union Cause” at Little Round Top.
The 5th Massachusetts, one of the first Black Union cavalry regiments, is the subject of a discussion with John Warner, the author of a new book on the regiment.
James Robbins Jewell and Eugene Van Sickle offer an account of the famous assault of the 54th Massachusetts on Battery Wagner. Capt. John W.M. Appleton commanded a company in the regiment of Black soldiers and he wrote a firsthand letter to his wife describing that fight. This is well worth reading.
Prominent historian Gary Gallagher discusses two important books written by Northern women during the Civil War. One is by Charlotte Forten, a Black woman from Philadelphia and the other is by Maria Lydig Daly who married a prominent Irish immigrant.
Elizabeth Leonard has written a new book on Ben Butler and here is an interview with her on this biography.
Tens of millions of Americans have seen Ken Burns’s Civil War on TV, in history class, or on YouTube. Thirty years after it was first released, Gary Gallagher asks if it still holds up. Gallagher writes: “I applaud Burns for applying his narrative gifts to a monumental and potentially controversial subject. My disappointment stems from a sense of missed opportunity. The filmmaker chose to maneuver comfortably along well-trodden paths, serving up military campaigns and leaders in familiar interpretive garb and never really challenging his viewers.”
Also on History Net, Alex Rossino writes about the Confederate hunt for enslaved men, women, and children who had escaped to the Union Army’s protection at Harpers Ferry. When Stonewall Jackson captured the town, his men engaged in a vicious slave hunt to return Blacks to enslavement.
History Net has an enthusiastic description of a new monument to photographer Matthew Brady in Washington, D.C. The same site has an in-depth article by Scott Reynolds Nelson on how the Union Army helped to create the modern commodities market.
Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War has a good interview with Harold M. Knudsen on his new book on James Longstreet, one of the most discussed Confederate generals today. Like several other modern writers, Knudsen does not accept the Lost Cause assignment of the blame for the defeat of the Confederacy on Longstreet, a commander Knudsen gives a lot of credit to.
At the same web site, Sheritta Bitikofer describes her visit to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland. She says that “The museum goes above and beyond to educate the masses and set straight the story of the nurses, doctors, and wounded of both sides. A museum of its depth and thoroughness in one singular subject is rare.”
Civil War Emancipation is a well-respected blog that was very active during the Civil War Sesquicentennial, but stopped posting new articles in July of 2015. Donald R. Shaffer, the author of the blog, has begun posting again, which I am very happy to see. His most recent posts look at how enslaved Blacks reacted when they learned that they were free. I am always encouraged when a dormant blog comes back to life. The problem for the refreshed blog is often that of rebuilding a dormant reader base. Hopefully Don will persevere and get back to regular posting. While my own readership across two blogs is still close to 200,000 unique visitors total this year, that kind of reader base can be hard to build to. If you like Civil War Emancipation, let your friends know and encourage them to check it out.
Hillsdale College is a small school that most Americans had never heard of before 2016. Since then, it has become a leading institution in the fight to change how school children learn about the American past. Hillsdale played a leading institutional role in the infamous “1776 Commission” and it has been a leader in the effort sanitize the history of racism and slavery in this country. Al Mackey has a long discussion of a Salon article on Hillsdale on his Student of the American Civil War Blog.
Substack
Kevin Levin has thoughts on what the Civil War generation can teach us about the memory of 9/11. As someone who lives only forty miles from the World Trade Center, and having lost a cousin their on that day, I have sometimes thought of my neighbors as not that different from the people who lived in the towns around Gettysburg in 1863.
The same author discusses Robert Gould Shaw’s reaction to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in late September, 1862 after the bloody Battle of Antietam. Shaw observed that, even before the proclamation, wherever Union troops occupied slavery was de facto ended, so he did not think it would have a major practical effect other than to lead to Confederate retaliation against the Union prisoners they held.
Levin also has an interesting story of a New England minister who served as a chaplain and his encounter with slavery during the Civil War.
