Leave it to a thoughtful student to point out aspects of our Civil War memory that often go unacknowledged. I have no idea why this video was done, but in it Christian Patterson, who is a student in a Texas private school briefly touches on what he remembers learning about the American Civil War. [click to continue…]

Looks like the story of Andrew and Silas Chandler is now the subject of a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, which appears in the collection, Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present. There is something satisfying about the story of Silas making it into such a collection and some of the stanzas are quite beautiful, but it is unfortunate that Komunyakaa makes so many mistakes. More to the point we are presented with the story of Silas as the loyal slave whose world is defined by service to Andrew and the Confederate cause. [click to continue…]

I am just about finished reading Brian Steel Wills’s new biography of William Dorsey Pender. It’s a solid biography, just what we’ve come to expect from Wills. Indeed, he has been very productive in recent years. Pender’s letters to his wife Fanny are front and center in this biography. One of the most interesting sections occurs early on in the book when Dorsey is chided by his wife for admitting to flirtatious behavior with women in Suffolk, Virginia, who he openly admitted, “will do anything for me.” That’s probably not what you want to write to your wife, who is struggling back in North Carolina to take care of two young children. Live and learn.

Even more interesting, however, is the revelation that shortly after the Antietam Campaign Pender chose to read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. [click to continue…]

By now many of you have heard that Alan Taylor has been awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. It’s a fabulous book and the award is certainly well deserved.

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010).

John McKee Barr, Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (Louisiana State University Press, 2014).

Michael Korda, Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee (Harper, 2014).

Brian Steel Wills, The River Was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow (Oklahoma University Press, 2014).