Daffodil Cavaliers

The cavalry of the American Civil War are well known for their dashing appearance. During the 1860s, the horse Soldiers from both sides strove to adopt and emulate the appearance of the Cavaliers of Europe and of the American Revolution. One Regiment that personified this image in the latter part of the war was the […]

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Warren’s Legacy still asks urgent questions

As a Kentucky-born writer who lived most of his professional life in the North, Robert Penn Warren was deeply conflicted about the American Civil War. That ambivalence, and the tensions that sprang from it, haunt every section of his essential essay, The Legacy of the Civil War. Written in 1961 at the dawn of the […]

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A beautiful, despairing journey with a coal-black horse

There’s a kind of myth-making happening in Robert Olmstead’s novel Coal Black Horse. Published in 2007, I had the chance this past week to journey with the horse once more, and it was a trip well worth taking. Set in the middle of the Civil War—itself a fertile era of American mythology—Olmstead’s story follows a […]

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Indiana Soldiers & Sailors Memorial

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A March Through War

This week I was privileged to attend a Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History seminar at Yale University. The topic is “Everyday Life in Early America” which included a fieldtrip to Historic Deerfield, in Massachusetts. Deerfield–rich with history going back thousands of years–has seen its inhabitants serve in time of war on far off fields […]

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A visit with “Old Kinderhook” on the 150th anniversary of his death

The secession of South Carolina triggered civil war in Martin Van Buren’s house before it ever triggered fighting on the battlefield. After his public career ended, the former president had retired to the quiet life of a country farmer in his hometown of Kinderhook, just south of Albany, NY. His household included his son, Abraham, […]

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The Grand Austin Flour Sack: An Idea Whose Time May Come Again!

For me, this summer’s reading included Mark Twain’s Roughing It, a compelling account of California and Nevada during the time of the Civil War by a man who did not fight. Legend has it that young Sam Clemens, after a brief experience with his local militia, decided that leaving the geographic area of battle was […]

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Civil War Sketch Book: Drawings from the Battlefront by Harry Katz and Vincent Virga

As a coffee table book, Civil War Sketch Book: Drawings from the Battlefront is beautiful. As a repository of some of the best Civil War artwork done by the “Special Artists” of New York’s Harper’s and Illustrated News, it is invaluable. Not only is the volume itself well put together, it is written in an insightful, […]

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Abe says, “Hey”

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