The Civil War Podcast

Civil War buffs in Washington, DC have another month and a half to partake in the Corcoran Gallery’s Shadows of History exhibition. The photographs capture a wide range of subjects, from geographical views, landscapes, and portraits of soldiers and officers at rest, to the death and destruction in the aftermath of battles. Photographs by George [...]

I’m filing this under “memoirs”, regardless of the fact that it’s a Twain piece. Despite the huge coincidence at the crux of it, huge coincidences weren’t unusual in the war, and anyways it certainly feels real. You almost feel as though you’re sitting on the porch with Aunt Rachael as she tells it. “Aunt Rachel, [...]

I’m catching up on Disunion articles I missed, and this one was very interesting. Everyone knows about the Colored Troops’ admission to the Union Army, but it never occurred to me that blacks were fighting before that, or that the Navy was totally desegregated. Still, some black men managed to join the Northern forces. In [...]

Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the reckoning of Civil War history as a black man schooled in the non-violence techniques of the Civil Rights era. On a more specific level, the Civil War presents something of an ideological challenge. Old school nationalists may well identify with black men literally fighting for their freedom–but the fact that those soldiers were [...]

NPR unearthed an interesting story on a very rare, newly-inducted United Daughter of the Confederacy. Mattie Clyburn Rice, 88, spent years searching through archives to prove her father was a black Confederate. As she leafs through a notebook filled with official-looking papers, Rice stops to read a faded photocopy with details of her father’s military [...]