Question of the Week: What are you hoping to learn about in 2025?
Happy New Year! For our first question of the week this year: What aspect of the Civil War are you looking to learn about in 2025?
Happy New Year! For our first question of the week this year: What aspect of the Civil War are you looking to learn about in 2025?
More about the surrender and the aftermath, including the release of prisoners and how they got home ( or not, as in the tragedy of the Sultana explosion ).
A regiment that I’ll write my next book on, a Confederate regiment that fought in the Army of Tennessee.
Which CSA regiment, and why that particular one?
My first book was on a Union regiment that served in the Army of the Tennessee (the 45th Illinois Infantry – my book, The Lead Mine Men). I have a goal to write a regimental study on a regiment that served in each of the 4 main armies – the Army of the Tennessee, Army of Tennessee, Army of Northern Virginia, and the Army of the Potomac. As I am here in the Dallas area, I am currently looking at the 9th Texas as they fought in nearly all of the main battles fought by the Army of Tennessee, and that there are few regimental studies of Texas regiments that fought in the war’s Western theater. And of course, it would make gathering sources easier, studying a regiment from Texas.
That said, I am keeping options open for another regiment. I know I can find other regiments that fought in most of the big battles, but finding the sources is the key.
I know the 9th TX was heavily engaged at Stones River. Good luck with your work!
Thanks. By the end of January, I should know if there are the sources available from the county historical societies from which the regimental hailed, and at state archives, and national battlefield archives.
I’m currently researching the 17th Louisiana, which was brigaded with the 9th Texas at Shiloh.
The various campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley.
The intersection of the Law and the War & Reconstruction.
I’m going to be in FL this year, so hope to learn more about the war there.
Fort Clinch is a great site.
If I can retire and become independently wealthy, I can learn a whole lot via traveling to battlefields! Hey miracles happen!
I’m always seeking more information about desertions on both sides. Corps, divisions, regiments from each state and regulars, as well. Oh, naval deserters too.
I intend to study the many surrenders of the Confederacy in more depth.
Chris, Caroline Janey’s “Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army After Appomattox” presents an interesting study of the many loose ends that surrounded Lee’s surrender. Eric J. Wittenberg’s “We Ride A Whirlwind: Sherman & Johnston at Bennett Place” gives a nice overview of Sherman’s attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The war in the West. I know little about battles in Tennessee, other than Shiloh, and am also eager to learn more about Trans-Mississippi activities in Louisiana, post Vicksburg.
Also contemplating a springtime dring tour through Tennessee, visiting battlefields other than Shiloh.
A deeper study of “The Rock of Chickamauga” General George Henry Thomas. It’s too bad that he destroyed his private papers. In my humble opinion he just doesn’t seem to get the acclaim and historical interest that he should. Any recommendation for book(s) would certainly be appreciated. Also will be at Pea Ridge, Wilson Creek, and the other Civil War sites in the area in a couple of months so looking forward to exploring and learning about those. There is just so much to learn and see about the Civil War that makes and allows it to be such a passionate endeavour.
Dale: George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel by Brian Willis is an outstanding biography of Thomas. You can’t go wrong starting your study with this book.
I have two pieces of research I am looking forward to focusing on from the immediately pre-Civil War era. I want to know how a plantation full of formerly enslaved people could successfully escape from Baton Rouge to Ripley, Ohio in December 1860. I also want to know more about the way Lincoln traveled from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, DC for his inauguration, with an emphasis upon the avoidance of assassination in Baltimore. Knowing the recent good historical writing on each of these topics, I look forward to diving into the research that the footnotes/endnotes support.
I began working as a volunteer at the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Battlefield Park this fall. I’ve learned how much I don’t know about the park’s four major battles and am determined to become fluent in units, commanders, tactics and strategy.
To learn of any parole lists that survive from Johnson’s surrender at Bennett Place.
Eagerly awaiting Vol. 1 of Bobby Krick’s Gaines’s Mill study, due out c. April. I expect to add a lot of knowledge in addition to what’s already out there.
I want to complete two pieces of research: Professionally, I want to complete the research on a certain Confederate officer, who is one of the main two figures in my book ‘Till The Stars Appeared,’ which is 75% finished. Despite coming from a prominent family – he was descended from one of our greatest Founding Fathers – and being quite prominent himself after the war, his personal history is largely a mystery, as we have been unable to locate a single one of his personal and professional documents. We suspect they were lost or accidentally destroyed in an incident that occurred at his daughter’s house 100 years after the war. I have information to write his biography, but of course I always want more. The search continues.
For fun, I want to obtain confirmed proof that Elvis Presley was descended from John Bell Hood. If anyone has the genealogical proof, please share!
I’ll bite. Who is the “certain Confederate officer”?
Kevin, I’d love to put a medium – not a big – fish on your line, but my attorney, my agent and the people we’re talking with in Hollywood have all sworn – warned – me to secrecy until the book is published, so I cannot. So, a medium fish – but the story is a whale. His family was – and remains – remarkable, an amazing group of people.
Understood. Sounds intriguing. Good luck on finishing the book.
Much thanks – have you down for sending you a note as soon as everything is released. Regards…