The Bonds of War: Edward and Nancy Murray home
by Diana Dretske * * * Edward and Nancy Murray home on Stateline Road in Lake County, Illinois When Edward Murray and Nancy Dixon married in February 1853, they lived with Edward’s parents on the family’s homestead along Stateline Road in Lake County, Illinois. After the birth of their second child in spring […]
Read more...The Civil War in Music Videos
by Dan Welch I often hear a refrain that’s probably familiar to most of you: “Children today, younger generations, are not interested in the American Civil War.” However, if pop culture can teach us anything, it is that the blanket statement above is just not accurate. The biggest influencers of popular culture remain movies, music, […]
Read more...The Delicious If: MacKinlay Kantor’s If the South Had Won the Civil War and Alternative History
by Stephen Davis For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863; the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid out and ready in the woods . . […]
Read more...The 2nd South Carolina String Band
Chris Mackowski [1] Joe Ewers stands on the stage and plucks one of the strings on his five-string banjo. His slouch hat sits at a rakish angle, and a pair of blue tassels, so faded that they look gray, dangle over the broad brim. He plucks, twists a knob to get the instrument in tune, […]
Read more...Chapter Three
by Constance Hall Jones Thomas Norcliffe Jones’s United States Citizenship petition and naturalization papers Transcript of Naturalization Petition. “Virginia At a circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for the County of Henrico and City of Richmond, held at the Capitol in said city the 1st day of June, one thousand eight-hundred and forty. Thomas […]
Read more...Literature
“The real war will never get in the books.” — Walt Whitman, Specimen Days * * * Chris Mackowski: “Gods and Generals: A Conversation with Jeff Shaara“—Web Exclusive Stephen Davis: “The Delicious If: MacKinlay Kantor’s If the South Had Won the Civil War and Alternative History“—Web Exclusive * * * ECW […]
Read more...Where Valor Proudly Sleeps
Where Valor Proudly Sleeps: A History of Fredericksburg National Cemeteryby Donald C. Pfanz “Engaging the Civil War” SeriesSouthern Illinois University Press,2018 Click here for ordering information Many books discuss in great detail what happened during Civil War battles. This is one of the few that investigate what happened to the remains of those who made […]
Read more...Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO: Postwar Burials in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania Court House Photos The First United States Veteran Volunteers scoured the Wilderness for Union remains in June 1865. Unburied skeletons, like these, were interred in one of two cemeteries established on the battlefield. * * * Wilderness National Cemetery No. 1 stood in […]
Read more...Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO: “Unintended Consequences: Ball’s Bluff and the Rise of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War” by James Morgan III Commentary · Images · Additional Resources · About the Author Commentary By Brian Matthew Jordan, co-editor, “Engaging the Civil War” Series Perched above a snarl in the Potomac River not terribly far […]
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