Off Topic---The Last Stands of Custer and Sitting Bull

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking Press, 466 pages, 18 maps, 64 b/w images, 11 color images, notes, bibliography, two appendices, 2010, $30.00 hardcover, $18.00 paperback.

Nathaniel Philbrick handled the histories Mayflower and the whaleship Essex exceptionally well. His consideration of Custer, Sitting Bull and their greatest battle is a fine example of good storytelling with primary sources, archaeology and artifacts. His presentation of the Custer legend and the development of the Little Big Horn story in popular culture is clear and concise. The films They Died With Their Boots On and Little Big Man are set within the Custer and Native American historiographies. Philbrick states that Custer is “more a cultural lightning rod than a historical figure, an icon instead of a man.”

The United State centennial celebration, the Democratic national presidential convention, and army politics are several of the many issues for George Armstrong Custer. The facets of Custer the man include glory seeking, charisma, the ability to deny obvious realities, personal arrogance, and a cheating heart. Sitting Bull is shown to be a prophet, warrior and chief. Philbrick states that Sitting Bull was "convinced that he alone had his people’s welfare in view, a conviction that inevitably exasperated those Lakota attempting to meet the challenges of reservation life in their own way."

Regarding his description of the Battle of The Little Big Horn and Indians' two day siege of Reno's troops, Philbrick is cautious in his claims. He relies on the army's inquiry testimony, survivors accounts, Native American accounts, Libby Custer's promotional efforts and modern archaeology to reveal the discrepancies of past narratives. Multiple points of view are presented in his narrative of specific events such as Custer's wounding and later death, Benteen's and Reno's character and the Native Americans attitudes toward their own chances of self defense. Overall, Philbrick's account is judicious in the weight he gives terrain and weather, weapons and logistics, and behaviors during crises. Compellingly written, informative and fair, Philbrick's The Last Stand is an engaging history book.

News---Call For Research On Confederate Soldiers' Wartime and Postwar Writings

Robert Gudmestad, Associate Professor at Colorado State University has an invitation for those doing research on Confederate wartime writings and Confederate postwar writings. Here is his offer that was sent to H-War@h-net.msu.edu, a listserv.

Hello,

I am interested in putting together a session for the 2013 OAH Annual Meeting in San Francisco. My paper would compare the material in wartime letters/diaries of Confederate soldiers with the material in post-war memoirs/reminiscences. A panel could go any number of directions, but might focus on wartime military experience, Civil War memory, or even compare various wars. The deadline for proposals to the OAH is February 15, 2012 and you may find specific information at http://annualmeeting.oah.org/call_for_proposals/2013_sanfrancisco.html

If you are interested in participating, please send a 250 word prospectus by January 31, 2012 to me at robert.gudmestad@colostate.edu

Thanks,
Robert Gudmestad
Associate Professor
Colorado State University
970.491.6050

Image Source: Civil War Librarian

New and Noteworthy---Bloody Sabbath Before Antietam: How Did The Confederates Remember The Battle of South Mountain?

An Interview with Brian Matthew Jordan, author of Unholy Sabbath: The History of South Mountain in Memory and History, September 14, 1862

Unholy Sabbath is the first, complete, full-length published study on the South Mountain battle (September 14, 1862). Brian Jordan recently discussed his book with Lindy Gervin of Savas Beatie LLC.

LG: The Confederates remembered the battle differently, didn’t they?

BMJ: Yes they did. The real meaning and import of the fighting suffered from the active postwar revisionism of its Rebel participants. Confederates had little desire to remember a battle in which the Federals wrestled away the higher, better ground from an army that had never been driven from the field, and in doing so, score an unprecedented victory that changed the course of the entire campaign by disrupting General Lee’s plans completely. There was much more romance in the story of an exhausted, barefoot army boldly striking north across the Potomac River, fighting it out against a larger and better equipped Army of the Potomac at Sharpsburg, standing on the field all the following day, and then making an organized (but not demoralized) retreat back to Virginia. South Mountain was a problem for the Confederates to overcome historically speaking, but the remedy was ready-made in the Lost Cause mythology, which I explain in the last chapter of Unholy Sabbath.

CWL: The entire interview is found at Libri Novus, the newsletter of Savas Beattie Publishing.

News---Gettysburg's Herr's Woods, Rebel Refuge, Receives a Preservation Cut

Battlefield Woodlot To Undergo 'Health Cuts': Effort Is Intended To Promote Tree Growth In The Historic Woods, Tim Prudente, The Evening Sun, January 5, 2012.