Book Reviews
Kevin Levin reviews a new book on the civilian experience during and after the Battle of Antietam. Levin says that When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and Its Impact on the Civilians Who Called It Home by Stephen Cowie is
“an exhaustive account of the civilian experience before, during, and after the bloody battle that took place along the Antietam on September 17, 1862. The research is impressive, especially the author’s use of the war claims collection housed at the National Archives. The detail that Cowie packs into this book is impressive and at times overwhelming. The destruction of the interior and exterior of buildings by artillery, along with the ransacking committed by men on both sides is thoroughly described. The impact of the battle on the landscape itself is explored in excruciating detail…”
Sheritta Bitikofer at Emerging Civil War reviews All For The Union: The Saga of One Northern Family Fighting the Civil War by John A. Simpson. The book is based on the letters of three Pennsylvania soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, two brothers and their brother-in-law. Bitikofer says that “All For The Union is a great compilation of personal narratives and biographies about the soldiers while also giving great material for those who are interested in learning about their regiments.”
Hidden History of Civil War Florida by Robert Redd was reviewed by Phill Greenwalt for Emerging Civil War. Florida had the smallest population of any Confederate state. In 1860, Florida had a total population of 140,000 of whom 61,000 were enslaved. It’s total population at the start of the war was smaller than that of Brooklyn! The Civil War in Florida is usually all but unmentioned in general histories of the conflict. Greenwalt says that this short book fills a gap and that it is a “great history and guide!”
The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship by Deborah Willis was reviewed last month by Brian Matthew Jordan is described in the review as a “handsomely produced, visually stunning book.” Jordan writes that “To assemble this book, Willis mined major archival repositories,” and he gives it a strong recommendation in Emerging Civil War.
A new book on Union veterans who had arms amputated has been getting good reviews over the last two months. The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans edited by Allison M. Johnson gets another head’s up, this time by Jon Tracey at Emerging Civil War. The book focuses on essays written after the war by amputees learning to write with their left arms. The writing touches on battles, slavery, suffering a devastating wound, and life after the war. Tracey says “this volume is a must for those who are exploring a wide range of Civil War era topics.”
Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25-December 31, 1862 by Timothy B. Smith got a good review over at Civil War Books and Authors. Ed Bearss’s trilogy had been the best detailed treatment of this phase of the Vicksburg Campaign, but Civil War Books and Authors gives this new volume higher marks than that classic. Civil War Books and Authors says:
the truly massive breadth and depth of Smith’s current-day research dwarfs Bearss’s limited approach from many decades ago. The result is a far more detailed rendering of these events, with both sharpened interpretation and vastly greater emphasis on the soldier and civilian experience. Of course, some issues remain unresolved and matters of opinion will vary (that’s the case with every Civil War campaign), but Timothy Smith’s Early Struggles for Vicksburg unquestionably provides us with the best researched and most closely detailed account yet published of a complex series of events that proved to be one of the bleaker moments of Grant’s early-war career and for the Confederates a momentary ray of hope in maintaining their foothold on a strategic stretch of the Mississippi River.
Civil War Monitor had some good book reviews last month. Anyone who follows Civil War writing knows that James Longstreet has been a popular subject for reassessment over the last four decades. James Longstreet and the American Civil War: The Confederate General Who Fought the Next War by Harold M. Knudsen gets a generally good review from A.J. Blaylock. The review says that “James Longstreet and the American Civil War argues that Longstreet’s post-Civil War defection to the Republican Party, rather than historical evidence, inspired many Confederate veterans and later historians to fault him for several Confederate battlefield defeats.” Blaylock concludes: “As a work of scholarship, James Longstreet and the American Civil War successfully poses a unique historical argument supported by primary sources while leaving the door open for future scholars to disagree with that argument. Knudsen ultimately offers a clearly written reconsideration of Longstreet’s career up to Appomattox that will interest readers of Civil War and military history.”
Brian Matthew Jordan, one of the most read Civil War book reviewers today, gives a strong recommendation to When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and Its Impact on the Civilians Who Called It Home by Steven Cowie. He says that the new book “offers the most comprehensive accounting to date of all that a Civil War battle did to an individual community.” He concludes that “When Hell Came to Sharpsburg will be required reading for anyone interested in the Maryland Campaign.”
The Civil War Book Review from LSU Press had a number of reviews over the summer. Catherine V. Bateson gave a mixed review to Songs of Slavery and Emancipation by Mat Callahan. The book itself, she writes, is “beautifully and clearly produced laying out the songs and several pages of related images,” but she faults it for not providing enough context for the songs of slaves and Black abolitionists.
