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

News---Manassas Virginia Reports Reenactment Related Income A Healthy Sucess

Manassas Profits From Mass Casualties (reenactment), Tom Jackman, Washington Post, November 20, 2011.

Thousands of Civil War reenactors and spectators converged on Manassas in July. “Our hotel is air-conditioned, right?” Most Civil War reenactments are done for the pure pleasure of recapturing historical moments, educating others about our past, and sweating off large amounts of weight in authentically heavy uniforms. But for the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, Manassas City and its businesses in Old Town were actually able to make some money, according to a new report issued by the city’s community development department.

. . . the report states, “The Sesquicentennial of the First Battle of Manassas was a singular event that is not expected to be repeated.” And what happened was that the city as a whole collected 14.4 percent more in meals taxes than in July 2010, which translates into an additional $811,500 in revenue for Manassas restaurants, the report figures.

In Old Town Manassas, shops saw increases of 55 percent for sales taxes and 21 percent for meals taxes, for more revenue. And sales at the Manassas Museum jumped 700 percent over the same time last year. ne party who didn’t cooperate: God. It was over 100 degrees most days of that July weekend, felt way hotter, and some events were canceled. But even this was turned into a positive because it allowed emergency management agencies to try out their response capabilities, and as a result there were no significant injuries, the report found.

So what does this mean for the sesquicentennial of the Second Battle of Bull Run, August 2012, a larger and even bloodier battle? Get those cash registers ready. And cool it with the heat waves, Big Man.

CWL: Here is the 27 page report of An Analysis of the City of Manassas Participation in the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of First Manassas, July 21 – 24, 2011

Text Source with some edits: Washington Post November 20 2011

Top Image Source: Kris's Photo a Day

Bottom Image Source: Manassas Civil War.org

Anniversary Reenactment---Ball's Bluff, Leesburg, Virginia: Appreciations and Suggestions

CWL sent these remarks to the cwdg.yahoogroups.org on the Monday after the Ball's Bluff commemoration reenactment on October 21, 22, 23.

As an infantry re-enactor who has been on campaign since 1993, me and my pards would list the 2011 Ball’s Bluff as among the best in in our experience.
Reasons: 1. Good accurate scenario on original ground. 2. Schedule of events
3. size of reenactment group, not to large not to small [with the exception of the Rebels, whose enlistments fell noticeably short] 4. And of course, great weather.

As we were leaving the question arose, when are we coming back? Is there an interest by the organizers that having Civil War re-enactors do a NPS style living history on the Ball’s Bluff location annually?

Slight disappointments: A. Friday’s fire wood supply contained a lot of dead wood that wouldn’t make heat; B. and in the ‘it never gets done’ educating the re-enactors on the battle that is being commemorated. Many re-enactors come on the field knowing lots about Gettysburg but not much about Ball’s Bluff and other smaller engagements. A one sheet, both sides with maps handout would go far with re-enactors and, come to think about it, spectators too.

I am one of those re-enactors that walk up to spectators and start conversations and it would be nice to have a common piece of information about the battle to talk about with spectators.

Image Source: markhunter

Forthcoming---The Civil War In The Light of the Civil Rights Era

American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, David W. Blight, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 328 pages, Publication Date: September 26, 2011, $27.95.

Text From Publisher: Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that “the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again.”

David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America’s most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century’s preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist—each exposed America’s triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.

Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America’s sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country’s political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.

Sequicentennial News---Have The Winners Forgotten The Civil War?

In North, Civil War Sites, Events Long 'Forgotten', Russell Contreras, Associated Press , Associated Press, April 17, 2011.

The gravesite of a Union Army major general sits largely forgotten in a small cemetery along the Massachusetts Turnpike. A piece of the coat worn by President Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated rests quietly in a library attic in a Boston suburb. It's shown upon request, a rare occurrence. A monument honoring one of the first official Civil War black units stands in a busy intersection in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse, barely gaining notice from the hustle of tourists and workers who pass by each day.

As the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, states in the old South —the side that lost — are hosting elaborate re-enactments, intricate memorials, even formal galas highlighting the war's persistent legacy in the region. But for many states in the North — the side that won — only scant, smaller events are planned in an area of the nation that helped sparked the conflict but now, historians say, struggles to acknowledge it. "It's almost like it never happened," said Annie Murphy, executive director of the Framingham History Center in Framingham, Mass. "But all you have to do is look around and see evidence that it did. It's just that people aren't looking here."

Massachusetts, a state that sent more than 150,000 men to battle and was home to some of the nation's most radical abolitionists, created a Civil War commemoration commission just earlier this month. Aging monuments stand unattended, sometimes even vandalized. Sites of major historical events related to the war remain largely unknown and often compete with the more regionally popular American Revolution attractions. Meanwhile, states like Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri not only established commissions months, if not years ago, but also have ambitious plans for remembrance around well-known tourist sites and events. In South Carolina, for example, 300 Civil War re-enactors participated last week in well-organized staged battles to mark the beginning of the war.

To be sure, some Northern states have Civil War events planned and have formed commemoration commissions. Connecticut's 150th Civil War Commemoration was set up in 2008 and has scheduled a number of events and exhibits until 2015. Vermont, the first state to outlaw slavery, started a similar commission last year to coordinate activities statewide and in towns. And some Massachusetts small non-profit and historic groups are trying to spark interest through research, planned tours and town events. But observers say those events pale in comparison to those in the South.

That difference highlights Northern states' long struggle with how to remember a war that was largely fought on Southern soil, said Steven Mintz, a Columbia University history professor and author of "Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers." For Northern states like Massachusetts, Mintz said revisiting the Civil War also means revisiting their own unsolved, uncomfortable issues like racial inequality after slavery. "We've spent a century and a half turning (the war) into a gigantic North-South football game in which everybody was a hero," Mintz said. "In other words, we depoliticized the whole meaning of the war. And insofar as it was captured, it was captured by the descendants of the Confederates."

Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group open to male descendants of veterans who served in the Confederate armed forces, boast 30,000 members across the Old South. The Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War has 6,000 members. Kevin Tucker, Massachusetts Department Commander for the Sons of the Union Veterans, said some Northern descendants don't even know they're related to Union veterans. "I found out after my father did some research and discovered that my great-great-grandfather had collected a Union pension," said Tucker, of Wakefield. "Until then, I had no idea."

Mark Simpson, 57, South Carolina commander of Sons of Confederate Veterans, said his family knew for generations about his great-great-grandfather's service in the Confederacy. "I visit his gravesite every year and put a flag down," Simpson said. "He is real to me." Mintz said the North has another factor affecting its Civil War memory: immigration from Italy and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. He said those populations, and more recent immigrants, sometimes struggle to identify with that war compared to more contemporary ones.

Then, Mintz said, after the Civil War a number of Northerners moved West — and to the South. History buffs with the Framingham History Center in Framingham, Mass., a town where residents say "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first sung, said they are using the sesquicentennial to bring attention to long-forgotten local Civil War sites and personalities. Included in a planned event is a celebration at Harmony Grove, site of many anti-slavery rallies where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison famously burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution and called it a "pact with the Devil."

Today, only a small plaque in front of a house announces the historic site now surrounded by industrial lots, train tracks and a motorcycle shop. Volunteers also hope to raise around $1 million for Framingham's dilapidated Civil War memorial building to repair its cracked walls and leaky ceiling. The building houses a memorial honoring Framingham soldiers killed in the war and an American flag that flew over the Battles of Gettysburg and Antietam. (Murphy said the flag was discovered in the 1990s after being forgotten in a case for 90 years.)

Fred Wallace, the town's historian, said that more importantly, volunteers wanted to bring attention to General George H. Gordon, a long-forgotten Union hero from Framingham who was a prolific writer and organizer of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. "I don't understand how this man was lost to history," said Wallace, who has researched Gordon's life and is now writing a biography on him. "He was in the middle of everything."

During a recent afternoon, Murphy took a reporter and photographer to Gordon's gravesite, which she said would be included in a planned walking tour. But Murphy couldn't locate the site and a cemetery official needed to comb through maps to find it. Murphy said putting the pieces together of Gordon's life is part of the fun, even when it surprises residents. "When I was told that I lived in what used to be a barn of Gen. Gordon's horse," 81-year-old Ellen Shaw said, "I was like ... General who?"

Since then Shaw has joined history buffs in searching for what they believe is a marker announcing the gravesite of Ashby, Gordon's horse in many battles. She hasn't located it on her property. "I hope I find it one day when I'm just walking around outside," Shaw said. "Then I can say, 'Glad to meet you. Sorry we forgot about you.'

Image Caption: In this March 25, 2011 photo, a workman does repairs at the Framingham History Center behind a statue.
Image and Text Source: Yahoo News/Associated Press

News---Selling the Sesquicentennial to African-Americans

Selling the Civil War to African Americans, David A. Graham, April 12, 2011.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and other activists are trying to invest more black Americans in this year’s Civil War sesquicentennial, in part by stressing that slavery—not states’ rights—was the primary cause of the conflict. David A. Graham reports.

Going to elementary school in Michigan in the 1980s, Geoffrey Blair learned about the Civil War: a story of Lee vs. Grant, North vs. South. He learned about Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Manassas, and Antietam. And he learned that President Lincoln had freed the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation. But no one ever told him about the nearly 200,000 black soldiers who fought in the war. “I was never taught that blacks actually had a role in the Civil War,” says Blair. “It wasn’t until I had my first college history class that I realized.”

Today he’s president of the 102nd United States Colored Troops, Co. B, a Detroit-based reenacting group that keeps alive memories of those black soldiers without whom, Lincoln once said, the Union couldn’t have won the war. Although the historically liberal 1989 film Glory brought a new awareness of black soldiers to many Americans, “we still do get looks,” says Blair, who portrays a corporal in the unit. “We get questions like, ‘Where do they come from? I didn’t know there was a black regiment that fought in the war.’”

But while Blair’s avocation is unusual, his experience is not. Historians, educators, and politicians worry that many blacks don’t know and don’t care much about the Civil War—even though it’s the pivotal moment in African-American history. So with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War beginning this spring, they’re pushing for ways to make sure the black community is invested in commemorating the war, including a new emphasis on the role of slavery as the primary cause of the war—pushing back Confederate apologists who insist the war was fought over states’ rights.

“I’m for an interpretation of the war that includes more Americans,” says Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who’s been a major driving force of the changes. “The federal government, which draws its strength from having saved the union, is under an obligation to tell a broader story at the battle sites that it has preserved, and that includes an interpretation of American history where people can better understand the causes and effects of the war.”

But it’s a difficult battle, facing obstacles from lack of funding, political opposition, and apathy in the black community. Black indifference to the war is partly a legacy of botched commemorations of the war’s centennial 50 years ago, experts say. With civil-rights battles raging across the South, the federal commission and its state counterparts stuck to discussing bullets, bombs, and battlefields, leaving the thorny question of “why” unanswered. “In a way, the civil-rights movement eclipsed the centennial and was seen by many people as being more relevant than observation and commemoration of military battles,” recalls James McPherson, an eminent Civil War historian at Princeton. “There was an idea that this war was about something that wasn’t really talked about.”

“It wasn’t in any abstract or theoretical sense that African Americans were fighting for freedom—they knew that if they lost, they were still slaves.” That created a chance for two kinds of history to take hold: a slanted version propagated by Confederate apologists who blamed the war on states’ rights rather than conflict over slavery, and a second, more common version that focused excessively on military history while leaving cultural context behind. Both alienated blacks from Civil War history.

Blair, the reenactor, chuckled at predominantly white preservation groups baffled at African-American disinterest in their activities. “I said, the names of your lectures are ‘Forrest: Wizard in the Saddle’ or about Robert E. Lee,” he says, referring to Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. “What African American is going to want to go to that?”

