June 04, 2015

The Unfortunate Case of David O. Dodd: "Arkansas' Boy Martyr" or Fool?

June 04, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

Young David O. Dodd hung on the end of a rope in the yards of his alma mater, St. Johns’ College. His death was not a merciful one, as the rope stretched and nearly five minutes passed before Dodd finally passed away. Convicted of spying on occupation forces in Little Rock, Arkansas, David had been sentenced to death by Union forces. The date was January 8, 1864, and David Dodd was only seventeen years old.

May 28, 2015

The Mayhem & Mystery of May 3: Joseph Hooker and the Battle of Chancellorsville

May 28, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

Complacency endangers history. The first plausible answer is not always the correct or solitary one, yet all too often we content ourselves with simplistic solutions to murky questions. Civil War historians have grappled with the Battle of Chancellorsville for nearly 150 years, and we (surprisingly) we still have very simple rejoinders for why Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac lost a struggle which they entered into with every advantage. Joe Hooker lost the Battle of Chancellorsville because of his own arrogance and errors. Joe Hooker lost Chancellorsville because he was no match for the Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Fighting Joe Hooker lost Chancellorsville simply because Fighting Joe Hooker lost confidence in himself.

In all likelihood, there are grains of truth to all these theories. Yet one should be careful of placing too much emphasis on anyone of them singularly. Instead, I wish to focus on a forgotten answer to the age old question of what went wrong for the Union army and Joe Hooker in May of 1863. On the morning of May 3rd, General Hooker was wounded, probably suffering a severe concussion received from Confederate artillery fire. This event, minimized and overlooked in many accounts of the battle, perhaps played a far greater role at Chancellorsville than history has given credit for.

May 21, 2015

Scapegoat or Scandal? J.E.B. Stuart and the Battle of Gettysburg

May 21, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

The June 12th, 1863 edition of the Richmond Examiner seethed. Just days before, Confederate cavalry had been caught completely by surprise in a daring strike by their Union counterparts at Brandy Station Virginia, and only after a hard fight with the help of Southern infantry was the enemy repulsed. “But this puffed up cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia,” the Examiner crowed, “has been twice, if not three times, surprised since the battles of December, and such repeated accidents can be regarded as nothing but the necessary consequences of negligence and bad management.” Such humiliations were unacceptable, and the Examiner concluded by charging that better organization, more discipline, and greater earnestness among “vain and weak-headed officers” was needed. Other Southern papers offered more of the same. The Richmond Sentinel called for greater “vigilance…from the Major General down to the picket.” The Charleston Mercury thought the affair an “ugly surprise,” while the Savannah Republican thought it all “very discreditable to somebody.” The commander of Confederate cavalry, James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart, had to be wondering if the Brandy Station fight wasn’t “discreditable” to him...

March 19, 2015

Patriotism in Print: The American Union, A Soldier's Wartime Paper

March 19, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

On the evening of July 3, 1861, a dozen Union soldiers (self -described “disciples of Faust”) broke into the offices of the of the Virginia Republican—a decidedly secessionist organ—and appropriated the newspaper’s office for their own use. The next morning—on the Fourth of July—the first issues of the American Union hit the streets of Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). The newspaper—composed and printed entirely by Union soldiers—enjoyed a brief existence in Martinsburg, lasting only as long as the Union troops occupied the town. Despite its brief existence, however, the paper sheds light onto the patriotism and zeal of Union soldiers during the war's opening months.

March 05, 2015

The Civil War Sesquicentennial: Commemoration in the Digital Age

March 05, 2015/ Rebekah Oakes

The American Civil War has left behind layers. When modern Americans visit battlefields, we see not only scars left between the years 1861 and 1865, but also select remnants of eras before and after. We see historic structures, which were the homes and businesses of people who occupied these now hallowed spaces long before the soldiers in blue and gray. Monuments, placed by veterans, heritage groups, and state and federal governments dot the landscape. Fortified earthworks, rebuilt fences, even trees and parking lots all tell complex stories of various attempts at remembering.

Which leads us to question, what has the 150th left behind?

February 16, 2015

The Long and Wild Ride of William Woods Averell

February 16, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

The young second lieutenant stepped out of General Winfield Scott Hancock’s office, having reported for duty and ready for his next assignment—whatever it may be. He didn’t have to wait long. That night, lounging in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in the heart of Washington, D.C., Second Lieutenant William Woods Averell was approached by several United States officers, including Majors Irwin McDowell and Fitz-John Porter. Invited to play a game of pool, William quickly learned that more than billiards was at hand. “While engaged in the game,” Averell recalled, “the Captain quietly asked me where I lodged and requested me to go to my room when the game should be finished and he would follow me.” Meeting surreptitiously in Averell’s hotel room, the officers relayed orders and forced the young officer to memorize them. Helpful suggestions were offered up by those familiar with the area in which Averell would soon be sojourning, and he prepared himself to set out the next day. It was the night of April 16, 1861, and William Woods Averell would soon be headed west across a disintegrating United States.