This is the view of Herr's woodlot as photographed by William Tipton in 1880 from the cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. The Katalysine Springs Hotel is the large building in the distance and the woods are just to the left, beyond the hotel grounds. A woodlot that sheltered Confederate soldiers on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg will undergo "health cuts" by the National Park Service.

Some of the trees will be strategically cut down to promote a balance of younger, middle aged and older trees, according to the Park Service. Known as Herr's woodlot, this 42-acre site is in the northwest section of Gettysburg National Military Park, just west of Country Club Lane. "We wanted to establish an even mix so the trees will mature and it will remain a woodlot 50 or 100 years from now," park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said. "It's sort of banking for the woodlot's future."

The clearing effort will cost the park $600 per acre, for a total of $25,158, and Pennington Tree Expert Service of Orrtanna was contracted to perform the work. Felled trees will be left on the forest floor to allow them to decompose, so that nutrients are returned to the soils and to provide habitat.

The park's tree-clearing efforts -- though at times controversial -- seek to restore the landscape to the way it looked in 1863. A six-acre parcel of densely wooded land near Culp's Hill, west of Spangler's Spring, was cleared in 2009 to allow an open view to Baltimore Pike and beyond. The park has also planted apple trees and natural hardwoods to restore acres of orchards and woodlands present during the battle. Still, clearing practices have drawn criticism from some neighbors and visitors who feel a national park should be interested most in preserving nature.

Herr's woodlot saw fighting during the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The woods sheltered refugees of Brig. Gen. James Archer's brigade after they had been repulsed and thrown back in disorder by Gen. Solomon Meredith's Union troops, known as the "Iron Brigade. Within an hour, North Carolinians under Brig. James J. Pettigrew deployed in battle line in these woods and sent forward a skirmish line to contest ownership of the Harman Farm with skirmishers from Meredith's brigade.

The southerners were subjected to small arms fire and the occasional artillery shelling before moving from the woods to attack the Union troops arrayed along McPherson's Ridge east of Willoughby Run. "Most likely the saddest use of the woods came soon after when wounded Confederates stumbled their way into the shade of the trees where they waited for ambulances to remove them from the battlefield," said John Heiser, historian for Gettysburg National Military Park.

Text and Image Source: The Evening Sun

Caption: This is the view of Herr's woodlot as photographed by William Tipton in 1880 from the cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. The Katalysine Springs Hotel is the large building in the distance and the woods are just to the left, beyond the hotel grounds.

News---Will The USCT Be Honored With A Monument at Petersburg NMP's Crater? Isn't There Already One There?

Gingrich Seeks Monument For Black Union soldiers At Battlefield, Brian J. Couturier, Progress-Index, December 29, 2011.

Leading Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is behind an effort to have African-American Union soldiers recognized for their role in the Civil War Battle of the Crater. Gingrich, along with co-author William R. Forstchen, wrote The Battle of the Crater: A Novel that was released in November and recounts the role that United States Colored Troops played during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864. In the acknowledgments and afterward of the book, the authors call for a monument to be placed in Petersburg National Battlefield at the site of the Battle of the Crater in recognition of "forgotten" African-American soldiers "who, on a terrible day in July 1864, did indeed offer up the 'last full measure of devotion.'"

The idea of a monument for United States Colored Troops has the initial support of National Park Service officials who oversee the battlefield. "We are definitely open to putting something near the Crater to let people know about the role of United States Colored Troops," said Petersburg National Battlefield Superintendent Lewis Rogers. "Today as we approach the 150th anniversary of the battle, there is still no formal recognition of the role played by these soldiers in that fight," Gingrich and Forstchen wrote.

About a year ago, battlefield officials were in discussions with representatives of Gingrich to discuss how to place a monument at the Battle of the Crater site, Rogers said. One of the main contacts on the effort was Kathy Lubbers, who is Gingrich's literary agent and his daughter. "They were pushing us hard for five to six months," Rogers said.

However, the effort has stalled since Gingrich, who could not be reached for comment, announced his presidential bid. Gingrich and Forstchen wrote that Petersburg National Battlefield officials "are delighted to work with us to fulfill a long-held dream of ours to see a monument placed on the site of the Crater in memory of the thousands of USCTs who fought on that field. As far as we can have been able to find out, not a single battlefield monument to any USCT regiment exists on ground they fought for. We hope to rectify this long-overdue honor and acknowledgment." While there is no monument for a specific USCT regiment, there is a monument at Petersburg National Battlefield that recognizes United States Colored Troops on ground they fought on. The monument was placed on the Petersburg battlefield in the summer of 1993 and is inscribed: "In memory of the valorous service of regiments and companies of the U.S. Colored Troops, Army of the James and Army of the Potomac, Siege of Petersburg 1864-65."

