December 14, 2020

Guest Review: The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera

December 14, 2020/ Civil Discourse

The War Went On is the latest in recent scholarship to look beyond the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and instead examine how wartime service affected veterans in the years and decades beyond. Topics run the gamut from political to social history, with inclusions of the fields of economics, memory studies, race, and others. Though not comprehensive, this excellent book explores a range of experiences and offers insight into complicated and diverse groups of veterans.

September 21, 2020

Review: The Civil War in the South Carolina Lowcountry: How a Confederate Artillery Battery and a Black Union Regiment Defined the War, by Ron Roth.

September 21, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

Beaufort, South Carolina was the epitome of the antebellum south. The production of coveted Sea Islands cotton created a community of wealthy, gentile white southerners who lived in their showcase Beaufort mansions surrounded by the slave force that sustained them. Placing the experiences of two units (one white and Confederate, the other black and Union), Ron Roth gives the reader a localized history of the Beaufort area that is fully contextualized in the larger military, political, economic, and social events of the Civil War.

July 20, 2020

Interview with Sarah Handley-Cousins, author of Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North

July 20, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

This is an interview with historian Dr. Sarah Handley-Cousins about her new book Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North.

July 20, 2020

Review: Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North by Sarah Handley-Cousins

July 20, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

In Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North, Sarah Handley-Cousins brings the reader past the medical fascination and bare statistics of Civil War casualties and injuries to look at Civil War disability from a more social and cultural view. The amputated leg or empty sleeve were prominent symbols of Civil War disability and the sacrifice of Union soldiers, but Handley-Cousins moves past that more visible and often used disability to examine those injuries less visible and more hidden. In doing so she gives the reader a fuller and more human perspective on the lasting impact of the Civil War.

May 04, 2020

Interview with S. C. Gwynne, author of Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War

May 04, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

This is an interview with author S. C. Gwynne about his recent book Hymns of the Republic.

May 04, 2020

Review: Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War by S. C. Gwynne

May 04, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

Gwynne begins his narrative of the final year of the Civil War with the arrival of General Ulysses S. Grant to Washington, D.C. in March 1864 after his promotion to command of all Union armies and finishes with Clara Barton raising the flag over the new cemetery at Andersonville and the liberation of the slaves. These bookends demonstrate the broad scope of Gwynne’s telling of 1864-1865. Hymns of the Republic brings the readers through the military campaigns of 1864 and 1865 and weaves them together with the political events of that year, the impact of slavery on the war and the increasing role of USCT on the battlefields, and some of the impact of the fighting off the field. The strength of this book is Gwynne’s ability to craft a compelling narrative and engage the reader by building the stories of people and events.

November 25, 2019

Interview with Christian Keller, author of The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy

November 25, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

An interview with Christian Keller, author of The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy.

November 25, 2019

Review: The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy, by Christian Keller

November 25, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are perhaps two of the most iconic Confederate figures and their relationship has been extolled and studied from the Civil War years to the present. Culminating in the resounding victory at Chancellorsville, after which Jackson lost his life, the partnership between Jackson and Lee has become stuff of legend and myth, as well as historical significance. In The Great Partnership Christian Keller examines the relationship between Lee and Jackson during the military campaigns of 1862 and 1863, the contemporary reaction to Jackson’s death, and how Jackson’s absence affected Lee and the rest of the army during the Gettysburg campaign. Keller analyzes Lee and Jackson through the lens of command and leadership and carefully examines the historical record to pull the historical narrative out of the myth that has grown around these two men.

November 11, 2019

Review: Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin Levin.

November 11, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

This is a book very relevant to our times. Over the last few years Civil War historians have taken center stage in the contest over Confederate memory as communities have debated the place of Confederate flags, names, and monuments in our society. It is a work that speaks well to how history intersects with the society that is remembering it, how that changes over time and is shaped by current social forces, and the role of the historian in navigating historical memory and reality.

October 14, 2019

Review: Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt

October 14, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Keri Leigh Merritt’s Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South is a piece of game-changing scholarship that fundamentally alters how we understand the South, slavery, and the Civil War.

July 29, 2019

Review: The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean

July 29, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

By opening up the study of violence in the Civil War to non-traditional warfare and making comparisons to international events, The Calculus of Violence argues that the American Civil War was violent or restrained at different times and places during the war, that violence occurred along a spectrum over the course of the conflict but did not move in any linear progression. Sheehan-Dean also demonstrates that the Civil War, considered devastating to the United States at the time, did not compare to other uprisings and conflicts around the world that were far deadlier.

January 23, 2019

An interview with John Reeves, author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee

January 23, 2019/ Civil Discourse

An interview wit John Reeves, author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee.

January 21, 2019

Review: The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon by John Reeves

January 21, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Katie Thompson reviews John Reeves’ new work The Lost Indictment of Robert E Lee, a reevaluation of Lee, President Johnson, and Reconstruction through the lens of the legal case brought against the former Confederate General in the aftermath of the Civil War.

January 30, 2017

Book Review: The Politics of Mourning by Micki McElya

January 30, 2017/ Kathleen Thompson

On first glace, Micki McElya’s The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery appears to be a history of the creation and development of the United States’ most famous national cemetery. Very quickly, however, the reader realizes that this book is a much deeper analysis of how Arlington National Cemetery grew from a family home and plantation to the country’s most sacred burial grounds, one that considers race, gender, memory, and politics. As a result, this work illuminates not only the history of the National Cemetery, but the society in which it developed.

September 24, 2015

Is Military History Antiquarianism?: Alexander Rose’s Men of War

September 24, 2015/ Kathleen Thompson

In June, Alexander Rose (known for Washington’s Spies which AMC turned into its drama series Turn) released his newest book, Men of War: The American Soldier in Combat at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. A direct successor of John Keegan’s groundbreaking The Face of Battle, Rose seeks to create the American version by focusing on American troops in the three iconic battles listed in the title. Like Keegan, Rose wrote the book determined to find the common participant’s experience of the battles, instead of a traditional, top-down military history of the tactics and maneuverings of the armies.

In July, the New York Times published a highly critical review of Men of War written by Andrew J. Bacevich. Bacevich tears Rose apart, even stating that were was no creativity or genius in the work. While every book deserves some critiques, his review sparked discussion and debate among historians, prompting a response on H-War from Rose himself.

July 30, 2015

Book Review: Walt Whitman’s Drum Taps, The Complete 1865 Edition

July 30, 2015/ Kathleen Thompson

This new volume, published at the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the original publication of Drum-Taps, seeks to restore the original Civil War volume for readers. By reconstructing the original work, editor Lawrence Kramer, intends to recapture the original voice and intention of Whitman’s poetry. With an excellent introduction and annotations within the poems, this new edition is an excellent resource for those interested in poetry, American literature, or the Civil War.

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