Walt Whitman said that the real war would never get in the books. This panel of historians confronts the primary sources of the Civil War, including the Official Records and soldiers letters, about whether what they record is an accurate portrait of the war for the common soldier. “Frances Clarke (The University of Sydney), Rebecca Jo Plant (University of California, San Diego), Jim Broomall (Shepherd University). Moderator: Brian Luskey (West Virginia University) explore the question “Did Civil War Soldiers Hide the Real War?”” This podcast of the entire session from the Civil War Institute on June 9, 2024 was recorded by the Addressing Gettysburg Podcast.
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the destructive path of armies through communities – outside the traditional ‘battle” narrative – looting, senseless vandalism, ‘violence’ between a community’s civilians and soldiers belies the myth of the empty battlefield and the battle-centric narratives that dormient scholarship – I know readers of military history that would call non-battle centric histories as ‘boring’ and unimportant….
this not diminish the political and strategic aspect of the “military” which should really thought as a part of the political nature and narrative of the conflict.. but the “small-turf” wars are part of the the network of any battle….