Nearby there are informational signs that describe fighting by African-American troops on June 15, 1864, where they "recorded their first major success of the war in Virginia." During two hours of fighting, African-American troops routed Confederate defenders and captured dozens of Confederates and six cannons on the Dimmock Line. The current proposal is to move the existing USCT monument to the Battle of the Crater site and reface it to refer to specific units that fought in that battle. The monument could then be rededicated. The battlefield's current management plan recommends no further monuments at the park. "We don't want a forest of monuments," Rogers said.

Also, the National Park Service is also considering a trail near the Battle of the Crater site that would have waysides or informational placards that would teach visitors about the battle and the role of African-Americans in that particular fight and in the overall war. Park officials say they have also been approached by the African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C., about the effort for a monument.

However, the National Park Service would have to find money for such an effort and that could be a challenge in the current political climate with Congress cutting the federal budget. The effort has particular meaning for Rogers. "The USCTs are one of the lesser know things known in the Civil War," he said. "I'm an African-American and I didn't have much of an interest in the Civil War because I didn't know of the contributions of African-Americans."

Rogers said many African-Americans are not aware of the major contributions of African-American soldiers during the Civil War and typically think of the period as it relates to slavery. During the war, a total of nearly 187,000 African-Americans served in the Union army. Of those, the greatest concentration of U.S. Colored Troops was at Petersburg. During the Petersburg Campaign, USCTs would participate in six major engagements and earn 15 of the 16 total Medals of Honor awarded to African-American http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsoldiers in the Civil War. More than 4,000 United States Colored Troops fought in the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, and represents one of the largest concentrations of African-American soldiers on any battlefield during the war. As a result of the battle, 1,327 soldiers were killed, wounded, missing or captured in the fighting.

The Battle of the Crater stemmed from a Union effort to dig a tunnel packed with gunpowder under Confederate fortifications and blow a hole in the defensive lines around Petersburg. United States Colored Troops were trained to be the first units to charge the Confederate works after the blast, but a last-minute order placed untrained white Union soldiers in the front of the attack. As a result, the attack bogged down and many Union soldiers charged into the crater rather than going around it. The ensuing battle was a bloody defeat for the
Union.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Text and Top Image Source: Progress-Index, December 29, 2011.

CWL: There is a USCT monument at Petersburg. Here is the Petersburg NMP virtual cache site of the memorial.

News---Army Of Northern Virginia Graves Found At Bristoe Station

Tenth Alabama Regiment Cemetery In Virginia Uncovered 150 Years Later, Mary Orndorff, The Birmingham News, December 29, 2011.

About an hour west of Washington, D.C., on a scrubby plot of land overrun by pricker bushes and in the shadow of dense modern townhouse developments, an Alabama cemetery was born. Civil War preservationists with no personal links to Alabama admit to muttering a "Roll Tide" or two as they walked across the newly cleared land, the final resting place of between 75 and 90 soldiers with the Tenth Alabama Infantry Regiment. Historicl documents and archeological study pinpointed the burial grounds, a desperate place in the late summer of 1861, when rampant disease claimed up to five or six Confederate soldiers a day at what was known as Camp Jones.

There are other signs. The area is devoid of stones, except for five large rocks dug deeply into the dirt, each cut on at least one side by a man-made tool. And the area is pockmarked by man-sized depressions, not in rows, but haphazardly, as if soldiers were buried right where they died. That level of detail, however, was unknown until Dec. 3, when a crew of about 40 volunteers, led by a 16-year-old Eagle Scout candidate, descended with chain saws and strong arms and gave sunlight and a defined boundary to the cemetery. "It's one of the better Eagle Scout projects I've seen," said Rob Orrison, site manager with the Prince William County Department of Public Works Historic Preservation Division. "I was blown away by the number of people that came out."

The Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park is a new, lesser-known addition to an area rich with Civil War historical sites; Manassas National Battlefield Park is about three miles away as the crow flies.

The Bristoe Station park opened in 2007 after a developer, Prince William County officials and the Civil War Preservation Trust reached a compromise. The massive farm property is to be developed for residential and office space, save for a 133-acre passive park marking the Battle of Kettle Run in 1862 and the Battle of Bristoe Station in 1863. The private owner who sold the land to the developer had farmed for decades around the unmarked cemetery, indicating he knew its historic value. But it was overgrown and inaccessible. So when Dane Smith of nearby Nokesville called up looking for an Eagle Scout project, park officials recommended clearing the cemetery.

