Yesterday’s News

In the Innis House along the Sunken Road at Fredericksburg, various layers of history show through on the interior walls. Paint covers newspaper, which covers painted wooden walls, still scarred with bullet holes from the battle. The layers accumulated over the years as subsequent homeowners remodeled.

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Gettysburg Campaign Handbook

Keeping with the guide-book series, I have just seen the new Gettysburg Campaign Handbook, by J. David Petruzzi and Steven Stanley. The book is beautifully laid out. The maps are very well done. This work is on par with Petruzzi and Stanley’s Complete Gettysburg Guide. I would suggest this new work to those who want […]

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The Civil War on the OBX: 1861’s Forgotten Story Gets New Attention

While most of the sesquicentennial spotlight this year has focused on Ft. Sumter and First Manassas, the North Carolina coast has also been commemorating events. After all, the fall of the Outer Banks—beginning with the Confederate surrender at Hatteras Inlet in late August of 1861—represented the first major Union success of the war. It also […]

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Week Two in Review

We had another great week here at Emerging Civil War. It started with a book review of Chris Mackowski’s new work Chancellorsville: Crossroads of Fire. That was followed by Zac Cowsert’s first post covering an introduction to the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Chris Mackowski wrote a nice piece on the myths of Gettysburg and the odd places […]

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One of the Smallest–and Most Significant–Battles of the War

Once bodies started floating down the Potomac past Washington, it was tough for officials in the capital to overlook the battle at Ball’s Bluff. It was bad enough that the Union forces there had been soundly trounced. Of the 1,700 or so Federals engaged, more than a thousand ended up as casualties: 223 killed, 226 […]

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Sumter Storyteller

Orientation talk at Fort Sumter Thursday, August 25, 2011

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Steve Earle, “Dixieland,” and the Irresistible Charm of Buster Kilrain

The myths of Gettysburg rear their heads in the most unexpected places. At a Steve Earle concert in Rochester, New York, a couple weeks ago, the folk-rocker launched into a pair of songs related to the Irish. Before he did, though, he launched into a history lesson—and lo and behold, who should suddenly appear in […]

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