Showing results for "Appomattox"
“Life Given, Not Lost”: Captain Morey’s Final Charge—Part Two
Authored by Edward Alexander (part two of three) Following the Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864, in which he claimed the Confederates “broke and run like a flock of sheep with dogs after them,” the Sixth Corps returned to the Army of the Potomac which lay siege to the city of Petersburg. Morey now […]
Read more...A Challenge Answered: The Battle of Kelly’s Ford, March 17, 1863
William Woods Averell was usually considered an even-tempered individual. However, in the opening weeks of March, 1863 his blood had been brought to a boil. This mild mannered New Yorker, whose great grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence, had his heart set on revenge. Averell was a drugstore clerk before he received his appointment […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions told until they are believed to be true
Part nine in a series “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs.[1] Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered.[2] […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: The Civil War’s great storyteller
Part six in a series. No written work embodies the tension between art and history more fully than Shelby Foote’s mammoth three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. Few people realize Foote was a novelist before he became the “warm and folksy raconteur” of anecdotal Civil War history; his novel Shiloh sits almost forgotten in the […]
Read more...Telling History vs. Making Art: “Frankly, my dear….”
Part three in a series As the horn section carries Max Steiner’s score from its overture into the sweeping, now-iconic strings of its main theme, Gone With the Wind opens with haggard-looking slaves returning from a hard day’s work set against the first of many sunset backdrops. On-screen text immediately evokes a romanticized antebellum past: […]
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...Telling History vs. Making Art: An upcoming series at Emerging Civil War
Introduction to a series As part of my doctoral work, I recently had to do some work that focused on Civil War literature. I use “literature” in a broad sense to cover fiction, nonfiction, and film. My interest in the topic stems from my work as a historian for Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. […]
Read more...Middle Child and Second Fiddle: The Sad Fate of Second Manassas
Try as I might, I can’t persuade my daughter to explore anything to do with Second Manassas. It’s July 29, 2000. Steph is six but already the veteran of several battlefielding campaigns, and she’s particularly a fan of First Manassas because that’s where her hero, Stonewall Jackson, got his nickname. She’s been eagerly urging us […]
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