Smith's father, Brian, recalls hearing the details about the project. "When I heard it was an Alabama regiment, I was like, 'Great, I work for an Alabama bank,'" Brian Smith said on his second straight chilly December Saturday at the site. He is the lead Washington lobbyist for Regions Financial Corp.

The volunteers, under Dane Smith's direction, cleared the underbrush, cut down trees, put up a split-rail fence and built a bridge over a creek. Their work was approved by Orrison, who told them which trees to remove and how not to disturb the ground. Tree stumps were left intact. The stone grave markers -- three of which Orrison knew were there plus two others uncovered during the work -- were marked with bright pink tape. The park had earlier used radar to detect the disturbed dirt of the grave sites so they could estimate a cemetery boundary. Soldiers marching by a nearby road in 1862 wrote of the row of cedar trees leading toward a clearing with wooden grave markers engraved with the names of the dead. Several years later, someone else wrote that the markers were in stone. "Who knows when they were changed?" Orrison said.

Old pictures indicate that some of the stones were engraved, but they are missing. Eventually, mulch will be placed on the path to the cemetery, and Orrison wants to raise the money to pay for a memorial plaque at the entrance, listing names of the 40 or so soldiers known to be buried there. He's hoping to have that work done in time for a September dedication ceremony. The grave sites will be mapped and the site open to tourists. Park officials hope that by registering the cemetery, genealogists and historians will help them fill in the blanks of who else might be buried there, and descendants will visit their ancestors. "It is a little sad that we won't be able to tell them exactly where they are," Orrison said.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

The Tenth Alabama Infantry Regiment included companies from Jefferson, Shelby, Calhoun, Talladega, St. Clair, Calhoun, DeKalb and Talladega counties, according to the Alabama Department of Archives and History. A second overgrown plot across the pasture is believed to be where Mississippi soldiers are buried.


Text And Image Source: Birmingham [Alabama} News, December 29, 2011.

News---St. Nick Visits Military Camps In The Republic of Suffering

Cartoonist Nast Drew One Of First Santa Claus Images In A Time Of Political Turmoil, A Holiday Hero, Frank Reeves, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 26, 2011.

By Christmas 1862, more than 200,000 Union soldiers and sailors had been killed, wounded, died of disease or gone missing since the Civil War began 20 months earlier. So staggering were the casualties on both sides that the United States had become, in the words of one modern historian, a "republic of suffering." It was against this background of death and despair that Harper's Weekly -- then one of the country's leading illustrated newspapers -- published its annual Christmas issue, dated Jan. 3, 1863. The magazine had well more than 150,000 subscribers who paid $2.50 a year for its fare of news articles, short stories by authors such as Dickens, and its wood engravings of the war.

To illustrate the cover of its holiday issue, Harper's selected Thomas Nast, a 22-year-old artist who had been on the magazine's payroll for only a few months. He was one of a cadre of artists, including Winslow Homer, hired by Harper's to cover the war. For Nast, it was the beginning of a 25-year career with Harper's that would see him rise to a level of fame and fortune such as no other American cartoonist before him had ever achieved, said V.C. Rogers, a North Carolina-based freelance illustrator and unofficial historian of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

Harper's would be the forum through which Nast would excoriate Southern sympathizers, the Ku Klux Klan, corrupt politicians and, perhaps most regrettably to many today, Irish immigrants and their Catholic faith. Even though he opposed slavery and would support the cause of black rights during Reconstruction, his depictions of African-Americans have often been criticized as racist.

During his political crusades, he created some of the nation's most enduring caricatures and symbols, such as the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party. Nast's drawing of a fat man, with an ample paunch and a money bag for a head, would become synonymous with the corrupt politician and, later, the greedy plutocrat. He would popularize the use of the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party, although he wasn't the first cartoonists to do so, Mr. Rogers said.

And, yes, Virginia, it is to Nast that we owe our modern conception of Santa Claus -- a composite drawn from German folklore and "St. Nick" in Clement Moore's " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas." The jolly old elf, sitting in his reindeer-drawn sleigh, would make one of his first public debuts on the Harper's cover for Jan. 3, 1863. "Nast was with only slight exaggeration the father of us all," Mr. Rogers said, referring to the generations of American political and editorial cartoonists who have followed in his wake.

In the 1860s, Nast was a staunch Union man. Family lore has it that he considered joining the Union army after President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. But family and friends convinced the young man that he could do more to support the Union cause by using his paint brushes, pens and sketch books than by carrying a rifle. Their confidence in him was amply rewarded by the numerous sketches he drew from life about the war and the Union army. So effective were Nast's illustrations, which became the basis of some of Harper's most popular wood engravings, that Lincoln reportedly said Nast "is our best recruiting poster."

