I am very excited about the next issue of Civil War Times, which should be hitting the newsstands very soon. The October issue will include an essay of mine, titled, “‘Until Every Negro Has Been Slaughtered’: Did Southerners See the Battle of the Crater as a Slave Rebellion?”. I am hoping that readers will find [...]
Petersburg
I have culled a number of helpful sources from Google Books. Today I am sharing a wonderful image of Douglas Southall Freeman that was taken from a Life magazine article published in May 1940. The article takes the reader to various places from the Petersburg Campaign, including the Crater and follows Freeman as he attempts [...]
I have already mentioned what a pleasure it was to have the opportunity to talk last week with Earl Hess about our mutual interest in the battle of the Crater. During our discussion Prof. Hess asked if I dealt in any substantive way with the evidence that USCTs executed surrendered Confederates at the Crater. I [...]
One of the highlights for me during last week’s Petersburg conference was the opportunity to view Pamplin Park’s feature film, “War So Terrible: A Civil War Combat Film.” Will Greene describes its inception as a response to visitors who reflected on their experience in the park as somehow enjoyable or entertaining. Greene and the rest [...]
Numbers play an important role in the Lost Cause view of the Civil War and the Petersburg Campaign in particular. The image of the Army of Northern Virginia as hopelessly outnumbered and hanging on by a thread continues to exercise a strong hold for many. There is something attractive about a narrative that pits a [...]
I want to thank Mark Snell and Denise Messinger of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War and Will Greene and the rest of the staff at Pamplin Park for putting on a wonderful conference on the Petersburg Campaign. It was nice to see so many familiar faces and I [...]
I just put the finishing touches on my paper and accompanying visual presentation for the George Tyler Moore Center – Pamplin Park Conference that begins tomorrow afternoon. Back in 2007 I took part in this conference, but this is the first year that Mark Snell and the rest of the gang at Shepherd University have [...]
Yesterday I had one of those moments, while working on the Crater manuscript, where I was able to see the big picture of the history of race in Virginia in the nineteenth century. It all came together around one individual, William E. Cameron. Those of you familiar with Virginia will recognize the name. Since the [...]
