The Civil War Podcast

Ken Burns gives a great response to the Confederate Monuments debate. I’ll have to keep this in mind for the next time the topic comes up in our Round Table group. At one point, Tulane professor Walter Isaacson asked, “Do you think that by pulling down these monuments we’re losing some feel for history?” Burns […]

Turns out one of the “witness trees” on Gettysburg has proven to be unusually resilient. Though water-loving honey locusts usually do not live much more than 100 years, this one is approaching 170 on high ground in the cemetery. Even more, it seemed doomed a decade ago after a wind storm sheared off much of […]

Another small town article that I enjoyed. This one’s not quite as compelling as the Virginia story, but still has some fun facts to impart. Bakers of the day played their part as well. They made the biscuits as hard as possible because the biscuit would soften and become more palatable with time, due to […]

One of the reasons I check out every small-town paper’s Civil War related stories is that you occasionally find some delicious wheat amongst the “round table meets tonight” or “Lincoln impersonator to speak at library” chaff. This article is one of the kernels that makes it worthwhile. A surprisingly in-depth look at some radical proposals […]

The Atlanta History Centre has made a rare purchase, and boy is it a beaut! This USCT flag looks in great shape. I loved the added detail that there were famous flag-painters. Quite a niche specialty, but one that must have been a heyday during the war!     Measuring 72 by 55 inches, the […]

When the Union blockade squeezed the South’s access to medicines, the Southern scientists turned to folk remedies. Modern researchers are turning to their findings, too, to test the efficacy of some of these remedies in our antibiotic-resistant era. During the Civil War (1861-1865), Union forces suffocated the South with a blockade, dramatically limiting the amount […]

There are dozens of new “cannons recovered from swamp/river” stories every month, but this one is far more interesting and involved than most of the local news reports. Not only do you get a behind the scenes look at the preservation efforts, but you get a good deal of history – it was news to […]

The WaPo looks at the discussions (and arguments) that marked the Lincoln Memorial planning. We forget that the now beloved monument was once an edgy and divisive design. Included in this article are some of the designs that were rejected. It’s interesting to wonder if they’d have been accepted as the Greek temple eventually was. […]

The Election of 1856 seems to get a lot less attention than those of 1860 and 1864, which is a shame, because there was a lot of interesting political maneuverings to study. This article, while written a bit too twee-ly for my tastes, is a good shallow dive into the Republican Party’s first nationwide showing. […]

This article briefly touches upon the La Niña which occurred during the Civil War, and it made me conscious of the fact that weather must have played a part in some of the war’s big events. (Meade’s failure to chase Lee on July 4th comes to mind.) The only book I could find on the […]