One of Nast's early masterpieces was "Christmas in Camp," the wood engraving for the cover of Harper's Jan. 3, 1863, issue. In the voice of a Victorian father, the editors provided an explanation of the drawing for their young readers: "Children, you mustn't think that Santa Claus comes to you alone." Soldiers bundled against the cold stand in the snow as they welcome Santa. "See how the soldiers have decorated their encampment in honor of the day. They have erected a triumphal arch to show how welcome [Santa] is," the editorial note continues.

Some of the men eagerly open the gifts Santa has brought them. One soldier pulls out a sock -- a Christmas stocking containing holiday goodies. In the foreground, a youngster, described as a drummer-boy, plays with a jack-in-a-box while his comrade looks on. Drummer-boys were popular subjects with Civil-War era artists. The boys in Nast's drawing look to be eight or nine years old. In reality, drummer boys were usually older. Children under 16 would probably not have lasted very long in an Army camp. The threat of disease and the rigors of infantry life would have killed them off quickly, said Michael Kraus, historian and curator at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum in Oakland. (The museum recently acquired original editions of Harper's, many of which contain Nast's illustrations.)

In the background (get your magnifying glasses at this point), soldiers "are playing football, getting a fine appetite for their Christmas dinner which is cooking on the fire." Despite the attempt by Nast and his editors to invoke holiday cheer, the grim business of war is an ever-present reality even in this fanciful scene. Nast's Santa was hardly a neutral figure in the conflict that was tearing the country apart. This Santa, wearing a star-spangled jacket and striped pants, is a staunch Union man like Nast himself. He wouldn't have been welcome around a Confederate campfire.

On first glance, Santa appears to be playing with a puppet for the innocent amusement of the men. Instead, as the edtiors tell us, Santa "is entertaining the soldiers by showing them Jeff Davis's future. He is tying a cord pretty tightly around his neck and Jeff seems to be kicking very much at such a fate." Jefferson Davis was, of course, the hated president of the Confederacy, often depicted in Harper's and other Northern newspapers as a rat.

The impact of the war did not fall on soldiers and sailors alone but also on their families at home. At war's end, many women and children would be widows and orphans. Then, as now, military families felt the grief of separation most acutely at Christmas. Nast tapped into this feeling in a double-page wood engraving entitled "Christmas Eve." It, too, appeared in Harper's Jan. 3, 1863, edition.

On the left panel, children are shown asleep in their bed while their mother kneels in prayer. We can imagine she is thinking about her soldier-husband at an Army camp far away. On the right panel, a soldier sits, bayonet in hand, while reading a letter from home. A small fire burns beside him to keep him warm. Nast surrounded these larger panels with contrasting scenes of holiday joy and the business of war. In the foreground, he drew a picture of four soldiers' graves. Even amid holiday joy, the war dead were not to be forgotten. "Letters from every corner of the Union poured into Harper's weekly with messages of thanks for that inspired picture," Thomas Nast St. Hill, the illustrator's grandson, wrote in an account that was published in 1971 of the elder Nast's Christmas illustrations.

"A colonel wrote the weekly to say that he had received his copy of the magazine and had unfolded it by the light of his campfire," St. Hill continued. " He was so touched by Nast's drawing that tears had fallen on the page. 'It was only a picture,' he wrote, 'but I couldn't help it.' " For the rest of his career, Nast would continue making pictures that touched the emotions of his audience. In the years immediately after the Civil War, he would play a pivotal role in bringing down New York City's corrupt Democratic political machine headed by William M. Tweed, the infamous "Boss Tweed." "I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don't know how to read," the boss reportedly said. "But they can't help seeing those damned pictures."

Nast died in 1902 of yellow fever while serving as a U.S. consul in Ecuador. But his place was already secure in the pantheon of political cartoonists. "We constantly refer back to Thomas Nast. We all take a piece of his legacy," said Rob Rogers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's editorial cartoonist. "His main influence on us has been the idea that a cartoonist could use his art to combat evil."

Text and Image Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

News---States' Sesquicentennial Efforts Uncover Civil War Antiques

Civil War's 150th Stirs A Trove Of Memories, Steve Szkotak, Associated Press, December 26, 2011.

A diary with a lifesaving bullet hole from Gettysburg. An intricate valentine crafted by a Confederate soldier for the wife he would never see again. A slave's desperate escape to freedom. From New England to the South, state archivists are using the sesquicentennial of the Civil War to collect a trove of wartime letters, diaries, documents and mementos that have gathered dust in attics and basements.

