July 06, 2020

Editorial: West Virginia Must Confront Its Confederate Monuments

July 06, 2020/ Zac Cowsert

In the autumn of 1910, a crowd of thousands gathered on the capitol grounds in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. The women and men, many of whom were Confederate veterans adorned once again in gray, had come from all over West Virginia to witness the dedication of a monument to Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson…Among the crowd, civilians and veterans alike wore “Lily White” campaign buttons. In the early 1900s, the Lily White campaign called for the disfranchisement of African American voters.

The Jim Crow politics intertwined with the history of Charleston’s Stonewall Jackson statue speak to the complicated and racist legacies Confederate monuments often hold. In 1910, West Virginians who turned out to honor Stonewall Jackson’s legacy naturally linked that cause with the disfranchisement of black voters. They understood the relationship between racism and Confederate iconography

June 15, 2020

Why I’m glad to see Lee go, and why I hope you will be too

June 15, 2020/ Becca Capobianco

A person would be hard pressed not to recognize how historic the last week and a half have been in the United States. This is a moment historians will look back on for many important reasons. Here in Virginia, news broke last Wednesday in the midst of massive Black Lives Matter protests that the Confederate statues on Monument Ave in Richmond would come down. While these announcements came from the mouths of the governor of Virginia and mayor of Richmond (Lee is owned by the state and the other monuments by the city), there is no mistaking that citizens’ collective action made this happen.

June 01, 2020

The Transformation of Gettysburg as a Commemorative Space, 1863-2020

June 01, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

Gettysburg is a field of monuments. Visitors to the battlefield today see hundreds of monuments marking the field, dedicated to units, individuals, and states. The creation of this commemorative landscape was a process over time, with the first monument placed in 1867 and the most recent in 2013. The first timelapse shows all of the Gettysburg monuments from 1863 to 2020. There are also timelapses for specifically Union and Confederate monuments.

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.

January 13, 2020

Historic Site Review: Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site

January 13, 2020/ Kathleen Thompson

While Perryville gets buried under more “famous” 1862 battles such as Antietam and Fredericksburg, it was the largest battle to occur in Kentucky and it was a key part of the fight to control the border states. About one-fifth of the combatants became casualties, making Perryville one of the bloodier battles of the war when looking at that ratio. It is a well-preserved and well-interpreted site and is well worth a visit.

December 24, 2019

Reporting from the SHA: Reconstruction, Race, and Policing

December 12, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Panelists were Elizabeth Barnes (University of Reading), “‘I Saw Their Stars’: Race, Rape, and Policing in the Reconstruction South;” Bradley D. Proctor (Evergreen State College), “Southern Policing and the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction;” and Samuel Watts (University of Melbourne), “Reconstruction Justice: Black Law Enforcement and the Politics of Space in Charleston and New Orleans.”

December 09, 2019

Reporting from the SHA: “(Re)Constructing an Empire: The South and the Nation after the Civil War”

December 09, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Panelists were Courtney Buchkoski (University of Oklahoma), “Lessons from Kansas: The New England Emigrant Aid Company and Imperial Projects in the Reconstruction Era;” Evan Rothera (Sam Houston State University), “The Complete Triumph of National Arms in the Cause of the Republican Constitutional Government: Anti-Imperialism and U.S./Mexico Relations;” and Cecily Zander (Pennsylvania State University), “The Great Task Remaining: The Reconstruction-Era Army in Texas.”

December 05, 2019

Reporting from the SHA: “Championing Justice and Rejecting White Supremacy: The Public Role of Southern Historians?”

December 05, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

This roundtable discussed the role of historians in countering bad historical interpretation and supporting a narrative that challenges white supremacy in our current society. Presiding was Redell Hearn of the Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College, and panelists were John Hayes (Augusta University), Robert Luckett (Jackson State University), Anthony Dixon (Bethune-Cookman University), and Rachel Stephens (University of Alabama).

December 02, 2019

Reporting from the SHA: “Sanitation, Statistics, and State-Building in Reconstruction America”

December 02, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

The panelists were Judith Giesberg (Villanova University), “‘A Muster Roll of the American People’: The Making of the 1870 Census and Postwar National Sovereignty”; Evan A. Kutzler (Georgia Southwestern State University), “‘Seeing like a State,’ Smelling like a Sanitarian: The Landscape of Health in Civil War Prisons”; and James Kopaczewski (Temple University), “‘The Seed of Robbery…Reaps Its Harvest of Blood’: Placing Grant’s Peace Policy within Reconstruction America.”

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 21, 2019

Reporting from the SHA: Arrivals and Departures: Unionists, Confederates, and Occupiers in the Deep South During the Civil War

November 21, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

Panelists were Clayton J. Butler (University of Virginia), “‘We Are True Blue’: White Unionist Regiments in the Deep South during the Civil War”; Stefanie Greenhill (University of Kentucky), “‘Yankee Skedadlers’: Unionism, Displacement, and Native Northerners who fled from the Confederacy”; and J. Matthew Ward (Louisiana State University), “‘To Rid the Community of All Suspicious Persons’: The Confederate Community in Civil War Louisiana.”

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 30, 2019

Editorial: Responding to Earl Hess’ “The Internet and Civil War Studies”; In Defense of Blogging

October 30, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

When the September 2019 issue of Civil War History released it immediately created a “twitterstorm” as historians reacted to Earl Hess’ article “The Internet and Civil War Studies,” at least certain parts of it. Hess’ article and several of the survey respondents were particularly negative against blogging. Respondents claimed that blogging took away from the real scholarship of the field and did not meet the standards of peer-reviewed books and articles. This negativity over blogs is partially in response to a challenge that I think everyone can agree on: the fact that anyone can post anything to the internet. Blogs, social media posts, and informational websites are problematic because it is easy to publish misinformation and much of the public do not have the skills to differentiate between scholarly work and incorrect information. This might be the biggest challenge to historians and the most negative impact of the internet on the field.

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.

September 30, 2019

2019: 400 Years of American Slavery

September 30, 2019/ Kathleen Thompson

This year the United States is marking a sometimes overlooked, but historically significant anniversary. 2019 marks 400 years since the first slaves were brought to what would become the United States of America (aka the British colonies). The 1619 date is when the first African slaves arrived in the British colonies, captured from a Portuguese slave ship and brought to Jamestown by English privateers.

September 19, 2019

The Guerilla: A Confederate Occupation Newspaper

September 19, 2019/ Zac Cowsert

In September, 1862, the Confederacy invaded the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia. The Confederate army of some 5,000—including many Virginians who hailed from the western region of their state—fought a series of engagements with their Union foes, culminating in the capture of Charleston.

The fall of Charleston provided an opportunity for pro-Confederate sentiments to reemerge in the public sphere. Within two weeks of the Rebel army’s appearance, the pro-Confederate newspaper The Guerilla began circulating the streets of the town. Published daily by “Associate Printers” for the duration of the short-lived Confederate occupation, the two extant copies of the Guerilla shed light on the nature of the Civil War in West Virginia and the short-lived Confederate occupation of the Kanawha River Valley…

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