Showing results for "Mexican American War"
Daniel Webster & the Devil
Today is March 7, the 173rd anniversary of Daniel Webster’s speech in support of Henry Clay’s final proposal to keep the states of America united, known as the Compromise of 1850. Lately, we think of such a compromise as a terrible idea because it allowed slavery to continue, but on January 21, 1850, the two […]
Read more...A Different Fight: The Insurance Writings of General Gustavus Woodson Smith
ECW welcomes guest author Karl Miller It seems incongruous that a former Confederate general would go on to become a significant business reformer, yet that is exactly the story of Gustavus Woodson Smith. While numerous military leaders of the Civil War such as John Bell Hood and Joseph E. Johnston went into the burgeoning life […]
Read more...“This Unparalleled Outrage…”: An Antebellum Raid on a Federal Arsenal, Part 2
See Part I… For Captain Luther Leonard, an assignment as military storekeeper at the Liberty Arsenal was likely envisioned as a means of easing into retirement. A West Point graduate (Class of 1808), Leonard had already seen nearly forty years of continuous service. As captain of a light artillery battery, he was present for the […]
Read more...BookChat: Rose Greenhow’s “My Imprisonment,” edited by Emily Lapisardi
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with a new annotated edition of Rose Greenhow’s famous Civil War diary, Rose Greenhow’s My Imprisonment (Winston Lewis Publishing, 2021). The edition comes courtesy of editor Emily Lapisardi, a living historian who portrays Greenhow. I had the opportunity to chat with Emily about her new edition. […]
Read more...The Last Roll Call of an “English Alien”
ECW is pleased to welcome back Gina Denham, chair of the Monuments For UK Veterans of the American Civil War Association My great great grandfather, George Denham, was a former private in Company E 111th Pennsylvania Volunteers, and later transferred to the USS Chickasaw as a 2nd class fireman serving down at the battle of […]
Read more...What if…Joseph Lane of Oregon had become President in 1861?
A few years ago, I was fascinated by the possibility that a certain Joseph Lane, rather than Abraham Lincoln, might have become President in 1861. I actually accumulated quite a file of research and notes, which I have since lost. I’m not the only one who considered the Joseph Lane scenario – many people during […]
Read more...The Contextualized Statue of Raphael Semmes
Until June 2020, Raphael Semmes stood on a traffic median along Government Street in Mobile, Alabama—at least his bronze statue did. On the far side of the intersection, the Bankhead Tunnel plunges below the city street and beneath the empty concrete pad where Semmes once stood, then onward, underground, beneath the Mobile River. When Semmes […]
Read more...Exchanging a Saber for a Cane: The Case of Colonel Charles Augustus May
In 1861, over 250 U.S. Army officers resigned their commissions. The majority joined the rebellion, while a few remained loyal to the Union. Nineteen officers (seven percent) didn’t serve on either side. The choice was not so simple for these officers. Some were loyal to the Union but would not take up arms against friends […]
Read more...Blockade, Privateering, and the 1856 Declaration of Paris
In April 1861, the commanders in chief of both the United States and Confederacy issued far ranging proclamations. Abraham Lincoln declared a blockade of Confederate ports while Jefferson Davis issued a call for privateers to make war on US seaborne commerce. Oddly, the 1856 Paris Declaration, a document neither president assented to, influenced these actions […]
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