tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-103551092024-03-23T14:12:58.186-04:00Civil WarriorsRefighting the American Civil War, One Blog Post at a TimeMark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-69934488189823199562012-02-07T16:24:00.000-05:002012-02-07T16:25:27.918-05:00Reconstruction as an Insurgency<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieoy2m9EJSNdETvbXUlZZX9QbBs4jQEmuqBCeR_mp77qZ2EPE9HE1quTiSBInN9RIf0MO1DwCDC3C8xWeYA__zpmYB_cQOyMh7A6N0-4IMXYZIo4UUPfwBh80kMGHUDq_KqYepGw/s1600/mob+violence+against+blacks.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieoy2m9EJSNdETvbXUlZZX9QbBs4jQEmuqBCeR_mp77qZ2EPE9HE1quTiSBInN9RIf0MO1DwCDC3C8xWeYA__zpmYB_cQOyMh7A6N0-4IMXYZIo4UUPfwBh80kMGHUDq_KqYepGw/s320/mob+violence+against+blacks.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702286947491021538" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Cross posted from <span style="font-style: italic;">Blog Them Out of the Stone Age</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><br />Mike Few, the editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">Small Wars Journal</span>, recently interviewed me about Reconstruction as an insurgency. Here's his first question and my response:<br /><br /><p> <strong>Mike Few: Traditionally, social scientists, viewing conflict through the lens of the state, prefer to quantify wars as resulting in a win, loss, or tie; however, history shows that the construction, reconstruction, or deconstruction of the state following a conflict is often a long process with mixed results. Why did the Civil War not end after <u><a href="http://www.dcvb-nc.com/comm/nr/Bennett-Place.pdf">Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered</a></u> to Union Gen. William T. Sherman at Bennett Place, Durham, NC and <u><a href="http://www.nps.gov/apco/the-surrender.htm">General Robert E. Lee surrendered</a></u> the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the rural town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia?</strong></p> <p> Mark Grimsley: It’s important to acknowledge that in an important sense, the war did end in 1865, because the federal government’s two goals—the restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery—had both been achieved. White southerners gave up the idea of an independent Confederacy, and they showed every sign of accepting the lenient terms for return to the Union offered by the administration of Andrew Johnson. The Republican-controlled Congress, however, believed that more stringent terms were necessary to achieve the fruits of victory. In the words of Richard Henry Dana, a prominent Republican, they insisted on holding the former Confederate states in “the grasp of war” until the political dominance of the Southern elite was eliminated. A key component of their plan to accomplish this involved the imposition of universal male suffrage for African Americans. Essentially, the Reconstruction insurgency was a successful effort to break the grasp of war and restore what Southern conservatives termed “Home Rule.”</p> <p> A more clunky response, since you mention social scientists, would be to point to the Correlates of War Study, which defines a war as any event that results in a thousand or more battlefield deaths each year. If you substitute “deaths from political violence” for “battlefield deaths,” then several years during Reconstruction would come close to meeting this standard. In Louisiana alone, for example, an estimated 2,500 people perished between 1865 and 1876.<br /></p><p><a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/rethinking-revolution-reconstruction-as-an-insurgency">Full interview</a><br /></p>Mark Grimsleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15703376014958246256noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-35131419024865551472012-01-06T15:40:00.002-05:002012-01-06T15:44:02.171-05:00Outflanking the Bad GuysThe <span style="font-style: italic;">Civil Warriors </span>Wordpress site has been plagued with malicious script, and what with the demands of work and life I haven't yet found time to address the issue decisively.<br /><br />Luckily, I discovered that I could create a redirect to its former home, namely the blog on which you've just landed.<br /><br />So Ethan and I are back in action.<br /><br />Huzzah!Mark Grimsleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15703376014958246256noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1157919825400562832006-09-10T16:22:00.000-04:002006-09-10T16:23:45.410-04:00Experiencing Technical DificultiesThe server for the Wordpress edition of Civil Warriors is down. It should be back shortly. If not, we'll publish on this site until it is.Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1116850037869269252005-05-23T08:06:00.000-04:002005-05-23T08:07:17.873-04:00I created this site as an experiment and have discontinued it, choosing instead to consolidate all my history-related blogging on a single site, <a href="http://warhistorian.org/blog/">Blog Them Out of the Stone Age</a>. You'll find Civil War-related entries there.Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1112026162537489222005-03-28T11:06:00.000-05:002005-03-28T11:09:22.536-05:00History of Confederate Troop StrengthFascinating graph of fluctuating Confederate troop strength over the war's four years. (Hat tip to <a href="http://cwbn.blogspot.com/">Civil War Bookshelf</a>.)Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1111342543798111972005-03-20T13:12:00.000-05:002005-03-20T13:15:43.800-05:00Antietam PhotosA nice series of recent black and white views of <a href="http://www.nps.gov/anti/">Antietam National Battlefield</a>, by photographer Darin Boville.Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1111259420290343242005-03-19T13:59:00.000-05:002005-03-19T14:10:20.293-05:00Rally on the High Ground<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/rthg/index.htm"><img style="border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 102); margin: 2px;" src="http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/rthg/frontcover.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War</span>, is available as an online book.<br /><br />The National Park Service, the National Park Foundation, and Eastern National sponsored a symposium on May 8 and 9, 2000 at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. They brought together many of the leading scholars on the Civil War era with park managers, interpreters and educators to explore new research and interpretations of this period of American history. This symposium, <i>Rally on the High Ground</i>, became much larger and more important than the sponsors envisioned. It was broadcast nationally on C-Span, and many of the nation's leading media sources covered the event. The papers from this symposium are published here in <b>Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War</b>. A 120-page paperback edition is available for purchase. (Just follow the link, above, to the order form.)Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107595981192663072005-02-05T04:29:00.000-05:002005-02-05T04:41:01.653-05:00Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/dispatches/dispatch.html"><img style="border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 102); margin: 2px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/320/black_dispatches.1.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<br /> Reprint of article from Studies In Intelligence, a journal published by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence.<a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" alt="Posted by Hello" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107333684964467382005-02-02T20:25:00.000-05:002005-02-03T00:04:20.426-05:00Mark Grimsley, "Race in the Civil War"<a href="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/racewar/page_36.htm"><img alt="Race in the Civil War." src="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/racewar/page_36strip.jpg" /></a>
<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Reprinted with permission of <a href="http://www.northandsouthmagazine.com/">North and South magazine</a>.
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<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Note: If you are using Explorer, and the pages of the article are too small to read:
<br />Go to "Tools," then "Internet Options."
<br />Hit the "Advanced" tab
<br />Scroll down to "Multimedia"
<br />Uncheck the box next to "Enable Automatic Image Resizing"</span>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107268864258846702005-02-01T09:39:00.000-05:002005-02-03T00:07:40.060-05:00Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Site Project<a href="http://www.sandcreek.org/"><img alt="The image “http://www.sandcreek.org/images/yellologobk.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." src="http://www.sandcreek.org/images/yellologobk.jpg" /></a>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107166647709383822005-02-01T08:45:00.000-05:002005-02-01T08:50:52.393-05:00Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project<a href="http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/"><img src="http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/img/Railspl1.jpg" alt="Lincoln/Net" /></a>
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<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107166416791458382005-01-31T05:11:00.000-05:002005-01-31T05:13:36.790-05:00The Last Men to Look Upon Lincoln<a href="http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton/Lincoln13.html">. . . did so in 1901, not 1865.</a>
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107164906900124602005-01-31T04:44:00.000-05:002005-01-31T18:44:33.720-05:00Mr. Lincoln's White HouseFrom the site introduction:
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<br /><blockquote>It was an "ill-kept and dirty rickety concern," according to presidential secretary John G. Nicolay. "I wonder how much longer a great nation, as ours is, will compel its ruler to live in such a small and dilapidated old shanty, and in such a shabby-genteel style." A Nicolay associate in the President's office, was less critical, describing the White House as "a very respectable building of brick and stone, painted white, built in the form of a parallelogram, two stories high fronting north; but, owing to the declivity, three stories fronting south toward the Potomac."