February 02, 2015

Not Who, But How: Civil War Loyalty

February 02, 2015/ Chuck Welsko

At the root of any civil war lays loyalty. Internal conflicts, fought over everything from politics to religion, produce deep divisions amongst a nation’s populace. America’s Civil War was no exception, as it witnessed divisions along geographic, social, political, and racial lines. Not only did the war divide former countrymen, but these divisions were something that Americans talked extensively about throughout the war. As historian William Blair recently noted, in the Civil War North it is almost impossible to find a newspaper that did not discuss treason or loyalty in nearly every issue. Along with extensive discussion about loyalty and treason in local newspapers, these conversations carried over into the personal correspondences of contemporary men and women. I, like many other historians, have studied the issue of wartime loyalty, yet my research takes that subject in a different direction.

January 26, 2015

“To think of the subject unmans me:” Grief and Soldiering Through the Experience of Henry Livermore Abbott

January 26, 2015/ Rebekah Oakes

On August 9, 1862, twenty year old Henry Livermore Abbott suffered a great personal tragedy; the death of his beloved older brother, Ned. Writing to his father weeks later, Abbott admitted, “I have had a good many letters about Ned but I can’t answer them. To think of the subject unmans me. I have to keep it from my thoughts.” He struggled to come to terms with this loss, as this was more than the death of a sibling. It was the loss of a comrade killed in battle.

January 14, 2015

Sesquicentennial Spotlight: The Fall of Fort Fisher and the Confederacy's Collapse

January 14, 2015/ Zac Cowsert

Dr. James A. Mowris surveyed the scene around him and could not help but be struck by its terrible grandeur. The forty year-old surgeon, under whose care were the veteran soldiers of the 117th New York Infantry, watched enraptured as thousands of Union troops disembarked onto the North Carolina coast. As the “downy web footed infantry” splashed ashore, a United States Navy fleet provided cover fire, bombarding Confederate-held Fort Fisher nearby. Fort Fisher protected the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, where for four years sleek Confederate blockade runners had slipped past Union warships and returned laden with much needed provisions, war materials, medicine, and more. By 1865, Wilmington was the Confederacy’s last remaining open port, a thin golden lifeline the connected the beleaguered South to the outside world and all its riches. Yet James A. Mowris and the nearly 9,000 other Union soldiers accompanying him had arrived to cut that invaluable lifeline. It was Friday the 13th, January, 1865, and the last great coastal campaign of the Civil War was underway.

January 08, 2015

18,000: A Comparison of May 3, 1863 and May 12, 1864

January 08, 2015/ Chuck Welsko

On the morning of May 3, 1863, Confederate soldiers slunk through the thick foliage that dominated the Wilderness around the Orange Turnpike and the tiny hamlet of Chancellorsville, Virginia. Around 5:30am, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, outnumbered, outgunned, and divided, unleashed a series of brutal frontal assaults on the Union positions around the Chancellor House. By the late morning, over a span of five hours, the Confederates had battered and broken the will of Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, compelling him to abandon the intersection near Chancellorsville and retreat back towards the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers.

January 05, 2015

"Coming to Terms with Civil War Military History": A Response

January 05, 2015/ Kathleen Thompson

The December issue of the Journal of the Civil War Era questions the state and direction of military history as a field. In their foreword to this special issue of the journal, historians Gary Gallagher and Kathryn Shively Meier offer their comments on military history and its important role in understanding and studying the Civil War. Many of their points deserve close attention, for they offer good suggestions for the direction of the field; other comments pointedly object to a rising set of scholarship which I argue follows the cycle of historical interpretation.

January 01, 2015

The Blue and Gray in Black and White: The Media’s Portrayal of Veterans during the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

January 01, 2015/ Rebekah Oakes

“There’s Still Life in the Old Boys Yet!,” a newspaper article emphatically exclaimed. An accompanying photograph portrayed Union veteran Tim Flaherty, well into his nineties, dancing a jig for his comrades. The year was 1938, the July heat sweltering, and the final grand reunion of the blue and gray well underway. Seventy-five years after the battle of Gettysburg, 1,845 veterans were able to reach the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania to once more commemorate the defining four years of their generation.

However, this reunion was different than the others.

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