Jackson is trying to push the nation over these barriers. As a youngish black man from the urban North, even one whose father is a leading civil-rights activist, the Illinois Democrat is an unlikely Civil War buff. He became interested when he toured Southern battlefields in the late 1990s. It was a horror show. He saw dozens of schools and civic buildings named after Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis—men he describes as “the greatest traitors in our nation’s history.” In Appomattox, Virginia, site of Lee’s surrender, a veteran high-school teacher told him how she had taught generations of students that the war wasn’t about slavery, proud of her even-handed but misleading approach.

And when he pressed National Park employees about the lack of context at historic sites, he was dismissed. “I was at a battlefield in Georgia, meeting the park superintendent, who had no idea I was a congressman,” Jackson recalls. “The guy got fairly indignant and said, ‘Well, if you want that changed, you got to go all the way to Congress!’ So I said OK.”

When he returned to Washington, Jackson slipped language into an appropriations bill that mandated that the National Park Service address slavery’s role as the primary cause of the war at relevant sites. NPS Chief Historian Bob Sutton says that’s led to a revolution in how the parks explain the war. But just swapping out the displays at Gettysburg only goes so far. A scant 5 percent of rangers are black, for example, and only six of the NPS’s 74 Civil War sites have black superintendents. And while the park service doesn’t collect statistics on visitor demographics, rangers say it’s not hard to tell that almost all park visitors are white—just look around most parks.

The centennial commission had a wide reach, but lack of funds and lack of organization mean that any Civil War education effort, much less one with a controversial message, will struggle to reach a wide swath of America. With Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, Jackson has proposed a national Civil War sesquicentennial commission, following in the footsteps of the centennial commission, but that bill stalled in the last Congress and hasn’t made any progress in the new term, either. Some states have created commissions to commemorate the war, but they’re often only advisory and are chronically underfunded. Other states, such as Mississippi, don’t even have committees.

But states that do are trying to include African-American stories in their celebrations. Ohio’s sesquicentennial commission is emphasizing the state’s role as a central part of the Underground Railroad. Pennsylvania has made a military training camp for black soldiers a centerpiece. Ed Ayers, a Civil War historian who is president of the University of Richmond, has scheduled historical events at historically black colleges and universities in order to draw in a black audience. And Keith Hardison, director of North Carolina historic sites, says commemorations there are focusing on blacks from the Tar Heel State who fought. “It wasn’t in any abstract or theoretical sense that those African Americans were fighting for freedom—they knew that if they lost, they were still slaves,” he says. “That’s a North Carolina story in the same way as the boys who lined up and put on the gray.”

Meanwhile, the Confederate apologists—though weakened by the passage of time—remain strongly opposed to the new narrative. Although the academic consensus is virtually unanimous in naming slavery as the primary cause of the war, pockets of resistance persist. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a heritage organization, has been aggressive in promoting its view that the war was fought not over slavery but rather over an unlawful invasion of Southern states. “I don’t think our government wants to face the truth that the war shouldn’t have happened,” says Michael Givens, SCV’s commander in chief. “If they’re just trying to appease the African-American population, it’s not going to do that.”

Within the Civil War history community, Virginia’s Civil War 150 commission is widely seen as the best organized and best funded in the nation, but the state was also recently forced to pulp a fourth-grade textbook that falsely asserted—based on shoddy Internet research—that thousands of blacks fought for the South. That came just months after the state’s governor proclaimed Confederate History Month and was then forced to reverse his move. And Mississippi is embroiled in a controversy over proposed license plates honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Even against a challenging backdrop, the revisionist camp represented by Jackson and others is optimistic. Many in the current generation of Civil War buffs credit the centennial with awakening an interest in the war, so the four years of sesquicentennial are the best chance they’ll have to make a major impression. “I want people’s understanding of American history to be transformed, for this to be the culmination of changing perceptions that began with the civil-rights movement,” Ayers says. “If it’s not a profound turning point in our history, we will have failed our own time.”

Text and Image Source: The Daily Beast April 12, 2011

Sequicentennial News---No Plans for 150th Anniversary Reenactment of Antietam

No Large-Scale Battle Of Antietam Re-Enactment Plans For Sesquicentennial, Heather Kells, Hagerstown Hearld-Mail, Arpril 9, 2011.

Hearld-Mail Editor's note: It has been 150 years since the first shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, S.C. In observance of the beginning of hostilities on April 12, 1861, The Herald-Mail has prepared a package of stories about how that conflict affected those who lived in the Tri-State area during those times. The first stories are being published today and Monday. The package will culminate with a special section in Tuesday's newspaper. Is it possible the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam could come and go next year without the thunder of hoofbeats, clank of bayonets and the sights of thousands of re-enactors in blue and gray marching through Washington County fields?

Not only possible, but likely, according to local historian Dennis Frye, who said he had not heard of any large-scale Battle of Antietam re-enactment plans for the battle's sesquicentennial in September 2012. Frye said he did not anticipate anything on the scale of the public re-enactments that were staged in 1997 and 2002, which each attracted about 13,000 re-enactors and as many as 100,000 spectators. "If anybody wanted to do something at Antietam in 2012, they're already way behind," he said.

Planning for the 1997 and 2002 re-enactments began about two and a half years before each event, he said. Frye, now chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, chaired those two re-enactments, which were nonprofit events coordinated by the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites in 1997 and the Antietam Commemoration Committee in 2002. Thomas B. Riford, president and CEO of the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Liz Shatto, director of the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, said they had not heard of any public re-enactments planned for Antietam in 2012.

"We are putting more emphasis in general on emphasizing the product that's available 365 days a year, rather than putting a lot of effort into sort of a one-time, big blowout event," Shatto said. "But if a partner organization came forward and had the wherewithall and the interest, we certainly would do what we could to make their project known."

One obstacle to staging a re-enactment today is finding suitable land for it, Frye said. National Park Service policy prohibits re-enactment on the battlefields themselves, and much of the nearby farmland used for the 1997 and 2002 re-enactments has since been developed. "Our bloody lane battlefield is now a data processing center, and the union campground is now a satellite facility," Frye said.