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<br />President Abraham Lincoln himself once called it "this damned house," and when he was besieged by office seekers and afflicted by bad news from the war front, the White House must have seemed truly damned. But, despite its drawbacks, the White House was a clear improvement on the family's previous living accommodations. Indeed, the President also declared it was "better than any house they have ever lived in." For the four years and one month of Mr. Lincoln's presidency from March 1861 to April 1865, it was home to the Lincoln family and the center of efforts to restore the Union and abolish slavery.</blockquote>
<br />You're going to feel like almost like you've actually been there once you've taken this state-of-the-art virtual tour.
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<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107148158402541652005-01-31T01:09:00.000-05:002005-01-31T18:46:38.936-05:00The Valley of the Shadow<a href="http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/"><img style="border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 102); margin: 2px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/320/valley_of_the_shadow.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<br />You're in for a treat. Check out this path-breaking history project, focusing on the Civil War era experiences of Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. <i>The Valley of the Shadow</i> won the first <a href="http://www.gettysburg.edu/academics/cwi/lincoln_prize/past_winners1.html">e-Lincoln Prize</a> in 2001. <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" alt="Posted by Hello" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107129760298134622005-01-30T19:02:00.000-05:002005-01-31T05:18:27.876-05:00The First Vote, 2005<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/320/iraqi_women_voting_jan_30.jpg"><img style="border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 102); margin: 2px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/200/iraqi_women_voting_jan_30.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" alt="Posted by Hello" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107129551941846832005-01-30T18:59:00.000-05:002005-01-31T05:22:29.786-05:00The First Vote, 1868<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/320/first_vote.jpg"><img style="border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 102); margin: 2px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/272/2526/200/first_vote.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<br />It was impossible for a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction era to watch the election in Iraq today and not be reminded of the first vote for African Americans in the South, 1868<span style="text-decoration: underline;">.</span>Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107124153798638412005-01-30T17:21:00.000-05:002005-01-30T19:13:53.463-05:00Following the anti-immigrant tangent<span style="font-style: italic;">From <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/6688821">A.C.E.</a>:</span>
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<br />On Friday our Civil War reading group confronted Everard H. Smith, “Chambersburg: Anatomy of a Confederate Reprisal,” <span style="font-style: italic;">American Historical Review</span> Vol. 96, No. 2. (Apr., 1991): 432-455. Among other things, Smith argued that Confederate anti-German sentiment contributed to the <a href="http://civilwarriors.blogspot.com/2005/01/restraint-and-reprisal.html">ferocity of the retaliation against the civilians of Chambersburg</a>.
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<br />There are problems. How German was Chambersburg by 1864? No more German, perhaps, than some of the Confederate regiments that burned it. But anti-immigrant sentiment is not characterized by accurate historical assessments. Confederates recognized that Germans were among the prominent Unionists in Missouri and Texas, and that the most vocal and eloquent German-American voices in the North opposed slavery. I can accept that many Confederates were anti-German.
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<br />More interesting to me is a broader question: What did anti-immigrant sentiment mean during the Civil War? How deep did it run?
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<br />In the antebellum South it meant something to be white. It meant not being black. European immigrants such as the Germans were clearly white. The Civil War intensified the need for white solidarity to overcome distinctions in social position, wealth, and nativity. Did Everard Smith mean to adjust this widely-accepted interpretation? I think there is still room for anti-immigrant sentiment, but we need to further examine what such sentiment would mean in a war for white supremacy.
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<br />In the North, historians have shown, things were more complicated. European immigrants received citizenship rights based on their whiteness, but the Irish, and sometimes even the Germans, were considered racially different from Anglo-Saxons. There had been significant anti-immigrant riots in the 1850s, and during the war immigrants became scapegoats. The German divisions of the Eleventh Corps of the Army of the Potomac were singled out for blame in the Union defeat at <a href="http://www.nps.gov/frsp/chist.htm">Chancellorsville</a> in Spring, 1863. Germans were disloyal cowards. One major general, who was mentioned by name in critical newspaper reports, spent the rest of his life trying to clear the reputation of his troops. But <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000151">Carl Schurz</a> also became a U.S. Senator and the Secretary of the Interior under President Hayes. Rather than suffering from the accusations, he used them to consolidate his immigrant support. Attacks on him as a German did not hurt him politically.
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<br />Anti-immigrant sentiment existed on both sides during the war. But I still don’t think we know what it really meant.