This still-unfolding call will help states expand existing collections on the Civil War and provide new insights into an era that violently wrenched a nation apart, leaving 600,000 dead. Much of the Civil War has been told primarily through the eyes of battlefield and political leaders. These documents are adding a new narrative to the Civil War's story, offering insights into the home front and of soldiers, their spouses and African-Americans, often in their own words.

Historians, who will have access to the centralized digital collections, are excited by the prospect of what the states are finding and will ultimately share. "I think now we're broadening the story to include everybody—not just a soldier, not a general or a president—just somebody who found themselves swept up in the biggest drama in American life," says University of Richmond President Edward Ayers, a Civil War expert. "That's what's so cool."

In Virginia, archivists have borrowed from the popular PBS series "Antiques Roadshow," traveling weekends throughout the state and asking residents to share family collections, which are scanned and added to the already vast collection at the Library of Virginia. Started in September 2010, the Civil War 150 Legacy Project has collected 25,000 images. Virginians have been generous, knowing they can share their long-held mementos without surrendering them, said Laura Drake Davis and Renee Savits, the Library of Virginia archivists who have divided the state for their on-the-road collection campaign. "They think someone can learn from them rather than just sitting in their cupboards," Savits said of the family possessions. "And they're proud to share their family's experience."

Patricia Bangs heeded the call when a friend told her about the project. She had inherited 400 letters passed down through the years between Cecil A. Burleigh to his wife, Caroline, in Mount Carmel, Conn. "I felt this would be useful to researchers, a treasure to somebody," said Bangs, who works for the library system in Fairfax, Va. In one letter, she said, Cecil writes of Union troops traveling from Connecticut to Washington, crowds cheering them along the way.

The letters, like many collected by archivists, are difficult to read. Many are spelled phonetically, and the penmanship can be hard to decipher. Typically, they tell of the story of the home front and its daily deprivations. Researchers in Tennessee, a battleground state in the war, teamed up with Virginia archivists earlier this year in the border town of Bristol. Both states have seen their share of bullets, swords and other military hardware. "We have grandmothers dragging in swords and muskets," said Chuck Sherrill, Tennessee state librarian and archivist.

Documents are fished from attics, pressed between the pages of family bibles and stored in trunks. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and many other states have similar programs, or at least are trying to gather materials for use by scholars and regular folks. Pennsylvania has been especially ambitious in adding new layers to the state's deep links to the Civil War, including a traveling exhibit called the "PA Civil War Road Show." The 53-foot-long museum on wheels also invites visitors to share their ancestors' stories and artifacts in a recording booth. The remembrances will be uploaded on the website PACivilWar150.com. One visitor brought in a bugle that an ancestor was blowing when he was fatally shot at the Battle of Gettysburg. "He wouldn't let anyone touch it," said John Seitter, project manager of the Pennsylvania Civil War project. "It shows you how deeply these artifacts connect people with the Civil War. There's some serious memorialization going on here."

The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University is also amid a survey of all the public archives in the state to produce a searchable database. The ambitious project aims to shed light on small, underfunded public historical societies where records are often "hidden from historians and scholars" and not used, Matt Isham of the "The People's Contest: A Civil War Era Digital Archiving Project" wrote in an email.

Some people are even donating items unsolicited. In Maine, for instance, some residents have submitted letters from ancestors who served in the war, but the sesquicentennial also saw an unusual submission from James R. Hosmer. Hosmer's mother, Mary Ruth Hosmer, died in 2005. He was going through her possessions in Kittery, Maine, when he made a discovery: dozens of carte de viste, small photographs carried by some Union troops, an early version of dog tags. They were stored in a suitcase in an attic. "The state archives was quite thrilled with it," Hosmer said.

The Virginia archivists said they were especially pleased by a submission from the family of an escaped slave who wrote of his love for a woman named Julia at the same time he fled his master for an outpost on the Chesapeake Bay, where Union ships were known to pick up men seeking their freedom. David Harris found his freedom in 1861, serving as a cook for Union troops. "I love to read the sweet letters that come from you, dear love," David Harris wrote to Julia. "I cannot eat for thought of you."

A valentine made of pink paper and shaped into a heart using an intricate basket weave was addressed to Confederate soldier Robert H. King to his wife Louiza. He was killed in 1862. As for the diary tucked in a soldier's breast pocket that shielded him from death at Gettysburg, "He kept using the diary," Savits said. "He just wrote around it."

