Yesterday I received the page proofs for Joan Waugh’s new book, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (UNC Press, pub. date, 11/15). I’ve read the first chapter and I am enjoying it very much. It’s part biography, cultural history, and memory study. The first chapter covers his life up to the Civil War and includes [...]
Civil War Historians
I‘ve been thinking quite a bit about the images of slave rebellions and miscegenation that shaped the world view of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. In the case of Nat Turner’s Rebellion newspapers throughout Virginia and beyond offered extensive coverage and attempted to offer an explanation that would assuage the concerns of what white [...]
Check out these short videos at Gilder Lehrman’s YouTube site, which include interviews with Gary Gallagher, Ed Ayers, Allen Guelzo, Thomas Bender, and Ira Berlin. Search the full list of videos and you can view interviews with James and Louis Horton and David Blight. They can be used in the classroom, though they range in [...]
I am putting the finishing touches on my review of John Schmutz’s new book on the Crater for H-Net. Given my recent post on understanding the Crater as a slave rebellion you can imagine my surprise when I came across the following passage: Weisiger’s Virginians were even more sensitive on this issue of confronting black [...]
It’s difficult to deny that the image of women in the work of contemporary Civil War artists tells us much more about the individual artist than the reality of women’s lives or the way those lives were transformed during the Civil War. I pick on Mort Kunstler quite a bit, but his characters beg for [...]
For some reason John Brown is back in the news of late with a specific focus on his continuing legacy as well as the pikes or spears that were to be used during the raid. For an excellent discussion of Brown’s life as well as the significance of the Harpers Ferry Raid I highly recommend [...]
Just kidding Ken, but congratulations nonetheless on securing a priceless Civil War document. See the story here.
I just wanted to take a moment to thank Dimitri Rotov for setting us straight on Civil War historiography: Agitating against “Lost Cause” historiography invites one into a fantasy struggle against a pretend school of thought invented out of scraps of writing and speech and then built into a menace. Centennialism dresses up as Don [...]
