Question of the Week: What’s your favorite Civil War topic to study?
What Civil War theme, event, battle, or person do you like to learn about, study, or research the most?
What Civil War theme, event, battle, or person do you like to learn about, study, or research the most?
The social changes in iconography depicting the Civil War. Specifically in light of the radically changing politically correct interpretation of Civil War history since about 2010.
This might not be much of a surprise to anyone, but I love exploring the naval side of the conflict, especially how it relates to the Mississippi River and how naval activity impacted, shaped, and was a tool for diplomacy.
Pensacola Bay, Florida. Where the Civil War almost began…
The law and its consequences on the war. The Lieber Code & Halleck’s incredibly foolish derivative order, both announcing that the U.S. would force improperly paroled soldiers to return into CSA captivity caused major embarrassment and helped break down the exchange system. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was cited by John Brown as tipping him into using violence and otherwise radicalized portions of the Northern states into greater opposition to slavery due to the threat to citizens’ own personal liberty. Then, of course, the secession issue comes down to how one interprets the Constitution. The law provides many interesting areas of Civil War study.
The actual battles fought.
First Day—Gettysburg
I would like to explore in detail the relationship between those who are seen or considered as great generals and their opponents. How much success on the battlefield can be attributed to the incompetence of their adversaries and not the brilliance of their strategies?
Logistics.
Western migration of Civil War veterans. In the Pacific Northwest, thousands of veterans were influential in their new communities Out West.
Immigrant influence and participation
Eastern theater, with a strong emphasis on Gettysburg and the somewhat less-studied aspects of that battle.
Civil War Medicine
John – Do you have information on Southern medical records in the war? I’m on the search for some important things for my book and so far have largely come up dry. ES
Sorry Eric but I do not
Thanks, John. As usual, SC is hard to locate!
ES
Perhaps the Reference List in “Medical Histories of Confederate Generals” by Dr. Jack D. Welsh (Kent State Press, 1995) will provide guidance: https://books.google.tt/books?id=1X1evZu45RcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thank you so much, Mike. Very kind of you.
ES
Overland Campaign. I find it hard to read about the Union generals getting defeated, Stuart prancing around McClellan, Jackson in the Valley, Pope not protecting Thoroughfare Gap and his complete misunderstanding of everything Manassas; Sept 16, 1862 – a lost opportunity; Burnside murdering the Irish Brigade, Hooker vacating a position of strength at Chancellorsville on Day 1. So after all that, the Overland Campaign seems like at least the Union leadership knew more about what they were doing.
Geology and geography
What a fascinating array of responses! It shows why studying the Civil War is so valuable to our country.
For me, I was always deeply intrigued by the Peninsula Campaign and its climax, the Seven Days, not least because it remains so under-studied, but also because many of my 30 ancestors in the service fought in this campaign, and my grandparents’ stories were rich with them. There are a staggering amount of key incidents and ramifications in the Seven Days, which is why it is the centerpiece of the book I am writing. The Seven Days and the handful of weeks leading up to it saw Robert Lee take command and shape the Army of Northern Virginia into the legendary force it became, along with the emergence of A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill, James Longstreet, Jeb Stuart, along with Stonewall Jackson, who was already known and performed poorly here but grew from the experience; the week of fighting was not seven separate battles, but one big battle, like the long, running battles to come in World War I and II, and as such, the Seven Days was the second largest battle of the war in terms of casualties – more fell only at Gettysburg; the third day, Gaines’ Mill, saw the largest Confederate battle charge of the war, 32,000 men, as opposed to the ubiquitously famous Pickett’s Charge, which had 15,000-17,000 men; and when it was all over, the nature of the war had changed from being one to stop a rebellion and bring the South back into the Union with slavery intact to, over the next six months, Lincoln making the political moves to try to make it a war on slavery. The Seven Days is hugely rich in vital history, and should be studied far more than it is.
The war west of the Mississippi. If Davis had not just written off anything that was not Richmond and keeping slavery, the war may have turned out differently. A recapture of New Orleans or Memphis would have increased goods crossing the Mississippi. An invasion of the north through Illinois and further could have put pressure on anti-war movements. Slavery would eventually have died out peacefully like it had in Europe, and with fewer issues in the decades that followed.
Excellent points. What has always puzzled me is that Davis thought Albert Sydney Johnston would be a superior general to Robert Lee, and gave him the Western Theater, but so little was done there in the crucial first year of the war. Control of states, rivers and forts was lost, and when Johnston began assembling his army in Corinth in March 1862 in order to confront Grant, many of the men had not yet been properly inducted, drilled, trained, given uniforms, equipment or proper weapons. Why had none of this been done the previous 11 months?
The common soldiers’ experiences.
Andersonville Prison and other prison sites (Cahaba, Rock Island, and the many Richmond sites) — Srones River and Shiloh, I had ancestors that died at both battles.
Texas, Florida, and Louisiana actions.
Battles and Tactics… I love to get into the weeds!
It changes on occasion, but my current favorite is the 1862 Maryland Camaign.
Camp Jackson “Affair” in St. Louis on May 10th 1861.
I’m currently working on my MA in History at Virginia Tech with Dr. Paul Quigley. My focus is on how white Southerners in military and civil positions wrote and thought about the “margins” of their emerging Confederate society; in my case, looking at the perceptions of foreign-born and Indigenous soldiers in the Confederate armed forces. This is going to give us a better understanding of how leading Confederates envisioned their new society and the process in which they tried to graft their ideas onto a difficult and reluctant reality.
Biographical studies, I suppose; officers, men in the ranks, civilians, political figures; Trying to learn motivations behind individual actions, and how each person (or groups of people) tried to shape their own legacy after the war.
Since I’m a proud Buckeye, anything about Ohio and Ohioans in the war. Also, cavalry operations.
Anything related to the Battle of Gettysburg, especially why Lee made the decisions he did and the result. Why was he so stiff-necked in his approach? Did he really feel that his men could perform the impossible, that he would continue to win every battle, especially after the famous win at Chancellorsville? So much to consider and learn about. The “what-ifs” are the factors that continue to fascinate and engage me. And of course, the town of Gettysburg itself, what a beautiful area!
Your questions are worthy, though remember – much of the portrayal of Lee at Gettysburg is entirely false, drawn from Longstreet’s dishonest memoir and Michael Shaara’s highly-fictionized novel ‘The Killer Angels’ and its film, ‘Gettysburg.’ For accurate portrayals of Lee at Gettysburg, read Freeman’s biography of him as well as ‘Lee’s Lieutenants,’ and Clifford Dowdey’s ‘Death of a Nation: Lee and His Men at Gettysburg.’ They present verified fact instead of fiction.