Jackson’s Arm and the Occupy Movement
A mythos is a set of beliefs or assumptions about something, and every hero needs to be surrounded by one. Confederate General Thomas Jackson has probably one of the best mythos anywhere, from eating lemons to last words. Did he really hold his hand in the air to balance his legs? What was all that […]
Read more...Disease: A Tale of Two Regiments (Part 2)
We are happy to welcome back Jim Sundman for part 2 of his Disease series. In late October 1862 my ancestor Garrett Bush deserted his regiment while it was encamped on Maryland Heights across from Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Bush was one of dozens of soldiers in the 13th to desert that fall, and in order […]
Read more...“The Daily and Nightly Exhibitions of Our Theatre of War”
From a January 8, 1863 letter by William Landon of the 14th Indiana, posted near Falmouth, Virginia: “Sunrise—guard mountings, drills, reviews, inspections, parades, the ‘gas bag’ at headquarters swinging in mid air with basket suspended beneath, a human head or two visible above its rim, to catch a glimpse of ye rebel pickets and see […]
Read more...Disease: A Tale of Two Regiments (Part 1)
We are happy to welcome back guest author Jim Sundman On October 1, 1862, Corporal Joseph Couse of the 107th New York regiment died of “brain fever” while his unit was encamped on Maryland Heights across the Potomac River from Harpers Ferry. A farmer from the small town of Hector in upstate New York, Couse […]
Read more...A Walk Around the Great Granddaddy of America’s Battlefields
Most Civil War historians in the Park Service feel a little battlefield envy when it comes to Gettysburg. It’s the great Granddaddy of All Battlefields in North America, marked and monumented with enough granite, marble, and bronze to sink Rhode Island into the sea. Pennsylvania, being bigger and more landlocked, isn’t in such danger. In […]
Read more...Audio Book Review: Killing Lincoln
Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard It is almost impossible to review Killing Lincoln without first reviewing one of its listed authors, Bill O’Reilly. Anchor of The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News and a self-avowed right-leaning conservative, just mentioning his name stirs up controversy. Plainly, the controversies have spread to his book. Many reviews […]
Read more...The Unfinished Civil War—A Place and A State of Mind
If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz already wrote it, nearly two decades ago. Here’s a guy who wandered around the South, talking to people about the legacy of the Civil War. He asked questions, had conversations, observed, listened, and explored the landscape for himself. He immersed […]
Read more...The Civil War’s Forgotten Vice-President
At night, the Kenduskaeg Stream runs through downtown Bangor like an eel in the dark, barely visible at the bottom of the concrete canal that channels it to the Penobscot River. Where the dark night ends and the surface of the water begins isn’t always easy to tell except when an errant ripple glistens in […]
Read more...