Staging a large-scale re-enactment requires an "enormous" amount of land with space for not only battles, but encampments, parking and support services such as food and toilets, he said. The 1997 and 2002 re-enactments used nearly 1,000 acres of land on Rench Road, south of Hagerstown. "It would be a real challenge to find a large property in Washington County of 1,000 acres that has very good access to the interstate and could facilitate all of the logistical requirements of a massive public re-enactment," Frye said.

The National Park Service prohibition against re-enacting on battlefields was put into effect in 1962 after a 100th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Antietam because of the amount of damage the event caused on the historic land, Frye said. "Basically all battlefields are cemeteries without stones, so the National Park Service believes they're sacred ground — hallowed ground — and that they should be commemorated, but not re-enacted upon," he said.

Another obstacle to re-enactments is their cost, according to Thomas Clemens, a history and political science professor at Hagerstown Community College. "It counts on someone talking a financial risk because you put a lot of money in up front and if bad weather or anything else happens, then you lose a lot of money," he said. "There's nobody interested in sticking out their neck these days." Clemens said he thought cultural factors had also played a role in curbing some of the enthusiasm for re-enactments.

"Re-enactors are, from my experience, aging, like the rest of the population, and you don't see nearly as many young people as you did, even in the 90s and early 2000s," he said. "I think that there's just sort of a change in culture to some extent." Amid a shifting political climate, the attractiveness of Civil War re-enacting is becoming more controversial, Clemens said, citing a column last spring in which writer Leonard Pitts criticized Confederate "apologists and battle flag fetishists" for sweeping the issue of slavery under the rug with "heritage not hate" rhetoric.

"The idea of the Confederacy as a defender of slavery is becoming much more of an inflammatory issue than it was eight, 10 years ago," Clemens said. "I don't think that's a big factor in the lack of re-enactments, but it's another thing to keep in mind. People are just a little more politicized about it than they used to be."

Text Source: Hagerstown Hearld-Mail, April 9 2011

Top Image Source: Capitol Hill CWRT
Middle Image Source: The Donovan
Bottom Image Source: 4th Michigan

Sesquicentennial News---- 4:30a April 12, 2011 Charleston Harbor, SC

The lights shine at Fort Sumter at 4:30 a.m. EDT to commemorate the moment the first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston, S.C. on Tuesday, April 12, 2011. The South Carolina ceremony Tuesday begins the four-year national commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Cannon blasts from Fort Johnson across Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter at daybreak signaled the commemoration of the start of the Civil War 150 years ago, Tuesday, April 12, 2011 in Charleston, S.C.





Fort Sumter, viewed from Fort Johnoson on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired 150 years ago in Charleston, S.C.

Text and Image Source: Kansas City Star, April 12, 2011

Sesquicentennial News---SCV Reenacts Jefferson Davis' Inauguration and Adds Remarks

YouTube Video of Remarks at reenactment of inauguration of Jefferson Davis, February 20, 2011. 5:56 minutes long

Short summary of SCV remarks at a reenactment of Jefferson Davis' inauguration on February 20, 2011.

Notions presented: Southern history is besieged like Harry Potter is besieged in a recent movie.

Regardless of whatever Confederate flag you [the audience] fly . . . anti-Confederate crowd will come at you [the audience].

During the sesquicentennial people will be getting information on the history of the South from an anti-Confederate crowd, the politically correct crowd such as MSNBC, USAToday or the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The original Confederates are being treated as treasonous, as evil, as Nazis, and as terrorists and have been sent to the back of the bus like Rosa Parks was sent to the back of the bus [during the 1950s].

Southerners with Confederate ancestors must stop the lies and must free people from their ignorance of the Confederacy and from their narrow mindeness, bigoty and intolerance regarding the original Confederates.

People of the Confederate states have been forced to the back of the bus. All we [the speaker and the audience] ask is to be left alone.

Top Image: 2011 Reenactment, Lafayette Advertiser

Sesquicentennial News---Abraham Lincoln/Fritz Klein Travels From Springfield to Washington, D.C.

February 14, 1861/2011. Abraham Lincoln visits Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the way to his inaugration March 4, 1861/2011.

The location is Soldiers and Sailors National Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fritz Klein portrayed Abraham Lincoln and did a spectacular job! With Fritz Klein is CWL and Lea Maureen Redd. The banner is a 2010 creation of a banner used by the Wide Awakes during the 1860 presidential campaign. The Wide Awakes formed in the spring of 1860 as bodyguards for Republican speakers during the campaign. In Pittsburgh, approximately 5,000 Wide Awakes paraded over two days in September 1860. The photograph was taken by Casey Patterson, program assistant of Soldiers and Sailors Museum.

Sesquicentennial News---- 150 Canon Volleys Within One Hour in Gettysburg, April 30

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Adams County, and Gettysburg National Military Park are hosting The Official 150th Gettysburg Kick-Off Event entitled The Invasion of Pennsylvania - Gettysburg. Sueinf Friday, April 29, 2011 and Saturday, April 30, 2011 the event will include 150 volleys from artillery. The launch event will feature the advancement of Union and Confederate troops into this historic town, followed by living history encampments at various locations throughout Gettysburg, reenactment skirmishes and a formal evening program. The highlight of this event will be the firing of 150 cannon shots to salute the brave men and women who fought in the American Civil War. Here's the posted schedule

Friday, April 29
7:00 - 9:00 PM Living History Encampments throughout Gettysburg
8:00 PM Luminary on Lincoln Square
8:00 PM Songs and Stories of a Civil War Hospital

Saturday, April 30
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Living History Encampments throughout Gettysburg

10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Historic Church Walking Tours

11:00 AM Skirmish - "Holding the Line"

12:00 Noon The African American Experience

2:00 PM Skirmish - "A Hasty Retreat"

4:00 PM Skirmish - "Defending Cemetery Heights"

5:30 PM Period Worship Service

6:30 PM Musical Performance at the Pennsylvania Monument

7:00 PM Kick-Off Ceremony to include a one-hour 150 volley Cannonade

8:00 PM Songs and Stories of a Civil War Hospital

CWL: On this schedule it does not note the location of the events. Possibly the 150 volleys may take place on the reenacment sites on Pumping Station Road or the Yingling Farm.

