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Tag Archives: historiography
A Reflection on Historians and Word Choice
Words have meaning. Historical interpreters, whether guiding battlefield tours, designing museums, or writing articles or books, must carefully choose words that both convey a point and do justice to the topic. Poorly chosen words can impact the effect of a … Continue reading
Book Review –Getting Right with Lincoln: Correcting Misconceptions about Our Greatest President
Getting Right with Lincoln: Correcting Misconceptions about Our Greatest President By Edward Steers University Press of Kentucky, 2021, $27.95 hardcover Reviewed by Richard G. Frederick Lincoln historiography has been awash with controversy for the last 150 years. Disagreements over his … Continue reading
What We’ve Learned: A Podcast Conversation
In a chat recorded in December 2020, Chris Mackowski, Cecily Nelson Zander, Kevin Pawlak, and Sarah Kay Bierle discussed reflections on the last ten year in personal exploration of history and changes in the history field. From the beginning of … Continue reading
Biography: No Longer the Stepchild of Civil War History
For much of the twentieth century, biography was a genre ignored or demeaned by many academic historians. Traditional cradle-to-grave biographies focused on the so-called “great men of history.” They consigned women, immigrants, people of color, and lesser known figures to … Continue reading
Some Thoughts on the Status of the Lost Cause
The Lost Cause was at first a subject of scholarly inquiry. It then became one of scorn, used at times as a slur. For a serious student of the war, it is a label few desire as its mythology has … Continue reading
Gaines Foster and David Blight: Two Views on the Lost Cause
In 1961 the nation celebrated the centennial of the American Civil War with a glorification of battlefield heroics entwined within a narrative of a nation reforged in the fires of war. However, Robert Penn Warren critiqued this vision with The … Continue reading
Posted in Memory
Tagged civil war memory, Confederate memory, David W. Blight, Gaines M. Foster, historiography, Lost Cause
12 Comments
Do We Still Care About the Civil War: Dwight Hughes
The cover story of the newest issue of Civil War Times asks, “Do we still care about the Civil War?” ECW is pleased to partner with Civil War Times to extend the conversation here on the blog. The Civil War … Continue reading
Longstreet Goes West: Conclusions
James Longstreet’s time in the Western Theater has by and large, not garnered accolades. The prevailing western-centric view casts him as a haughty eastern interloper, come to further his own ambitions at Bragg’s expense. Historians of a more eastern bent … Continue reading
Posted in Emerging Civil War
Tagged Bragg, Chickamauga, civil war memory, historiography, Leadership, Longstreet, Longstreet-Goes-West, Monuments
4 Comments
Longstreet Goes West, part nine: The November of our discontent
Part Nine in a Series Both Bragg and Longstreet – indeed every Confederate from Richmond on down – understood that to be successful, any movement into East Tennessee must be conducted quickly, and in sufficient strength. The idea was to … Continue reading
Posted in Emerging Civil War
Tagged Bragg, Chickamauga, civil war memory, historiography, Leadership, Longstreet, Longstreet-Goes-West, Monuments
3 Comments
1860’s Politics: After All These Years, Why Do We Think President McClellan Would Have Given the Rebels an Armistice?
Approaching the 1864 Northern presidential election, students of the Atlanta Campaign tend to focus on how Sherman’s capture of the city on Sept. 2, 1864 helped President Lincoln win re-election. Conversely, we ponder Southerners’ hopes that the Democratic candidate, Maj. … Continue reading
