The Civil War Podcast

I’m so excited to see this Adalbert Volck exhibition, which I mentioned in a previous update.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, of all papers, has this excellent biography of the man. (But, surprisingly, none of his cartoons.) Volck lived nearly 50 years after the war’s end, dying in Baltimore in 1912. In a letter to the Library [...]

It’s always disheartening to read reports of your favourite generals and presidents saying horrible things on the subject of race, but given the times, there’s a distasteful story for just about every personality in the war, North and South. Today, it’s Sherman: Blinded by his implacable racism, Sherman could see no worthwhile moral or legal [...]

This article was short, but very helpful. I’m familiar with the prisoner exchanges and the idea of surrendered soldiers being “paroled”, but had never realised the “make an effort” component of it: Following centuries-old precedent, the United States and Confederate governments used parole and prisoner exchange early in the Civil War, relying on the honor [...]

Yesterday’s post about Eliza, the 1/64th black slave sold into sexual slavery, reminded me of a discussion from my university race relations class. A quick Google search (possibly hampered by my increasingly foggy memory – university’s starting to feel like a long time ago) doesn’t reveal much on the “one fatal drop” theory we discussed, [...]

An odd choice of topic for Valentine’s Day, but this Wikipedia entry (pulled up when I was investigating comparative slavery systems for that Atlantic Monthly article) contained a paragraph that warmed the cockles of my patriotic heart: By 1790 the abolition movement was gaining credence in Canada and the ill intent of slavery was evidenced [...]

One of the best in-print observations of the sesquicentennial is by The Atlantic Monthly (altogether fitting, since it was one of the most influential magazines in the 1860s), who’ve assigned blogging duties to Ta-Nehisi Coates. I’ve seen Coates in a few talking-head spots (and, if I recall correctly, a Colbert Report interview) and he’s always [...]

I’m in the early chapters of  Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering, which talks about how the Civil War impacted American attitudes towards death and grieving. This site has an excellent summary of its own on the topic. For family members and friends in the North, the prospect of loved ones dying far away [...]