On the same site, John David Smith reviews Holly Pinheiro’s The Families’ Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice. Smith says that this is a is a “well-researched, cogently written, and original” study of a sample of Northern Blacks families in Philadelphia during the Civil War Era and afterwards. Families of men who served in the 6th U.S. Colored Infantry, and the 8th U.S. Colored Infantry are the focus. Smith says that “Pinheiro admirably brings to light the “long-term negative consequences on the economies, familial dynamics, and relationships of USCT veterans…”
The Civil War Monitor’s Brian Matthew Jordan review’s the same Holly Pinheiro book The Families’ Civil War. He is also enthusiastic about this new book, writing:
Pinheiro lends depth and texture to his analysis through careful study of a particular community. Further, the author considers “the experiences of soldiers’ families before, during, and generations after the Civil War”; this capacious periodization demonstrates how antebellum struggles with racial bigotry materially shaped and informed soldiers’ wartime experiences and postwar plight. Just as Black soldiers and their families fought for justice and equity before the war, so too did they fight “for inclusion in the historical memory of the Civil War.”
At HistoryNet GETTYSBURG 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town by Jill Ogline Titus gets a good review by Melissa Winn. She writes:
“From its earliest stirrings during the war itself, the memory of the Civil War has always depended on the present for context and meaning, and all signs suggest that it will continue to do so in future years as well,” Titus writes. Indeed, Gettysburg 1963 is a welcome opportunity to understand how we’ve done this in the past knowingly or unknowingly and how best to do so in the future mindfully, constructively, and with purpose. A worthy read.
Civil War Monitor reviews Count the Dead: Coroners, Quants, and the Birth of Death as We Know It by Stephen Berry. Reviewer Mark S. Schantz writes that while we sometimes accept uncritically reports of the number of deaths in Civil War battles, we know that in our own era the numbers about how many people died from COVID, or of Blacks killed by police, are very contentious. According to Schantz:
The book…narrows to take a more granular view of counting the dead in the U.S. Civil War. Berry reveals the work done by Union soldier and Andersonville survivor Dorence Atwater, who catalogued the names of every man who had perished in that prison. He hails the unsung work of Clara Barton as a tabulator of death and recognizes the Pension Division of the War Department for amassing the names of the Union war dead. He concedes that “a list can seem clerical and reductive, but a list is one of the only data forms that is both microscopic and telescopic at the same time.” (50). Naming the dead—an impulse dating back to the Athenians and present still in Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial—provides a brake for those who would again speed us into war. His humane and haunting care with individual stories of dead soldiers while also seeing the “Big Data” picture is one of the book’s many virtues.
Al Mackey reviews a short book, Seven Myths of the Civil War edited by Professor Wesley Moody. He writes:
This is a terrific little book. It takes on a number of well-entrenched myths and does a great job in blowing those myths out of the water. I can highly recommend it for students of the war.
Podcasts
Probably the most iconic painting of the Battle of Gettysburg is the gigantic Gettysburg Cyclorama. Civil War Talk Radio has a great interview with Sue Boardman, co-author of “The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas.” She was part of the team that restored the painting and gives its history and what’s in it.
Keeping with the Gettysburg commemoration, Gerry Prokopowicz, Civil War Talk host, interviewed Jill Ogline Titus, author of “Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in Americas Most Famous Small Town. “ This was an excellent discussion of one of the largest events of the Civil War Centennial.
Civil War Talk Radio also interviews Sheridan R. Barringer, author of “Unhonored Service: The Life of Lees Senior Cavalry Commander, Colonel Thomas Taylor Munford.”
Author Jeffrey Harding was on the Addressing Gettysburg podcast to talk about the romance of General John Reynolds and Kate Hewitt. The story of the search for this woman’s story was really engaging. Reynolds was killed on July 1, 1863 at Gettysburg, ending his life before he was able to marry Kate Hewitt.
The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast has a fascinating interview with Kent Masterson Brown about George Gordon Meade at Gettysburg. This is the second episode on Meade, and it covers July 2, 1863 and continues to the end of the battle on July 3.
Emerging Civil War had a good podcast on army politics between the Battle of Second Bull Run and Antietam in 1863. Historians Kevin Pawlak, Dan Welch, and Chris Mackowski have a lively discussion of McClellan, Pope, Porter, Lincoln, and Stanton.
Emerging Civil War’s Chris Mackowski is interviewed about the Civil War Battle of Jackson.
Video
Chris Young, a National Park Ranger at Chickamauga, tells the story of Clark Lee. This enslaved man who served his “master,” a Confederate officer, during the Civil War has been misrepresented in recent years as a “Black Confederate.” Young tells the real story of this man.
Note: I write a monthly article on Reconstruction for Emerging Civil War for which I receive no compensation.
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