Question of the Week: What’s your favorite Civil War topic?
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?
Fighting on the Union left flank. My great great grandfather fought there with Co. H 2nd VT USSS. SGT. Grove Scribner. Somehow survived the war and returned to VT and farmed. His great grandson (also Grove Scribner) looked remarkably like the war era photo of older Grove.
For me there are so many aspects of the Civil War that I find fascinating. I live in the UK so it’s not always easy to follow up some things as easily as it might be for those living over there. Having said that it doesn’t appear to have any detrimental part in the steady acquisition of more books ( I have a very understanding wife ) on all aspects of the war. If there is one person that stands out in my book collection and I love studying him then it has to be Lincoln
Topography , geography and geology.
Leaders, leadership and civil-military relations
Biographical information on participants Joseph.Truglio @comcast.net
Although battles and leaders of the Civil War are fascinating to me I’m more intrigued by the story of the common man.
Anything Gettysburg-related
Three periods of Civil War art. Early: 1861 thru 1950. Mid: 1951 thru 2000 including the Centennial. Present: 2001 thru present day. Observing changes in interpretation.
The events which caused the Civil War. A very interesting period.
Photography. I love looking at photos of people and places as they appeared at that time. I have a couple dozen books with photograghs and I absolutley hate seeing them colorized in social media.
I lived in the Richmond Virginia area 40 years, so the Seven Days Battles and Overland Campaign were my favorite topics/battles. I lived a few miles from Gaines Mill/Cold Harbor, and Stuart’s Ride Around McClellan went past my road. A couple of the cavalry fights during the Overland Campaign also took place near my house. Now, I live in Dayton OH, and I’m learning/studying the Western Theater = Morgan’s Raid, and the Kentucky battles/campaigns.
Which Richmond-area sites do you think are most worth visiting? I try to add a day each year around the Emerging Civil War Symposium to visit a battlefield or two.
I love everything 1861, but I spend a lot of time thinking about Confederate political, economic, home front, military organization and administration through out the war. I’m also drawn to Andrew Johnson’s war experience, which may have affected his Presidency.
Primary source accounts by soldiers North and South. While many are still well-known to scholars and readers, it is astonishing the number of diaries, letters and memoirs written shortly after the war – even during it – that exist, yet have never been quoted or used in any way for history books. I include in this regimental histories as well. In writing my own book I have found endless “new” material from these sources, long ignored by recent “historians” who keep going to the same sources over and over again, too lazy to do the work to dive into the wealth of information that is out there, untouched.
While I’m interested in many CW topics and locations, my top three are Gettysburg, Gettysburg and more Gettysburg!
Visiting battlefields represents my ‘favorite topic”.
John Pelham. I lived in Anniston, Alabama for a while, and Pelham was from Alexandria, Alabama, which is in the same county.
After visiting my daughter and her family in Nevada, I became interested in how the CW played out in the West.
The bravery of the men is amazing, just fricking, plain-out amazing. Anathema: reading of foolish and dumb orders that wasted many good men.