Showing results for "Death of Stonewall jackson"
The Smoothbore Volley and the Calamity at Chancellorsville
Physician Matthew Lively says historian Bob Krick is wrong about the wounding of Stonewall Jackson. In the mid-nineties, historian Robert K. Krick redefined the story of Jackson’s wounding with his groundbreaking essay “The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy.” In 2002, he updated and improved upon his study with a revised edition published in a […]
Read more...Shaping Chancellorsville: The first reenactment and ‘The Last Meeting’
part five in a series In 1933, administration of the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park was turned over to the National Park Service, and shortly thereafter, the NPS invited the Civilian Conservation Corps to come in to the park to do restoration and preservation work. Among their projects at Chancellorsville, they installed a visitor […]
Read more...Eastern Theater versus Western Theater: Where the Civil War Was Won and Lost: The Conclusion to a Series
The conclusion of a series. This series was put together from one of my extended graduate school research papers. The sources used were the current research between 2007-2008, obviously the historiography of the Civil War expands on a monthly basis, thus some of the “current research” in the paper is no longer exactly current. ********* […]
Read more...Eastern Theater versus Western Theater: Where the Civil War Was Won and Lost: Part Five
Part five in a series. This series was put together from one of my extended graduate school research papers. The sources used were the current research between 2007-2008, obviously the historiography of the Civil War expands on a monthly basis, thus some of the “current research” in the paper is no longer exactly current. ************** […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: “Story is a central component of ‘history'”
Part eight in a series The ability to evoke emotion easily stands out as The Civil War’s greatest strength: From its opening shot of a canon silhouetted against a fire-orange sky and the use of the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote and the haunting Appalachian violin of Jay Unger’s “Ashoken Farewell,” Burns strives first and foremost […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: The ways we remember the war
Part two in a series “We may say that only at the moment when Lee handed Grant his sword was the Confederacy born,” wrote Robert Penn Warren during the Civil War’s centennial; “or to state matters another way, in the moment of death the Confederacy entered upon its immortality.”[1] Writer/activist Albion W. Tourgee, however, considered […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: “a tension between Art and Science”
Part one in a series As a battlefield guide at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park (FSNMP), I frequently speak with folks who’ve come to the battlefields because they’ve read The Killer Angels, which in turn inspired them to come see a Civil War battlefield. Michael Shaara’s novel is about the battle of Gettysburg and […]
Read more...Reynolds Reconsidered
Was John Fulton Reynolds a great corps commander? Was Reynolds even a great general? And why do Civil War buffs have such a high regard for an officer who did so little in the Civil War compared to the likes of Stonewall Jackson, George Meade, Robert E. Lee, or Ulysses S. Grant? While these questions […]
Read more...“Greatest” of the Greatest?
As part of the research I’m doing on the Chancellorsville battlefield, I’m giving thought tonight about the 149-year-old characterization of Chancellorsville as “Lee’s greatest victory.” I suspect, statistically and situationally, a case could be made for several of Lee’s victories as “the greatest.”
Read more...