Text and Image Source: Civil War's 150th Stirs

Newsstand---- The Atlantic Commemorates Civil War With Greatest Hits Issue

The Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857, was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. Quickly achieving a national reputation, it became important by recognizing and publishing new writers and poets, and encouraging major careers by publishing leading writers' commentary on abolition, education, the War Between The States and other issues in political affairs.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, The Atlantic’s special commemorative edition, featuring an introduction by President Barack Obama, showcases some of the most compelling stories from the magazine’s archives. Contributors include such celebrated American writers as Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott.

Through reporting, essays, fiction, and poetry, The Atlantic chronicled the conflict firsthand—from the country’s deepening divisions in the years leading up to the conflict, to the horrors of the battlefield, to the reshaping of society after the war’s conclusion. This 148-page edition captures the voices of the witnesses to the war and its aftermath. With memorable images from the National Portrait Gallery, this rich collection of contemporary reflections on the dramatic story of America’s most transformative moment. Print copies are available at bookstores, newsstands and ordered online in digital format for iPad and Kindle.

Following is the table of contents for the issue Atlantic's contents:

PART ONE: PRE-WAR

Where Will It End?
In its second issue, The Atlantic urged readers to take a stand against slavery.
BY EDMUND QUINCY

Nat Turner's Insurrection
An account of America's bloodiest slave revolt and its repercussions
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

A True Story, Word for Word As I Heard It
In his first Atlantic contribution, the author tells the story of a mother's surprise reunion with her son, a former slave.
BY MARK TWAIN

The Freedman's Story
An escaped slave recalls his violent showdown with slave-catchers.
BY WILLIAM PARKER

Paul Revere's Ride
The famous Revolutionary War poem that's really about slavery
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

John Brown and His Friends
How a coterie of New Englanders-- including the author--secretly funded the raid on Harpers Ferry
BY FRANKLIN SANBORN

Bardic Symbols
The author's first Atlantic poem
BY WALT WHITMAN

The Reign of King Cotton
In 1861, the grandson of John Quincy Adams argued that slavery could still end without war. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS JR.

Recollections of Lincoln
A journalist who covered the Lincoln-Douglas debates recalls the future president's bawdy appeal.
BY HENRY VILLARD

The Election in November
In 1860, The Atlantic endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Charleston Under Arms
A Northern journalist records his visit to Charleston during the Fort Sumter standoff.
BY JOHN WILLIAM DE FOREST  


PART TWO: THE WAR 

Our March to Washington
A dispatch from a Union soldier who was later killed in action
BY THEODORE WINTHROP

Voluntaries
A poem in praise of soldiers who gave their lives for the Union
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Bread and the Newspaper
In 1861, an Atlantic editor captured the anxious mood on the home front.
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

The Advantages of Defeat
A scholar argues that the Union debacle at Bull Run was not such a disaster.
BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

Chiefly About War Matters, by a Peaceable Man
The novelist visits Washington in wartime--and is then censored by The Atlantic.
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Cumberland
A poem commemorating a mighty Union ship done in by the Virginia, a rebel "ironclad"
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

My Hunt After the Captain
An account of the author's frantic search for his wounded son, who lived to become a Supreme Court justice
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Barbara Frietchie
The classic poem mythologizing an old woman who flew her Union flag as the rebels marched past
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

The Man Without a Country
The famous short story about an Army officer who learns, too late, to love his country
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE

American Civilization
An Atlantic founder argues vehemently for emancipation of the slaves.
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The President's Proclamation
Seven months after his call to free the slaves, Emerson hails the Emancipation Proclamation.
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Women, Unite Against Slavery
The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin urges other women to action.
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

The Story of a Year
One of the earliest pieces published by the author, who was 21 years old at the time
BY HENRY JAMES

The Ladies of New Orleans
A Union general is stymied by the ornery women of the South.
BY ALBERT F. PUFFER

Leaves From an Officer's Journal
The white colonel of the first official black regiment recounts his experience.
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

Life on the Sea Islands
A young black woman describes her experience teaching freed slaves.
BY CHARLOTTE FORTEN

The Brothers
Set in a wartime hospital, a short story about a family with a poisonous secret
BY LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

The Words That Remade America
The significance of the Gettysburg Address
BY GARRY WILLS

A Rebel's Recollections
A Confederate soldier from a plantation family provides a Southern perspective.
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

Lee in Battle
A Northerner pays tribute to the general's humility and heroism.
BY GAMALIEL BRADFORD JR.

