The Civil War Podcast

In early 1865 Delany was granted an audience with Lincoln. He proposed a corps of black men led by black officers who could serve to win over Southern blacks. Although a similar appeal by Frederick Douglass had already been rejected, Lincoln was impressed by Delany and described him as “a most extraordinary and intelligent man.” [...]

In recent years, I’ve fallen out of the habit of reading books; I now spend most of my time on Wikipedia.  Now that I’m working (or not working, as is currently the case) from home, I thought it time to rectify this error.  In honor of the sesquicentennial (and as research for the podcast by [...]

NPR puts a name to an unknown soldier. This is a fascinating piece of modern detective work. Now that we had the regiment, the next step was to visit the New York soldiers index, where a search in the National Parks Service Soldier and Sailors Database turned up four possibilities with the right initials: Thomas [...]

One of the many Civil War commemorations around Washington, DC, are a series of statues to the heroes of the war: Grant, Sherman, Farragut, McPherson and… Albert Pike? Who the heck is Albert Pike? In all my years of study, I’ve never found a reason to remember that name.  A quick glance at his Wikipedia [...]

Missouri is famous for its teenaged bushwhackers, but this article reminds us that it didn’t hold a monopoly.  Virginia’s John McCue joined Mosby’s Irregulars, and had quite an eventful year of service, by the sounds of it. His father, Judge John H. McCue, compromised with the boy and allowed him to “learn soldiering” at Virginia [...]

A strict disciplinarian who served during the Mexican-American War and as drillmaster for the Utica, New York, city militia, William Henry Christian certainly had the credentials of an officer. A surveyor and engineer by trade, Christian sought to make his mark in the military and got off to a promising start. As events proved, however, [...]

Since the Ken Burns series rekindled public interest in the war, every diary keeper, North and South, whose writings were stashed away in attics has become a published author. Most of these accounts are repetitive or uninspiring, but I’m sure each one has at least one anecdote of interest. This account contained a term I’d [...]

I tried a search for “best Civil War memoirs” (listing “Grant” and “Watkins” as qualifiers for quality), and one Amazon list suggested John H. Worsham’s narrative. Found it on DocSouth, and a quick flip through reveals some very entertaining anecdotes, and a sense of irreverence amidst the hard marching and the terrible battles. We went [...]

Thanks to Google’s Books service, I went from a quick consultation of this book to reading a good portion of it online. The first few chapters are available in their entirety – as the book progresses more and more are left out, but it’s enough to gauge the readability, and this one’s very readable. Like [...]

A two-for-one posting: An interesting article that mentioned a memoir which I’ve added to the Library. A Canadian girl disguised herself as “Frank Thompson”, and joined the Union Army. Given this description from the article, the memoirs will be quite the Victorian potboiler: How did Emma and 400 other male impersonators that served in the [...]