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<br />Ed. Note: Readers with access to JSTOR will find the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/app/%3Ca%20href=%22http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199104%2996%3A2%3C432%3ACAOACR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E%22%3E">article online</a>.
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106635444127491892005-01-30T17:20:00.000-05:002005-01-31T05:04:26.883-05:00Restraint and Reprisal<img src="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/assets/southrevenge.jpg" align="left" border="0" height="254" hspace="8" vspace="8" width="300" />
<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">From <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/5631755">Mark G.:</a></span></span>
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<br />This Friday the Civil Warriors will meet to discuss:
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<br />Everard H. Smith, "<a href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199104%2996%3A2%3C432%3ACAOACR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E">Chambersburg: Anatomy of a Confederate Reprisal</a>," <span style="font-style: italic;">American Historical Review</span> Vol. 96, No. 2. (Apr., 1991), pp. 432-455.
<br />(You'll need access to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/">J-STOR</a> to read the article. )
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<br />The article gets at the issue of when and why restraint breaks down in war. In 1995 I gave a lecture at the <a href="http://www.usma.edu/">U.S. Military Academy</a> that also addressed this question--and also discussed what is needed for restraint to hold up:
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<br /><a href="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/usma/rest2.htm">Union Soldiers and the Persistence of Restraint in War</a>
<br /><a href="http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/HIUS403/frhome/home.html">
<br />War Comes Home: Chambersburg, Summer of 1864</a> provides a good, brief introduction to the burning of the town, and links to an excellent archive of illustrations.
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107029736594955422005-01-30T01:11:00.000-05:002005-01-30T01:13:23.876-05:00The US Civil War Center (USCWC): An Appreciation<a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/index.htm">The U.S. Civil War Center (USCWC)</a> was founded in 1993 and is involved with a number of projects, but the best-known is its attempt to link to every scrap of information on the web that touches upon the Civil War era. To date it has found and cataloged about 9000 sites, though inevitably at any given time, some of the links are "broken;" that is, they lead only to a 404 error code.
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<br />The main point of entry is <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/civlink.htm">Index of Civil War Information on the Internet.</a><p></p>From an <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/purpose.htm">introductory page</a> that explains the center's mission, history, etc.:
<br /><p align="left"></p><blockquote>The Center has been called an "information clearinghouse."<b> However, the Center is not a museum or a library</b>. While we do not maintain original documents on the premises, we help direct individuals to the appropriate experts, institutions, and books for their research projects. Each day we are contacted by phone, fax, mail and e-mail by scholars, teachers, students, movie producers, reenactors, librarians, and amateur genealogists who are working on a diverse group of projects.
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<br /> If you have a question, please be sure your first step is to view the<a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/civlink.htm"> Index</a>, <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/questdir.htm">Questions</a>, and <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/other/genealogy/faq-gene.htm">Researching People of the Civil War Era</a> sections on the Center's web site. Once you have examined our available links, we ask that you submit all inquiries in writing, either via <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/index.htm">mail, fax or e-mail.</a></blockquote><a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/index.htm"></a> <p></p>The USCWC essentially vaccums up all the info on the web it can and parks that info as best it can in an extensive <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/civlink.htm">index</a>. The center knows the info is not always accurate or reliable and that it may be part of idiossyncratic, even offensive historical interpretations. It expects users to know how to discern good sources from bad, bearing in mind that the meaning of "good" and "bad" are contextualized by the purpose of one's research. If I'm interested in popular memory of the Civil War, sources that would be "bad" for a college term paper on, say, Northern politics during the era, are "good" for my needs.
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<br />Over the years I've used the USCWC a lot and have always found it nothing less than extremely helpful. But as an expert on the Civil War era, I'm pretty well able to sift the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly. Therefore I thought a useful service might be to go through the index and identify the "best" links.
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<br />"Best," of course, is subjective. In general, I have thought of "best" in the sense of "value-added": I have looked for sites that tell you things or provide perspectives you could not just as easily find in an encyclopedia or some other reference work. "Value-added" does not always mean accurate, and some of these sites reflect perspectives on the Civil War era that are dated, racist, idiosyncratic, or downright weird. But usually "value-added" does mean interesting.
