The Civil War Podcast

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 [...]

This one’s rather macabre, so if you have a sensitive constitution, don’t click through to the picture that accompanies the article. Shortly after the battle of Antietam, a farmer plowing his field dug up a dismembered arm.  For some reason, he and the doctor he consulted about it decided to pickle it rather than bury [...]

This company contacted our Civil War Round Table a few weeks ago.  Turns out we’re not the only Canadians with an interest in the war!   The CG Fort Moultrie presented here is amazing. A real glance into the surroundings of those who eventually found themselves dodging the first fire of the war at Sumter. [...]

I posted a somewhat whimsical article on April 1st about family trees, and today’s news item is a more sombre followup. My mother is a genealogist, and delights in tracing our family tree (which consists mainly of failed farmers or drowned fisherman – unlike their lucklessness, I have not inherited her enthusiasm). It involves painstaking [...]

You’ll permit me one last public thank-you to those who go out of their way to preserve and present historical sites; this story made the Virginia news in early February, and I thought it worth a mention. This week’s collapse of a Civil War-era tobacco warehouse on Dunbar Drive has thrust a spotlight on another [...]

Yesterday I posted about the idea of giving thanks to those volunteers and researchers in often thankless preservation jobs.  Today, I follow up with a different kind of giving, but one that is just as appreciated.  The Washington Post created this list at the close of 2011, encouraging readers to get last-minute charitable donations in [...]

When I search the web for Civil War related items, I often come across small town papers whose “news” isn’t really newsworthy. This piece stood out, though, for the wonderful sentiments behind it, and because of the email from the Whitman Archive researcher that inspired yesterday’s post. We’re in an economy troubled enough that museums [...]

After posting the entry about the Whitman Archive, I received a note from Archive employee Bev Rilett. Thanks for the kind notice of the Whitman Archive. I work there for Ken Price, who has been supporting grad students in English with this monumental project for more than 10 years. Try our bibliography search feature for [...]

As I mentioned yesterday, The Atlantic Monthly is knocking the sesquicentennial celebrations out of the park. This piece on the Gettysburg Cyclorama is fantastic, and is making me greatly regret declining a ticket on both my trips to the park. Four hundred feet long. Fifty feet high. It was art on an astonishing scale. All [...]

National Geographic offers a small photo gallery of the newly restored and displayed Hunley. If you’ve read any of the previous Hunley posts, you’ve probably seen most of these pictures, but the first is pretty revealing: The fully “restored” (it looks extra crumbly) sub with a restorer or museum staffer next to it. It’s bad [...]