Text Source: Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau

Image Source: Howizers.com

Sesquicentennial News---USPS Commemorates Civil War

Fort Sumter and Bull Run Stamps Will Lead Off Civil War 150th Anniversary Commemorative Series, Bob Janiskee, National Parks Traveler, 01/04/2011.

This year the U.S. Postal Service will issue stamps commemorating the 150th anniversary of two important Civil War events, the beginning of the war and the first great land battle. National parks preserve the sites of both of these events. Fort Sumter and Bull Run Stamps Will Lead Off Civil War 150th Anniversary Commemorative Series. The battle scenes depicted on this year's Civil War 150th anniversary commemorative stamps are reproductions of well known artworks.

The Confederacy was launched soon after South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, and the Civil War got underway four month later. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, forcing its surrender the next day. No longer a war of words centered on the slavery issue, the Civil War was now a shooting war. Both sides raised armies of eager volunteers who believed that the war would soon be over, and with few casualties to count.

These beliefs were put to a severe test on July 21, 1861, when the first major land battle was fought at Manassas, Virginia. The First Battle of Bull Run -- called the First Battle of Manassas or just "First Manassas" in the South -- yielded a Confederate victory, thousands of casualties, and the sobering realization that both the North and the South might have to raise huge armies, shift their economies to a war footing, and fight a long and costly war.

Over the next four years, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a series of stamps commemorating the Civil War's 150th anniversary. A souvenir sheet of two stamps will be issued each year, with the final issue in 2015. The first issue is scheduled for release on April 12, 2011, the 150th anniversary of the war's beginning. It will be a sheet of two stamps, one depicting the firing on Fort Sumter and the other depicting the Battle of Bull Run. Additional information about the Civil War stamps and other commemorative stamps to be issued this year can be found at this US Postal Service website.

Phil Jordan, the Postal Service's veteran art director (since 1991), has chosen scenes for the initial Civil War commemorative stamp issue that are well known to Civil War history buffs and art collectors. The Fort Sumter stamp is a reproduction of a Currier & Ives lithograph entitled “Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor” (ca. 1861). The First Bull Run stamp is a reproduction of “The Capture of Rickett’s Battery," a 1964 painting by Sidney E. King that shows fierce fighting on the Henry Hill site where a key Union battery had been placed.

The stamp pane features comments on the war by President Abraham Lincoln, black abolitionist/human rights leader Frederick Douglass, and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. (It was at the First Battle of Bull Run that the latter earned his famous nickname.) Also included on the stamp pane are some of the lyrics to “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” a folk song of sacrifice and lament that was popular during the Civil War. The stamp pane’s background image is a ca. 1861 photograph of a Union regiment near Falls Church, Virginia.

Both sites depicted on this initial stamp issue are preserved within the National Park System. Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston, South Carolina, was established in 1948 and now attracts over three-quarters of a million visitors a year. From the park's Fort Moultrie unit on Sullivans Island, the battered remains of the brick masonry fort (which was repeatedly bombarded by Union gunships during the war) can be viewed from the vantage point of Confederate gunners who opened fired on Fort Sumter during that fateful April day in 1861.

Virginia's Manassas National Battlefield Park, which is located about 20 miles southwest of Washington, DC, preserves and interprets the sites of two major battles, including First Bull Run (First Manassas). At the park's Henry Hill Visitor Center you can see Sidney King's original oil-on-plywood painting of “The Capture of Rickett’s Battery" and then go walk the very ground depicted in the painting (as well as the staunchly-defended Confederate position on Henry Hill where General Thomas J. Jackson earned his nickname "Stonewall").

As the name implies, the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) was not the only major battle fought for control of Manassas, a key railroad junction. The Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas), an even larger battle with considerably more casualties, took place August 28–30, 1862, and resulted in another Confederate victory.

Text Source: National Parks Traveler
Images' Sources: Top---National Park Traveler; Middle and Bottom---National Park Service, Fort Sumter and Manassas web pages

Sesquicentennial Opinion---Are the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the NAACP Talking Past Each Other?

Slavery Was The Central, But Not The Only, Cause Of Civil War, Robert E. May, Charleston Post and Courier, January 18, 2011.

One hundred and fifty years ago, South Carolina seceded from the Union and put the nation on the path to its bloody civil war. The NAACP and media commentators argue that plans by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups to commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the origins of the Confederacy ignore slavery's role in the Civil War. Confederate celebrators rebut that the Rebs fought for noble causes like states rights and defending home and family against Northern invaders, and that the North hardly went to war to end slavery. Lincoln waited until mid-war to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Why can't neo-Confederates and their critics find common ground? The problem is that both sides simplify the past. Let me explain.

Lincoln hated slavery, but he and his Republican party insisted they had no intentions of using federal power to dismantle slavery in southern states. Republicans knew the Constitution had clauses protecting slaveholders' interests, although it avoided using the actual term "slavery." Lincoln, a lawyer, did not believe his party had the right to violate the Constitution, and knew the clauses had been included so Southern states would ratify the document in the first place. Neither Lincoln nor his party endorsed the abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry to free the slaves.

On the other hand, the Constitution did give Congress governance over U.S. territories. The most divisive disputes between the North and the South before the Civil War had to do with slavery in the territories.

The Civil War came because Lincoln and Republicans opposed slavery expansion, though Southerners had other grievances like Northern non-compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act. Initially, Republicans worried about slavery spreading westward ("Bleeding Kansas"). By Lincoln's inauguration, they had won the West for freedom. No western territories became slave states after 1845, but several including Kansas became free states. Slavery could, however, still go southward towards the tropics.

In fact, it was already heading that way. Not only did Lincoln's predecessors as president try to purchase the slaveholding island of Cuba for the U.S., but American adventurers called "filibusters" had been trying to conquer it. Just a few years earlier, Mississippi's former governor and Mexican War hero John A. Quitman, who owned several plantations himself, plotted an expedition to make a slave state of Cuba. William Walker, a Tennessee native, conquered Nicaragua and then became president and legalized slavery there. When Central American armies expelled him, he dedicated himself to re-conquering Nicaragua, announcing publicly he was doing it for the South.

