The Civil War Podcast

The University of Richmond has posted an interactive, online map that charts the activity of the Union army and (sometimes unrelated) slavery/emancipation events across the states from ’61 to ’65.  It’s interesting to note how the red dots (emancipations) generally precede the blue dots (army investments), and to observe the profusion of red and blue [...]

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 [...]

A search for Henry Kyd Douglas’ I Rode with Stonewall shows – to my surprise – that the memoir is still under copyright. As a secondary result, I found this reenactor’s performance of some of the book’s anecdotes. The youngest member of Stonewall’s staff is looking pretty long in the tooth these days, but it’s [...]

One of those old movies I was wishing for in the last post! Smithsonian Magazine uncovered this film of a bunch of aged Southern vets demonstrating what’s left of their Rebel Yells for a crowd in the 1930s. The individual yells don’t do much on their own (one old fellow, in particular, looks winded by [...]

Over my years of study I’ve read a few slave narratives, but it’s always a smack in the face to read a fresh one. It’s worth remembering, when the debates rage on States’ Rights and the other distracting discussions, that slavery was a horrific, inhumane system that deeply affected real people. The arguments are a [...]

No, not the one that cost a certain King Charles his head; NPR does their usual great job at recounting unusual pastimes and interesting fringe groups by publicizing the existence of a far-afield group of reenactors. “Why not? It’s jolly good poppy,” says Philip Clark. A lawyer by weekday and soldier by weekend, he is [...]

There’s a very cool reenactment taking place in Swedesboro, NJ on the 25th of September: The re-enactors will present what life was like for sailors serving onboard an ironclad warship during the Civil War. “Eyewitness” participants will describe daily shipboard routine during the blockade and stirring naval battles in great detail.  Uniforms, weapons, accoutrements and [...]