Christie, Cox, Crook, Confusion, and the Burnside Bridge

Sometimes, going down rabbit holes of research will lead you to unexpected places. Occasionally, they lead nowhere. But every once in a while, you get rewarded. Hence, the case of Lt. Samuel L. Christie of Jacob Cox’s staff during the Maryland Campaign. It all started by reading George Crook’s Autobiography. “About ten a.m.,” Crook remembered, “Capt. […]

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Remembering Franklin 2020

Today, November 30, is the anniversary of the 1864 battle of Franklin. When I visited the battlefield in September, I was struck by this sign outside Carnton Plantation. It serves as an invitation to all of us, as students of the Civil War, to remember the people at the heart of our studies.

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Question of the Week: 11/30-12/6/20

In your opinion, who was the best corps commander for the Union’s Army of the Tennessee?

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Gaines’ Mill Sunset

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Week In Review: November 22-29, 2020

We hope you’ve had a nice week and start of the holiday season. You’ll find some fun Civil War cooking experiments and gratitude lists to celebrate Thanksgiving and some details about lessons from Fredericksburg, night at Paynes Farm, JFK in Texas, and poetry from Whitman. Happy reading!

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Weekly Whitman: “Thick-Sprinkled Bunting”

THICK-SPRINKLED bunting! Flag of stars! Long yet your road, fateful flag!—long yet your road, and lined with bloody death! For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world! All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy banner!

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Civil War Cooking: Colonel Bartlett’s Dinner with the 49th Massachusetts

“I invited George Wheatland (of Salem), Major of the Forty-eighth, to dine with me this evening. We dine at six. I gave him a very good dinner. We used the new mess pail; just right for three. I had a pork steak off a young pig, French bread, which Jacques gets in Baton Rouge, and […]

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Saving History Saturday: Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is coming up next week, and we wanted to pass along word about a couple giving opportunities from some of ECW’s partners, the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, the Civil War Roundtable Congress, and the American Battlefield Trust. (And while ECW isn’t doing a formal fund-raising “ask” this year, we are a 501(c)3 and […]

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Payne’s Farm After Dark

November 27 marks the anniversary of the 1863 battle of Payne’s Farm, part of the Mine Run campaign. Elements of the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia, converging toward a wayside in the Virginia Wilderness known as Robinson’s Tavern along the Orange Plank Road, stumbled into each other. The ensuing fight, known […]

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