"Arkansas Would Ever Remain Under the Eagle": A Unionist’s View on Secession

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"Arkansas Would Ever Remain Under the Eagle": A Unionist’s View on Secession

In May 1861, a “Western Arkansian” penned a passionate defense of Arkansas Unionism: “The people of western Arkansas, the true people, the bone and sinew of our land, are yet, in sentiment and at heart, for the preservation of our once glorious union.” By exploring the circumstances of Arkansas’s secession, we can better understand the anger of this unknown Unionist and the riven reality of Arkansas’s entry into the Confederacy.

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The Plight and Flight of Unionist Edwin R. McGuire: Divided Loyalties and Violence in Independence County, Arkansas

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The Plight and Flight of Unionist Edwin R. McGuire: Divided Loyalties and Violence in Independence County, Arkansas

On Friday, December 4, 1863, Missouri Corporal John Winterbottom scribbled in his diary that just days before, “20 Rebels attacked the house of a rich unionist 10 miles West of here, by the name of McGuire. He killed two of the Rebels and then made his escape with a slight wound. The Rebels then burned his house, which was the finest in the country.”

The plight of Edwin McGuire and his family owed itself to the confused communal politics and military landscape of Independence County, Arkansas during the American Civil War…

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Chasing Bushwhackers: The 3rd Missouri Cavalry and a "Scout to Hot Spring County," Arkansas

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Chasing Bushwhackers: The 3rd Missouri Cavalry and a "Scout to Hot Spring County," Arkansas

On February 8, 1864, blue-clad troopers of the 3rd Missouri Cavalry rode southwest out of Little Rock, Arkansas on a “scout to Hot Spring County…for the purpose,” explained Private Alexander W.M. Petty, “of driving out a company of bushwhackers reported to be committing all kinds of depredations there upon the persons and property of the loyal citizens.” Over the next week, the Federals journeyed over 200 miles, clashed repeatedly with Rebel guerrillas, suffered casualties, and took enemy prisoners. Their scout through Central Arkansas offers a window in the harsh realities of guerrilla warfare and the difficulties that faced U.S. soldiers in attempting to suppress it.

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"Grant is beating his head against a wall": Lt. Col Walter Taylor on the Overland Campaign

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"Grant is beating his head against a wall": Lt. Col Walter Taylor on the Overland Campaign

Lieutenant Colonel Walter Taylor served as General Robert E. Lee’s aide-de-camp throughout the Civil War. In the context of the critical 1864 Overland Campaign, Taylor’s writings offer an invaluable window into morale and thoughts of the Confederate high command throughout the summer. They likewise reveal Confederates’ ultimate faith in Robert E. Lee and disdain for Ulysses S. Grant.

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The Industrial Confederacy: The Augusta Powder Works

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The Industrial Confederacy: The Augusta Powder Works

The Augusta Powder Works operated until April 1865 when the Confederacy surrendered and the Civil War ended. During operation the works manufactured about 7,000 pounds of gunpowder a day for a total of 2,750,000 pounds produced during the war. The Confederate Powder Works was the only permanent, industrial complex constructed by the Confederate States of America.

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“The ‘Milk and Water’ Policy…Is To Be Abandoned”: The Battle of Lewisburg, the Yankee, and Hard War in Western Virginia

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“The ‘Milk and Water’ Policy…Is To Be Abandoned”: The Battle of Lewisburg, the Yankee, and Hard War in Western Virginia

In late May 1862, United States soldiers of the 44th Ohio Infantry occupied the abandoned offices of the Greenbrier Weekly Era in Lewisburg, western Virginia. Having recently emerged victorious in the Battle of Lewisburg and perhaps faced with the boredom of occupation, the soldiers set about publishing a newspaper they christened the Yankee. Though the Federals only managed to print a single issue before evacuating the town, the Yankee’s four pages reveal the hardening attitudes of Federal soldiers and the arrival of “hard war” in 1862 western Virginia.

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Retreat from Antietam: The Battle of Shepherdstown, September 19-20, 1862

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Retreat from Antietam: The Battle of Shepherdstown, September 19-20, 1862

Following Lee’s retreat from Antietam proved deadly for the Union 5th Corps at the Battle of Shepherdstown. One of West Virginia’s largest Civil War battles, it was largely inconsequential in terms of stalling Lee’s retreat. However, it was an unforgettable event for the men who fought it.

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

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

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.

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Private Uriah "Duck" Alley: The Story of West Virginia's Last Civil War Veteran

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Private Uriah "Duck" Alley: The Story of West Virginia's Last Civil War Veteran

In May 1944, four men stood together for a photograph in the small town of Cameron, West Virginia. On the far left stood Donald Solomon Redd, a veteran of World War II. On his right stood Charles Everett Anderson, a WWI veteran, and Robert Calvin Yoho, who had fought in the Spanish American War. And on the far right side of the remarkable photograph stood 95-year-old Uriah Talmage Alley, affectionately known to many as “Uncle Duck.” Uriah Alley was West Virginia’s last Civil War veteran. The photograph ran in the May 22, 1944 issue of Life magazine, and as the four generational photograph of American veterans suggests, Uriah Alley’s life proved quite a story…

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Black Woman Rising: Susie King Taylor—A Righteous Voice of the Civil War Era

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Black Woman Rising: Susie King Taylor—A Righteous Voice of the Civil War Era

In the Civil War and post-Civil War eras, decades in which there were precious few voices of Black women, that of Susie King Taylor’s was especially eloquent, and is especially prescient today in the era of Black Lives Matter. Her legacy rests on a remarkable work, A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs. A laundress for the legendary 1st South Carolina Regiment—the first Black Civil War regiment formed to fight for the Union cause—she found herself at the epicenter of a profound revolution in the history of United States race relations, one that she describes with clarity and conviction.

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Interview with Ron Roth, author of The Civil War in the South Carolina Lowcountry: How a Confederate Artillery Battery and a Black Union Regiment Defined the War

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Interview with Ron Roth, author of The Civil War in the South Carolina Lowcountry: How a Confederate Artillery Battery and a Black Union Regiment Defined the War

This is an interview with Ron Roth about his recent book, The Civil War in the South Carolina Lowcountry: How a Confederate Artillery Battery and a Black Union Regiment Defined the War.

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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.

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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.

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.

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Debating Confederate Monuments at the Federal Level

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Debating Confederate Monuments at the Federal Level

The conversation over Civil War memory and Confederate monuments is rapidly evolving this year. While many states and communities are making decisions about local Confederate monuments, there has been a lot of discussion recently about proposed legislation now being considered in Congress. H.R. 7608 “State, Foreign Operations, Agriculture, Rural Development, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2021” contains three sections which deal with Confederate flags, Confederate Monuments, and Confederate names.

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The Newest Evolution of the Civil War Video Game

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The Newest Evolution of the Civil War Video Game

For players of traditional Civil War wargames, the hexagonal battle map where they can move carefully researched units to gain tactical objectives will be very familiar. Now, however, a new game allows you to be in the center of the action. A Civil War first person shooter, online multiplayer game is now on the gaming scene.

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

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

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.

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