Lincoln understood the threat, telling Republicans to block a last-ditch deal to preserve the Union by guaranteeing slavery in territory the U.S. "hereafter" acquired in Latin America. He warned them to prevent "compromise of any sort on 'slavery extension' "because if it passed "filibustering and extending slavery recommences." He undoubtedly knew from newspaper headlines that just weeks earlier a Honduran firing squad had executed Walker during yet another attempt to conquer Central America.

To emphasize slavery expansion rather than slavery in the states is not to excuse neo-Confederates from dealing with slavery. One need only read what Southern leaders said in 1860, their secession ordinances, or the Confederate Constitution, to see how absurd it is to divorce slavery from the Civil War. The Confederate Constitution mandated that in all territory "the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected." Late in the war, when desperate proposals were floated for arming and freeing slaves to stave off military defeat, Southern politicians protested it would negate the whole reason the war was fought.

As Robert Hunter, the Confederate Senate's president pro tempore exclaimed, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?" The ultimate purpose of slavery's expansion was, of course, to perpetuate and strengthen the "peculiar institution" in the South itself, by giving the South more political power and more land for plantations. Many Southerners believed that if slavery didn't expand, it would die. So did Lincoln and the Republicans.

Slavery had more, not less, to do with secession than most people think, but not in the simplistic way Civil War causation is usually interpreted. For the Sesquicentennial to get it right, both neo-Confederates and their critics need to explain to the American people that the war was over slavery as refracted through the issue of territorial expansion, southward as well as westward. Until they get it right, they will continue talking past each other.

Robert E. May, Professor of History at Purdue University, is the author of The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861 and Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America.

Text Source: Post and Courier

Sesquicentennial News---Slave Auction Reenacted in Missouri

Slave Sale Reenactment Held As Part Of Civil War Anniversary, Fox2 St. Louis, Missouri, January 16, 2011.

It was a Civil War era reenactment like St. Louis had never seen: a slave sale on the steps of the Old Courthouse. It was part of a Lindenwood University history professor's mission to remember the overlooked figures in St. Louis history. The ugly chapter of that history came alive Saturday. Hundreds showed up, snapping photos, rolling video of an event that seemed very real.

About 50 reenactors wore the dress of the day: slaves, slave owners, sheriff's deputies, and courthouse clerks. There were no news cameras, home video when such a slave sale was really happening in St. Louis. Maybe it wouldn't have drawn cameras anyway. Slave sales and the now-uncomfortable trappings were a part of life then; with auctions held at the Old Courthouse when property owners would die, for instance; their property, slaves included, sold at a sheriff's sale; old paintings inside the Old Courthouse Museum didn't seem to tell the whole story.

"These were human beings who wanted the same things we want now," said Angela da Silva, a reenactor and Lindenwood history professor. "Now we look at them as one lump of black mass. There's no individualization. These were maybe not even people. But they were. They had names."

They bore the pain. In reenactor Chris Sutton's home video, you don't just see it, you feel it. The idea is to keep what happened from becoming just flat old photographs and documents in history books and instead - make it true to life: three-dimensional, real people -- from the slaves who were sold to the slave owners who purchased them. "I paid close to $800 for a skilled cook. While I was transacting business the person was hauled away and transported in a wagon, to the DeMenil mansion," said reenactor, Phil McGourty of DeMenil Reenactors. "Some [people] were actually appalled."

Professor da Silva said it was all part of honoring those history had yet to give their due. "We pulled those [slave] names from actual sale bills. We resurrected them from files in this building," da Silva said. "They had children. They had desires. They wanted one thing: freedom." Dred Scott was one such name. He sued for his freedom at the Old Courthhouse only to have the U.S. Supreme Court rule in 1857 that Scott and other slaves "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect ... [they] might justly ... be reduced to slavery".

"That was this case had such a pivotal part in history leading to the Civil War," Jeffrey Blair instructed his daughters at the Dred Scott exhibit in the Old Courthouse, not missing this teaching point, with history coming alive. "My goal has been accomplished," da Silva said. "People do understand the horrors of what it was for families to be separated, never to be seen again and on these very steps that St. Louisans pass every single day."

It really happened ... here. She said the last slave sale at the Old Courthouse was in 1861. Sunday's event marked the beginning of St. Louis's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

Text Source: Fox2 News with Video

CWL: Between the December 20th revelers in Charleston, SC and the Missouri Slave Auction in January, it is shaping up to be a lively Sesquicentennial.
Better unfurl my Wide Awake for Lincoln banner, fill my street torch with oil and head over to Washington D.C. for the Lincoln Inauguration in March.

Opinion---Glenn LaFantasie's Brazen List Of The Best Books

The Top 12 Civil War Books Ever Written, Glenn W. Lafantasie, Salon.com, December 26, 2010.

Putting together such a list is, of course, a nearly impossible task, given the stacks and stacks of excellent books on the Civil War that have been published since 1865. Historians like to say that 60,000 books, give or take a few thousand, have been written about the war, but I'd wager that estimate is way too low. One needs only ponder the steady stream of books on nearly every aspect of the war that regularly roll off the presses to realize that Americans never seem to get enough of their favorite war.

Trying to name the top dozen Civil War books of all time is, admittedly, a brazen act on my part. Nevertheless, the books on this list are, indeed, my all-time favorites -- cherished works that have informed and inspired me, sometimes leaving me awestruck. In some cases, I've read these books more than once. Each time, I extract something new from them; never has my opinion of them lessened from reading them again. They are like old friends: They never wear you out and they don't ask much from you, other than that you think of them from time to time and recall what they mean to you.