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<br />I vouch for the accuracy of nothing on these sites, nor for whether they respect applicable fair use laws, not whether they contain malicious code, or anything else. I won't even guarantee you'll agree with my selections. In fact, I'm sure you will disagree with some of them. I don't care. Get your own blog and make your own list.
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<br />But I do hope you'll enjoy the sites in the lists I've chosen.
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<br />The section below will provide links to specfic subject areas and will be updated as needed:
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<br /><a href="http://civilwarriors.blogspot.com/2005/01/uscwc-best-links-on-reconstruction.html">Reconstruction</a>
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<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1107029798976703362005-01-30T01:05:00.000-05:002005-01-30T01:17:48.813-05:00USCWC: The Best Links on Reconstruction, 1862-1877<a href="http://civilwarriors.blogspot.com/2005/01/us-civil-war-center-uscwc-appreciation.html">Have you read the explanation and disclaimer?
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<br />Compared to the abundance on other topics, fourteeb on the battle of Gettysburg alone, there's not that much on <a href="http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/links/links11.htm#Reconstruction">Reconstruction</a>.
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<br />Total links: 27
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<br />Value-added links: 6 (or 5.5: you'll see what I mean)
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<br /><a href="http://www.grazian-archive.com/History/P08_C42.htm">Civil War II: 1865-1965</a> - idiosyncratic account and interpretation from the <a href="http://www.grazian-archive.com/">Grazian Archive.</a> Check out the <a href="http://www.grazian-archive.com/">welcome page</a> and think carefully about the nature of this source and the needs of your research. If you have some knowledge of Reconstruction (actually the whole sweep of race relations between Appomattox and the Voting Rights Act of 1965), this might be fun--and perhaps even a useful challenge to your thinking. If you have little prior background, best to avoid. You have been warned.
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<br /><a href="http://www.bchm.org/wrr/">Civil War Reconstruction and Recovery in Brazoria County, TX</a> Rock on! Funded in part by a grant from <a href="http://humanitiestexas.org/">Humanities Texas</a> (formerly the Texas Council for the Humanities), this is graphics rich, vivid, and thought-provoking. Note to high school students and undergrads: Brazoria County, TX, is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> the South as a whole. This is a close-up of this period as it took place in one small area. The text of this exhibit was written by Dr. Betsy Powers and relies heavily on her doctoral dissertation, <i>From Cotton Fields to Oil Fields: Economic Development in a New South Community, 1860-1920 </i>(University of Houston: 1994.)
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<br /><a href="http://library.puc.edu/heritage/bib-civilwarmissouri.html"></a><a href="http://ncnatural.com/selections/hist19th2.html"> </a><a href="http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Reconstruction.PDF">"Reconstructing America: Consolidation of State Power 1865-1890" </a><span style="">by Thomas J. DiLorenzo</span>. DiLorenzo, a professor economics at Loyola College in Maryland, is a controversial historian and this essay (in pdf) offers a controversial interpretation of the period. All historical interpretations reflect to one degree or another the worldview of the interpreter. DiLorenzo identifies explicitly with the worldview exemplified in <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/">Rockwell.com</a>. If you want to be challenged and/or provoked, check it out.
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<br /><a href="http://www.civilwarhome.com/reconstruction.htm">Reconstruction!!!</a> - a chapter from <a href="http://www.civilwarhome.com/confederatemilitaryhistory.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Confederate Military History</span></a> supplied by <a href="http://www.civilwarhome.com/">Shotgun's Home of the American Civil War</a> page. For most purposes it's badly out of date and tedious to read. And as Shotgun notes: "WARNING! This is not what you were taught in school. It has a definite Southern bias. It is not politically correct! Nor should it be. It was written shortly after the war by Southerners about Southerners."
