Departments

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Civil War

  • SOURCE: CNN
    10/28/2020

    This is the Biggest Election in 160 Years

    by Manisha Sinha

    "The one underlying commonality that binds these two historic presidential elections is the conviction that it is American democracy -- rather than just opposing presidential candidates -- that is on the ballot."

  • SOURCE: Politico
    10/27/2020

    How Democrats Can Learn Hardball From the Republicans of 1861

    The Antebellum slave power suppressed democracy and abolitionism through control of the institutions of American government, from the Senate to the courts to the postal service. Only after secession and the start of civil war did the Republican Party fight back successfully with hardball tactics.

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    10/9/2020

    #WEWANTMOREHISTORY

    by Greg Downs, Hilary N. Green, Scott Hancock, and Kate Masur

    At historic sites across the United States on September 26, dozens of participating historians presented evidence to disrupt, correct, or fill out the oversimplified and problematic messages too often communicated by the nation’s memorial landscape.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    10/6/2020

    The Oligarchs’ Revenge (Review)

    by Manisha Sinha

    Heather Cox Richardson's book makes an essential argument that the conceptual distinction between class and race in American history obscures the way that American elites have worked to create and defend oligarchy. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    10/5/2020

    Holding an Election During the Civil War Set the Standard for Us Today

    by Jonathan W. White

    “We can not have free government without elections,” Lincoln told the crowd, “and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/28/2020

    Amid the Monument Wars, a Rally for ‘More History’

    “Historians have different views on taking down statues,” said Gregory Downs, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the organizers. “But that debate doesn’t really capture what historians do, which is to bring more history.”

  • SOURCE: YouTube
    9/29/2020

    Bawdy Civil War Letters, In the Style of Ken Burns

    by Katie Hemphill

    Historian Katie Hemphill's recent crash course in video editing for Zoom teaching let her fulfill a longtime goal: set the bawdiest Civil War letters she found in her research to the stirring sounds of documentary music. Content Warning: Cuss Words.

  • SOURCE: Journal of the Civil War Era
    9/22/2020

    Civil War Day of Action: Leading a Reading Group

    by Julie A. Mujic

    Leading a reading group is a great, and socially-distanced, way to take part in the Day of Action for Civil War history. Here are some tips. 

  • SOURCE: Smithsonian
    9/14/2020

    Why ‘Glory’ Still Resonates More Than Three Decades Later

    by Kevin M. Levin

    The film based on the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry is streaming on Netflix. Kevin Levin suggests that despite the narrative license taken, the film puts the story of Black freedom fighters and the question of emancipation at the center of the story of the Civil War. 

  • SOURCE: Journal of the Civil War Era
    8/25/2020

    Civil War History: A Call to Action

    The Journal of the Civil War Era urges historians to mobilize on September 26 to correct the misinformation delivered by public monuments and memorials.   

  • 9/6/2020

    Americans Have Feared Another Civil War Since the End of the Last One

    by Richard Kreitner

    The ink was hardly dry on Lee's surrender at Appomattox before Andrew Johnson's conciliation toward the former Confederacy clashed with the unfulfilled goals of freed slaves and radical Republicans to threaten further violence. These fault lines have been hidden but never healed in the restored American union.

  • 8/30/2020

    Gettysburg’s First Confederate Monument

    by David K. Graham

    The dedication in 1886 of a monument to the Maryland 2nd Confederate Regiment at Gettysburg launched the movement by southern partisans to lay claim to the site of the Union victory as a monument to national reconciliation. The Grand Army of the Republic organization wasn't buying it then, and we shouldn't today.