All of these books occupy a special place in my own collection of Civil War works -- not only because I'm a Civil War historian, but also because these happen to be extraordinary books, every one of which has been written by exceptionally gifted authors. These are the sort of books you wish you hadn't read before, if only because you'd like to recapture the pure delight of reading them fresh for the first time. I hope you'll find my descriptions of them enticing enough to seek them out for yourself. No doubt you might disagree with my assessment of them. One of my wisest professors once said that books don't belong to their authors -- they belong to their readers. Every reader will have a different response to these books, but my hope is that you might enjoy them -- or any one of them -- as much as I do.

First, some arbitrary rules that have guided my selection of titles. I've only included books published after World War II, which means I'm leaving out a long shelf of good books issued before the second half of the 20th century, some of which still stand the test of time. Out of necessity, I've narrowly defined the universe from which I have picked my top dozen. For example, I've not included any biographies on this list -- an exclusion that some may find indefensible. No series or multivolume works are included here either, which means that Allan Nevins' majestic "The Ordeal of the Union" (eight volumes), Bruce Catton's "Centennial History of the Civil War" (three volumes), and Shelby Foote's very popular "The Civil War" (three volumes) are not to be found below, despite the fact that they all qualify as masterpieces. What's more, I've stuck to only nonfiction titles, so fans of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" or Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels" (both winners of the Pulitzer Prize) will be disappointed to see these novels missing from my list.

In any event, here are a dozen books that, for me, tell the story of the Civil War with literary elegance, intellectual gusto and enormous flair. Most of these books are in print (and in paper editions) and may be purchased at your local bookstore, from out-of-print book dealers, or from any of numerous book retailers.

12. "The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War":

11. "Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America":

10. "Lincoln's Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation":

9. "Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War":

8. "Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave":

7. "Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam":

6. "Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War":

5. "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory":

4. "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War":

3. "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era":

2. "The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans":

1. "A Stillness at Appomattox":

To read the entire essay and LaFantasie's rationale for each book go to Salon.com December 26, 2010.

CWL: Great list! Though Lafantasie creates a list of non-series books, he does put one of a trilogy on the list, A Stillness at Appomattox, part three of Catton's Army of the Potomac. But CWL agrees with them all, even Horwitz's Confederates In The Attic. A personal favorite, Confederates In The Attic appears to be scorned by neo-Confederates. In a Gettysburg bookstore CWL stood behind a Confederate reenactor, a colonel, who lectured a Confederate reenactor, a private, on what to read. The private picked up Confederates In The Attic and was rebuked by the colonel. "That book gets it wrong," the colonel said. The private put it back on the shelf. It seems that Horwitz's book may be a 'heritage violation' among the 2200 or so of the so-called Sons of Confederate Veterans.

CWL---Reading Through the Sesquicentennial

2011 is 1861. Here's a list of books. If you read these in order in twelve months, then 2012/1862 will become more clear. Let's play a little catch up first.

The 1860/2010 Reading List

November: Disunion!, Elizabeth Varon [a history of American secession movements through Spring 1861]
December: Border War, Stanley Harrold [verbal sparring, kidnapping, and murder in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois/Maryland,Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri


The 1861/2011 Reading List
January: A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy, William C. Davis [creation of the Confederate government]

February: The Baltimore Plot: The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Michael J. Kline [Lincoln travels to Washington, DC and yes there was a nearly successful conspiracy to assasinate him in Baltimore]

March: Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession, Russell McClintock [Lincoln’s motives and strategies]

April: Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War, David Detzer [Confederate motives and strategies] OR Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War by Maury Klein


May: Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee, Kent Dollar, Larry Whiteaker, Calvin Dollar (Editors) [Border State session movements]

June: Rebels at the Gate, Hunter Lesser [Rebel attempt to keep Virginia Appalachian Mountains in the Union]

July: Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War, William C. Davis [first major military battle]

August: Wilson's Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It, William Garrett Piston [Missouri’s near secession and the military battle that kept it in the Union]

September: The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, Donald Stoker [how the generals saw the strategy and tactics of the coming war]

October: A Little Short of Boats: The Fights at Ball's Bluff and Edward's Ferry, October 21-22, 1861, James Morgan [the battle that changed the U.S. congress’ view of the war]


November: Over Lincoln's Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War, by Bruce Tap [created by Ball’s Bluff this political investigation lasted the entire war and had a huge impact on McClellan, Porter, Hooker, Sickles and Meade]

December: McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, Ethan S. Rafuse [understanding McClellan’s over all notion of what the war was about and how it formed his strategy and tactics]

News---Coming in 2011? Six Hour Version of Gods and Generals?

Six Hour Director’s Cut of Gods and Generals to be Released in 2011?

Gods and Generals is one of the greatest movies ever made about the Civil War, mainly because it did not conform to Hollywood standards and put forth a highly accurate depiction of the characters and events surrounding the first three years of the American Civil War. It includes many memorable scenes of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and his first Virginia brigade, the tragic battle of Fredericksburg that resulted in an embarrassing Union defeat, the triumphant Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, and finally, the sad, accidental death of Jackson at the hands of his own men.

The film is dramatic, humorous at times, and deeply saddening. The constant use of captions, which some call distracting, further enhance the accuracy of the film, as those who are not Civil War buffs can know what regiments are where, and what day of the battle it is.

But even with all that this film excels in, it is highly fragmented. The film was sent to theaters with the audience full-well knowing that this film is only a fraction of what was originally filmed. It was released with the intention of it appearing on TNT for a network airing following it’s DVD release a few months later, and then the following year, a full director’s cut of what Ronald F. Maxwell initially shot, a film project running around six hours, would be put out. Unfortunately, the film bombed at the theaters, and even sent Turner Pictures into bankruptcy (Ted Turner, who produced Gettysburg, the prequel, paid the entire $60 million budget for Gods and Generals out of his own pocket.)

With the film a monumental failure to everyone but Civil War enthusiasts, the thought of releasing this massive director’s cut was shelved indefinitely. But now, according to a source on IMDB, this cut of the film is now not only in talks, but is actually going to be released in 2011.