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<br /><a href="http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/kilgroe/recon.htm">Reconstruction and Its Aftermath, 1865-1877</a> - This page simply introduces <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/index.html">America's Reonstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War</a>, which is where you may as well begin. This online exhibit is based on a traveling exhibition, originally sponsored by the Valentine Museum in Richmond. It opened in 1996 at the Virginia Historical Society and was subsequently shown at the South Carolina State Museum, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Museum of Florida History, Museum of the New South, and the Chicago Historical Society, where its tour ended in 1999. The development of this online exhibit was sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
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<br /><a href="http://www.rit.edu/%7Enrcgsh/bx/bx06b.html"></a><a href="http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/civilwar/16/reconstruction3.html"></a><a href="http://users.erols.com/va-udc/confed_vets.html">Thin Gray Line: Confederate Veterans in the New South </a> - Doesn't really fit in the Reconstruction section, but this is a good, "popular history" article from the <a href="http://www.vfw.org/">Veterans of Foreign Wars</a>.
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<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106910485195438322005-01-29T00:28:00.000-05:002005-01-29T00:28:43.696-05:00Civil War Talk Radio<a href="http://www.worldtalkradio.com/show.asp?sid=150"><img src="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/assets/civil_war_talk_radio.jpg" align="left" border="3" height="188" hspace="2" vspace="5" width="180" /></a>Gerald Prokoprowicz hosts <a href="http://www.worldtalkradio.com/show.asp?sid=150">Civil War Talk Radio</a>, which is really streaming audio broadcast on the internet. He does a nice job. Recent guests have included: James M. McPherson, <span style="font-style: italic;">For Cause and Comrades; </span>Ken Burns, PBS <span style="font-style: italic;">Civil War</span> series; James I. "Bud" Robertson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Stonewall Jackson</span>; John Marszalek, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order</span>; and, well, <a href="http://www.worldtalkradio.com/archive.asp?aid=3173">me</a>. Honestly, check it out.
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106888284568986172005-01-29T00:26:00.000-05:002005-01-29T00:28:05.393-05:00U.S. Civil War FAQ. . . compiled and maintained by<a href="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.war.civil.usa"> alt.war.civil.usa</a>, an unmoderated discussion group
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<br />I used to hang out in cyberspace with the folks who compiled the FAQ. They were very knowledgeable and the FAQ is really quite good.
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<br /><a href="http://www.faqs.org/faqs/civil-war-usa/faq/part1/">U.S. Civil War FAQ, Part 1
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<br /><a href="http://www.faqs.org/faqs/civil-war-usa/faq/part2/">U.S. Civil War FAQ, Part 2
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<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106885748678896062005-01-28T01:01:00.000-05:002005-01-28T01:00:19.833-05:00Custer: the Legend, the A-Hole<img src="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/assets/custer1.jpg" align="left" border="0" height="416" hspace="8" width="295" />Louise Barnett, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805037209/qid=1106887205/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-5522366-6126455?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"><span style="font-style: italic;">Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer</span></a>. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.
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<br />Jeffry D. Wert, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684810433/qid=1106887261/sr=12-1/002-5522366-6126455?v=glance&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer</span></a>. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
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<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Biographies have a way of coming out in pairs, trios, and even quartets. These two worthwhile Custer bios appeared in the spring of 1996, almost simultaneously. This is a review Mark G. published with the Cleveland Plain Dealer in May of that year.</span>
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<br />George Armstrong Custer is the patron saint of American hubris. Even at its most flattering, his popular image is of a bold cavalier galloping headlong into disaster; at worst, it resembles the depiction in the 1970 film <i>Little Big Man</i>: Custer charging off to ruin with the exultant cry, "Take no prisoners!"
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<br />It is grimly appropriate that the first major clash between U.S. and North Vietnamese troops involved a reconstituted, helicopter-borne Seventh Cavalry, whose sergeants responded to orders with a snappy "Gary Owen, sir!" - a reference to Custer's favorite song. Like Custer<b>,</b> the Americans in the Ia Drang Valley were looking for the enemy. Like Custer<b>,</b> they found him in punishing abundance.
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<br />By rights, Custer ought to be an obscure figure. True, he fought gallantly during the Civil War and became a brigadier general at age 23, but that conflict produced many gallant, youthful generals. After the war he won success as an Indian fighter, but not as much as several others.
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<br />His notoriety derives from one simple fact. On a sunny day in June 1876, he and his entire command - 263 men - were annihilated by 2,000-3,000 Indians at the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana. The shocking defeat spawned a fascination with Custer that has never abated. More has been written about him than any American save Abraham Lincoln.