Toward Appomattox
Reliving the war's final battles
BY JACK BEATTY

Late Scenes in Richmond
A reporter describes the rebels' flight from Richmond, and Lincoln's surprise visit two days later.
BY CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN


PART THREE: POST-WAR

The End, and After
A Confederate soldier recalls the chaotic days following surrender.
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

Assassination
Three months after Lincoln's murder, The Atlantic seeks to make sense of it.
BY CHARLES CREIGHTON HAZEWELL

Ode to Lincoln
The magazine's first editor gives poetic voice to the nation's grief.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Three Months Among the Reconstructionists
In 1866, a journalist offered a scathing report on post-war life in the South.
BY SIDNEY ANDREWS

The Mistress of Sydenham Plantation
The famous novelist's tale of an elderly Southerner, oblivious to what the war has cost her
BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT

The Case of George Dedlow
An absurdist short story about a Union doctor--which many Atlantic readers erroneously believed at the time to be nonfiction
BY SILAS WEIR MITCHELL

For the Union Dead
The classic 1960 poem pays tribute to the glory of the Civil War era.
BY ROBERT LOWELL

The Freedmen's Bureau
A leading black intellectual surveys the government's efforts to aid the freed slaves.
BY W. E. B. DU BOIS

Reconstruction, and an Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage
A former slave urges Congress to grant black Americans the vote.
BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS

The Death of Slavery
A poem hailing the demise of slavery's "cruel reign"
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

The Result in South Carolina
A Southerner describes mounting racial tensions in the aftermath of Reconstruction.
BY "A SOUTH CAROLINIAN"

The Awakening of the Negro
An educator's controversial argument contends that blacks should advance by making themselves useful to whites.
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Of the Training of Black Men
Taking issue with Booker T. Washington, the author argues that blacks should attend college. BY W. E. B. DU BOIS

Strivings of the Negro People
Du Bois gives voice to the aspirations of black Americans in the post-Civil War world.
BY W. E. B. DU BOIS

Battle Hymn of the Republic
BY JULIA WARD HOWE  

Text Source With Edits: The Atlantic

Off Topic---Richard Matheson, Master of the Uncanny

Shadow On The Sun, Richard Matheson, TOR Books, 192 pages,$13.99 and Other Kingdoms, Richard Matheson, TOR Books, 320 pages, $24.99.

Richard Matheson is the author of the classics I Am Legend, Hell House, Somewhere in Time, The Incredible Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, The Beardless Warriors, What Dreams May Come and others. Now forget the movies made from his books. Remember The Twilight Zone episodes.

Named a Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention, and a recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, Matheson has won the Edgar Award for Mystery and Detective writing, the Spur for Western novels and stories, and several of the Writer's Guild awards. In 2010, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Yes, this is the author that the best storytellers, such as Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Peter Straub and others, read.

Matheson has authored screenplays for film and television. His most recognizable work is for The Twilight Zone including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” based on his short story and featuring a very young William Shatner. Born in New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, and a World War 2 combat infantryman, Matheson earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

Shadow On The Sun, originally published as a mass-market Western in 1994, has been out of print for years. This tale of supernatural terror is best described by a comment of a friend who had just finished the book. "Wow! Couldn't put it down. I wonder if the makers of Cowboys and Aliens [the film] read this before they made their movie." Set in Arizona, a century ago during a truce between the remote frontier community and the Apaches. A delicate peace is literally shredded when the mutilated bodies of two white men are found. Billjohn Finley, the local Indian agent, fears that darker, more unholy forces may be at work: a tall, dark stranger who rides into town and is wearing the dead men’s clothes.

In Other Kingdoms the setting spans decades in France, England and Brooklyn. In 1917 a young American soldier is recently wounded in the Great War. The young veteran, Alex White, travels to Gatford, England because of a promise made to a dying comrade. This pastoral English village, seems to be the perfect spot to heal his wounded body and soul. In truth for the reader, Gatford and its forests are not as distant as Narnia but closer that Brigadoon. The neighboring woods are said to be haunted by capricious, even malevolent spirits, but surely those are just old folk tales.

In the forest dwells Magda Variel known as a witch but confesses to Alex that she is merely a practitioner of Wicca and has healing powers. She warns him of a more real danger, one that is located deeper into the forest. It is another kingdom. A World War One veteran, Alex is bold and undaunted. He becomes a resident in three kingdoms: rural England, the Wicca religion, and live among shape-sifting spirits. He willing enters bondage to love, sex and magic and has dual citizenship in two of kingdoms. Each has a dominant woman who wants him.

To read these two shorter works by Matheson is to engage a master storyteller who will very subtly cause you to suspend your disbelief. The literary genre of The Uncanny deals with the notion that a person or a thing has or seems to have a supernatural basis. The Uncanny genre deals this events that are beyond the ordinary, that are mysterious, superstitious, fearful or dreadful. Like Stephen King's work, Richard Matheson work is both an uncomfortably strange but a comfortably thoughtful experience.