According to a poster, who was a student of James Robertson, a professor at Virginia Tech and a Civil War historian and scholar with ties to Maxwell, he emailed Robertson asking if this director’s cut story was true, after being tipped about it on another web-page. The response he got was as follows:“(W)arner Bros. plans to release the unabridged edition of “Gods and Generals” sometime in 2011. Later this month, director Ron Maxwell, Col. Keith Gibson, and I will record a long commentary/conversation that will be an extra on the DVD. The uncut version will not be shown in movies houses because of its length (6+ hours). Rather, it will be available in a DVD set.”

Even though the way this post is set up seems credible, I will still attach a “grain of salt” warning to this, but I am very happy about this, and hopefully am not being let by false hope. Gods and Generals was a film that had so much passion behind it, but one that was flawed because they cut this massive project down into just more than three hours.

The deleted scenes include the entire battle of Antietam, a sub-plot between John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln, a friendship between Booth and actor Henry T. Harrison, who served as a Confederate scout, and additional scenes in and throughout the film.

With 2011 being the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, I had been thinking earlier that if there was any time to release this film, these next fiveyears would be it. I can only hope that this source is true, and that the email correspondence between he and Robertson is not fabricated. Gods and Generals is a film that can both entertain and educate, and it needs to be seen in it’s full six hour glory.

The entire cut of this film was only shown once, several years ago as part of a personal screening by Ron Maxwell. It ran well over five hours and upon it’s conclusion, it was met with a standing ovation. When released, Gods and Generals will be a treat for as all.

Text Source: Gregg Caggiano

Sesquicentennial News---The Slave Republic and the Sons of Confederate Veterans

The Election of 1860 and Secession—to Preserve Slavery, Douglas Egerton, History News Network, November 15, 2010.

When news of Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency reached South Carolina on Nov. 8, 1860, joyful Charlestonians took to the streets as if their candidate had won. They erected liberty poles near the battery, and booming cannon saluted the Palmetto flag. "The tea has been thrown overboard," editorialized the Charleston Mercury. "The revolution of 1860 has been initiated."

That evening, in a foreshadowing of events to come, fireworks lit the sky above Fort Sumter. Who could doubt, wrote Mercury publisher Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr., "that the other Slaveholding States, when once the Union is broken," would join "in the formation of a Slave Republic" to protect "their institutions, from Abolition rule in Washington?"

Autumn 2010 marks the sesquicentennial of the election of 1860 and the secession of South Carolina. In 1860 Americans understood what was at stake, though they scarcely knew how to respond. Defeated Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas labored to craft a compromise to bring the seceding states back into the union. Meanwhile, President-elect Lincoln refused to budge on his party's opposition to slavery in the territories. A compromise on southern demands for the West, he said, might lead to "filibustering for all [foreign lands] South of us, and making slave states of it."

A century and a half later, many Americans have been misled about the events leading up to the Civil War. A new textbook for Virginia fourth graders, Joy Masoff's Our Virginia, Past and Present, makes the wholly untrue claim that "thousands of southern blacks fought in Confederate ranks." The notion that black Americans willingly fought for what Rhett called "a Slave Republic" is no accidental error. Rather, that falsehood, commonly advanced by groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is designed to perpetrate a larger lie: that the Confederacy did not exist to protect slavery, or that slavery was not the root cause of the bloodiest conflict in our history.

And Masoff has company in this deception. Last spring Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell declared April to be Confederate History Month in Virginia. The governor's initial announcement failed to mention slavery. When asked why, he insisted that "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states." McDonnell later amended his statement, but Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a fellow Republican, rushed to his defense. The whole controversy "doesn't amount to diddly," sniffed Barbour, who, according to a recent Newsweek profile, has a Confederate flag, signed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, hanging on the wall of his office.

As the nation readies itself for anniversary ceremonies marking the war years, Americans need to understand why the Civil War took place. If McDonnell hopes that American students will study the history of the Confederacy, educators at all levels should support him. But if he wishes to honor what Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens described as a nation whose "corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man," then his proclamation should offend all Americans.

Modern defenders of Confederate History Month point out that a majority of southern whites did not own slaves, a fact that is true but irrelevant. The Confederacy was not forged by middle-class farmers but by planters who correctly feared that Lincoln's election and the Republican policy of restricting slavery from western territories imperiled the slave system. Of the white South Carolinians who met in a state convention to vote for secession, 90.5 percent were slaveholders. And of those convention delegates who owned slaves, 41.4 percent owned fifty or more black Americans, while twenty-seven were among the largest planters in the South.


Despite the fact that the Confederate Constitution explicitly protected slavery, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who wrote much of McDonnell's initial statement and supplied the research for Masoff's text, claim that the "preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision" to secede. In reality, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, non-slaveholding soldiers quickly lost interest in dying to preserve the property rights of rich planters. When reenlistments fell off, the Confederate Congress responded in the spring of 1862 with the first draft law ever passed in the Western Hemisphere. That law exempted whites who owned twenty or more slaves.

Unlike supporters of Confederate History Month, who persist in claiming that some African Americans supported the breakaway republic, secessionists were completely honest in explaining why they desired a separate country. On a speaking tour of the North in 1860, former Alabama Congressman William Lowndes Yancey told a Boston audience that the founding fathers had intended the nation to be forever governed by a white "master race." Speaking in Frederick Douglass's Rochester, N.Y., Yancey promised that "all we ask is to be allowed to keep southern slavery, and we will not let the negro insult you by coming here and marrying your daughters." Confederate President Jefferson Davis agreed. As the owner of more than two hundred slaves, the Mississippian attributed secession to the "hostile measures" waged by northern politicians "for the purpose of rendering insecure our property in slaves."

When governors and influential southern politicians protest that they merely wish to honor Confederate veterans, they willfully mangle history by ignoring the root cause of secession. Joy Masoff is right about one thing. Americans should study Confederate history, if only to better understand why there was a Civil War and to learn just how far our nation still has to travel when it comes to race.

Douglas Egerton, a descendant of North Carolina slaveholders and Confederates, teaches American history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. His books include Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War (2010). Attribution to the History News Service and the author is required for reprinting and redistribution of this article.

Text Source: History News Network, November 15, 2010

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