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<br />There are two main ways to approach Custer. The first is to take his fame at face value and treat him as a significant military figure. The second is to acknowledge the true root of that fame and give the myth of Custer as much coverage as the man. Jeffrey Wert, a veteran biographer of Confederate leaders John S. Mosby and James Longstreet, pursues the first strategy. Louise Barnett, a professor of literature at Rutgers University, adopts the second. The results are two very different books that nevertheless share a basic sympathy for their subject.
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<br />Wert's biography walks the reader straightforwardly through Custer's life, focusing almost exclusively on his military career. Born in New Rumley, Ohio, in 1839, Custer grew up mostly in lower Michigan before gaining appointment to West Point. When the Civil War broke out, he and his classmates graduated a year early.
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<br />Custer joined the Union Army of the Potomac, where he gained a reputation for energy and guts, finishing the war as a major general. After the war, he became second-in-command of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry, a unit which, for all practical purposes, he commanded until his death. Though well-liked by his Civil War troops, he managed to antagonize many soldiers in his postwar outfit by a penchant for severe discipline and flamboyant display. He was even court-martialed in 1867 and sentenced to a year's suspension from rank and pay.
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<br />The reason for the court-martial tells a lot about Custer. The charge was leaving his post without authorization in order to visit his wife, Elizabeth "Libbie" Bacon Custer. Married early in 1864, the pair enjoyed a close, highly charged relationship and wrote one another constantly during their lengthy separations. On this occasion, Custer had heard nothing from her for an extended period and became frantic to see her.
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<br />Thanks to the intercessions of Gen. Philip Sheridan, who knew Custer well from their Civil War days, Custer was returned to active duty and sent west to help subdue raiding Cheyenne war parties. Unable to overtake the war parties in the open field, Custer resorted to a common Army expedient: He traced them back to an Indian village and launched a surprise attack at dawn, thereby forcing the warriors to stand and defend their women, children and the elderly.
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<br />Over 100 Cheyenne, many of them noncombatants, died in this Battle of the Washita, which sealed Custer's reputation as an Indian fighter. But although he participated in several other expeditions against Indians, the Washita remained his only major encounter until the Little Bighorn nine years later.
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<br />The second book, <i>Touched by Fire</i>, deals less with Custer's military career than his marriage and his conscious efforts to cultivate a dashing image. It spends much time placing Custer's experiences and persona in the context of his time, and it is excellent on the meanings of the Custer myth.
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<br />Although informed by contemporary sensibilities about sex and race, it seldom strays into ideological dogma. Occasionally a lapse does occur, as when Barnett simply notes that Indian war parties sometimes gang-raped white women but waxes indignant that white men, when discussing such outrages, would stress the fact that these women were "wives": "For whites, the abuse of those women belonging to men made the most compelling case against Indians." On balance, however, <span style="font-style: italic;">Touched by Fire</span> is a very good book, thoughtful, well-written and fair-minded about Custer.
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<br />Barnett's basic technique is to take a revealing aspect of Custer's life and devote a chapter to a sustained appraisal of it. A particularly effective chapter examines the "mystery" of Custer's Last Stand. Students of the battle have spilled rivers of ink to explain how Custer and his command could have been killed to the last man. Theories have ranged from negligence on the part of key subordinates to outlandish speculations that Sitting Bull, Custer's opponent at the Little Bighorn, had once been a West Point cadet. Each small decision by Custer en route to the disaster is lovingly dissected and redissected.
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<br />But, Barnett argues, the mystery cannot be chased from the battlefield because "the locus is not the physical site but the psyche of white America. Its source is racism, the pure and simple conviction that a body of white soldiers" like the Seventh Cavalry "could not be overwhelmed even by an overwhelming number of Indians. For the typical Custer buff, mystery is preferable to this stark fact."
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<br />At the core of <span style="font-style: italic;">Touched by Fire</span> is Libbie Custer, and the book continues even after Custer's death to recount her tireless efforts to preserve and protect his memory. Since she survived until 1933 and wrote three books about her husband, those efforts were impressive indeed. Barely 34 years old when Custer died, she was beautiful and energetic and could easily have moved on to a new life. Instead she remained utterly devoted to Custer's memory; to be his widow was her only and highest calling.
