First things first. Thanks to all of you who emailed yesterday to share your concerns about our safety in light of the attacks that took place here in Boston yesterday. My wife and I have lived in Boston for close to two years. After watching the response of our community to yesterday’s tragic events, I [...]
Civil War Historians
There is a danger when we remember or imagine the past that we treat historical actors as static or stuck in a particular moment as opposed to dynamic and forward looking. We make an implicit assumption that since we are preoccupied with a particular historical moment that the individuals were as well. The recent history [...]
Linda Barnickel, Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory, (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). Earl J. Hess, Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign, (University of North Carolina Press, 2013). William A. Link, Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath, (University of North Carolina [...]
In between the final day’s sessions yesterday at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Megan Kate Nelson and I met over lunch and cocktails to talk a little business. Over the next few months we will be co-editing a special issue of Common-place on the Civil War Sesquicentennial and Civil War memory. The issue is slated for [...]
This weekend I am attending a conference hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society called “Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion.” Last night John Stauffer gave the keynote address on abolitionism in the Bay State and today I attended three panels. The range of topics discussed is really quite impressive. I especially [...]
You heard that right. It was just a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of basing a reality TV show around the eccentricities and annoying behavior of history buffs. Here is the description for the casting call: Are you a curious person, and obsessed with history? Can you recite facts inside [...]
Earlier today I finished reading Michael J. Bennett’s essay “The Black Flag and Confederate Soldiers: Total War from the Bottom Up” which is also published in Andy Slap and Michael Smith eds., This Distracted and Anarchical People: New Answers for Old Questions about the Civil War-Era North. In his essay, Bennett explores accounts of massacres [...]