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<br />Libbie has a good recent biography of her own - <i>Shirley A. Leckie's Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth</i>; - but Barnett's shorter treatment is accomplished and insightful. Wert, too, addresses the rare relationship between Custer and Libbie, but too often his coverage goes little deeper than the recounting of sexual double entendres they shared in their private correspondence.
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<br />The Custer literature is so abundant that any newcomer must justify its existence. The rationale for Wert's <i>Custer</i> is its balanced coverage of Custer's Civil War and western careers. The result is a good one-volume military biography that nevertheless improves little on Gregory Urwin's <i>Custer Victorious</i>, which covers the Civil War years, or Robert M. Utley's <i>Cavalier in Buckskin</i>, which concentrates on Custer's postwar career.
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<br />Barnett's <i>Touched by Fire</i>, on the other hand, is a sharp, original and engaging study of Custer's life and myth which, though less concerned with military campaigns, nevertheless includes a first-rate account of the Little Bighorn. It vividly demonstrates how, when dealing with a legendary historical figure, it is best to address the legend as well as the individual.
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106789016740709512005-01-26T20:11:00.000-05:002005-01-26T20:25:02.323-05:00Lawyers in Love. . . with A. Lincoln, esq., attorney at law
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<br />The <a href="http://www.claremont.org/">Claremont Institute web site </a>has this <a href="http://www.claremont.org/writings/000630hinderaker_johnson.html">appreciation of Lincoln as a lawyer</a>, written by two lawyers: Scott W. Johnson and Paul H. Hinderaker.
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<br />If this aren't names that ring a bell with you, try "The Big Trunk" and "Hindrocket."
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<br />Still no good?
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<br />Try 2/3 of the team at <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/">Powerline</a>.
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<br />Still fuzzy?
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<br /><a href="http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php#007760">Maybe this will help.</a>
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10355109.post-1106784944673235292005-01-26T18:35:00.000-05:002005-01-26T19:15:44.673-05:00The Civil War Bookshelf<em>From Mark G.:</em>
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<br />I've begun wandering around the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere">blogosphere</a> of late. It's still largely <em>terra incognita</em> to me, for while I have been keeping <a href="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/dialogue/postcolonialism/resistance.htm">a blog </a>for over a year, I can see that until I created <a href="http://warhistorian.blogspot.com/">an orthodox blog site </a>I wasn't really blogging. You just don't get the <a href="http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php">interconnectivity that defines blogdom</a> until you have a site that bloggers can easily find.
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<br />Naturally I have a particular interest in Civil War blogs, if indeed there are any. So far I know of only one: <a href="http://cwbn.blogspot.com">The Civil War Bookshelf </a>, maintained by <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/1848140">Dimitri Rotov</a>, who posted his <a href="http://cwbn.blogspot.com/2003/08/welcome-new-readers-i-hope-this-little.html">first entry </a>on August 27, 2003. Since then, according to Site Meter, CWB has gotten almost 24,000 hits. Not bad at all for a blog that confines its beat to Civil War historiography and publishing. (Mr. Rotov also seems to be the moving force behind <a href="http://www.georgebmcclellan.org/soctoc.html">The McClellan Society </a>and the society's <a href="http://www.georgebmcclellan.org/">MG George B. McClellan Pages</a>.)
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<br />Mr. Rotov thinks that too much consensus characterizes the field of Civil War history. This is from his maiden post:
<br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><p>The consensus was slowly and painfully developed through the 1940s through the 1960s. It covers hundreds of individual points of American Civil War history (hence the slowness to build, the pain of achieving). We know, common sense tells us, that a consensus covering hundreds of points and spanning thousands of published authors is contrived. It is simply not possible for active scholars in a vital field brimming with fresh infusions of primary materials to agree on so much, so vehemently. So something is wrong with our field. We need to fix it. Maybe this blog can help.</p></blockquote>I'm not yet entirely sure what he means by this, so I'm as yet in no position to agree or disagree. But I can tell that he's a serious student of the conflict and I'm curious to explore his blog more closely. I encourage you to do so as well.
<br />Mark G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08655782356556219869noreply@blogger.com0