New and Noteworthy---The Dead Line At Andersonville Prison: In Fact, Memory and 20th Century Wars

Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory, Benjamin G. Cloyd. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, Illustrations, 251 pp., notes, index, bibliography, 2010, $37.50

Review by Adam M. Zimmerli. Published on H-CivWar (September, 2011)

As the Civil War drew to a close in 1865, thousands of prisoners streamed home from prisons North and South, victims of often haphazard systems that fostered both intentional cruelty and unintentional suffering. More than four hundred thousand soldiers endured captivity during the war, and nearly one-tenth of the soldiers who died during the war years breathed their last within the confines of a prison. Though most of the returning soldiers would mend physically, the question of what happened to them and their comrades, and how their experiences fit within the emerging interpretation of the colossal struggle, would weigh on their minds and those of generations after them.

Benjamin G. Cloyd's recent Haunted by Atrocity is a welcome and timely voice in the ongoing struggle to understand the memory of the Civil War. In a discussion that is dominated by models of either combat veteran memories transitioning into the postwar commemoration or ladies' societies navigating complex political waters through monuments to the fallen, Cloyd's book weaves a complex story that not only incorporates the difficulties of competing postwar narratives, but also adds the depth of a group of veterans that are frequently overlooked but whose often vitriolic responses had a lasting effect when other interpretations faded.

Focusing largely on Andersonville, Haunted by Atrocity examines the influence that the prison and its inmates' memories had on six distinct time periods. The overarching story of the prisoner experience, ranging from the earliest weeks of the Civil War to the impending sesquicentennial, is one that remains controversial even as reconciliation movements dull the edge of postwar rhetoric. In addition to discussing an important yet often overlooked facet of the struggle to privilege certain memories, Cloyd's book also provides tangible evidence that some of the emotions generated by the Civil War remained extremely potent despite the passage of time.

Beginning with the genesis of the prisoner-exchange cartels, the author charts the prisoners' experiences in the first chapter. Cloyd shows that the burgeoning systems regarding prisoners of war quickly broke down under unanticipated pressures caused by the vast numbers of captured soldiers following the war's early battles. He also draws the reader's attention to the early charges of barbarism and atrocity, their uses in propaganda on both sides, and their effects on the psyches of the incarcerated soldiers.

Following this chapter on the war itself, Cloyd delves deeply into the growth of the memoir industry and its impact on the evolving interpretations of the conflict. During much of Reconstruction, virulent attacks on the South dominated the memory of the prisons, in particular with regard to Andersonville. The narrative was not completely one-sided, however, and Cloyd contrasts the overt vehemence of the Union veterans with their more quiet Confederate counterparts. The latter's recollections ultimately set the stage for the drastic changes to the war's interpretation in the form of the Lost Cause narrative.

Haunted by Atrocity's next two chapters on the period between 1877 and 1914 differ significantly from the way many other treatises on Civil War memory interpret the rise of the Lost Cause. Whereas most works on this period emphasize a relative relaxation of the animosity that drove postwar politics, Cloyd shows that prisoner memoirs clung even more fervently to descriptions of barbaric captors and systems designed to torture or kill inmates. It was during this period, as well, that former Confederates began publishing prisoner-of-war memoirs. Equally as vehement as the accounts from Union veterans, the stories told by Southerners were also part of an effort to reclaim a status as equals within society and to lay claim to the memory of the war. As major commemorations occurred on former battlefields throughout the South that often featured former enemies coming together and posing for photographs, former captives from both sides joined in the telling of the Civil War by employing highly charged language and divisive rhetoric.

These chapters do conform, however, to the standard interpretation of the evolution of the war's memory in terms of the Emancipation narrative. Former prisoners often reacted violently to African American celebrations at sites like Andersonville. As Cloyd points out, these riots and physical altercations that broke out at numerous Memorial Day celebrations in the South as African Americans gathered to remember the sacrifices of Union soldiers who had languished and died in prisons eventually all but silenced the Emancipation narrative.

A final point discussed by Cloyd in these two chapters examines the question of commemoration at the prison sites. Veterans' groups placed thousands of monuments on fields stretching from the wilds of Texas to Gettysburg, yet few were met with such hostility as those of contested figures at former prison sites. Cloyd uses major points of controversy, such as the proposed monument to Henry Wirz, and the monument to the Confederate dead at Camp Chase, as bellwethers throughout the second chapter. He employs those monuments to show that the viewpoints of former prisoners had become increasingly disparate as the limits of reconciliation were stretched in that era, and living veterans of the war became even more firmly entrenched in maintaining the memories of their departed comrades. Since the general feeling of reconciliation and "shared recognition of what it meant to be a soldier" did not encompass the experiences of the prisoner of war, "the same factors that encouraged national reconciliation continued to promote discord in the specific instance of Civil War Prisons" (p. 109).


The last three chapters of Haunted by Atrocity explore the legacy of the prisons as their roles shifted in the twentieth century. One of the greatest changes that Cloyd explores is the decline of subjective, first-person accounts of the prisons in favor of more objective, historical analyses of the prison experience, as well as the rise of Civil War prisons in fiction. Historians came to use the prison experience, from both the small, firsthand accounts to commandants' and politicians' reflections, to exonerate numerous individuals and to portray many captors as average human beings, rather than as barbarians. Fiction could blur that line to an extent, as Cloyd illustrates through post-World War II stories that drew light parallels between such Civil War prisons as Andersonville and concentration camps. Largely, however, the discussion of captivity during the war, as well as the political machinations that influenced policies, entered a new phase in the twentieth century, which opened the door to new interpretations that precluded simplistic notions of cruelty for cruelty's sake as had been a hallmark of the discussion for decades.

As early as the late nineteenth century, prisons evolved into tourist sites as opposed to purely commemorative sites . . . .

For Cloyd, the creation of the National POW Museum at Andersonville is the natural and logical "consequence of our accepting the objective memory of Civil War prisons," and has transformed a site with a divisive past into a place and memory that is malleable enough to be used for true reconciliation and healing (p. 177) . . . .

The only problem that arises from Cloyd's treatment of prisons in the Civil War and their memory worth mentioning is his seeming bias regarding some of the more modern descriptions of the various sites. While the author very clearly points out the traumas and political agendas motivating the writings of veterans, he has less patience for treatments of the subject that have come in the past approximately fifty years, particularly those that seek to exonerate or glorify the South . . . .

Despite focusing largely on Andersonville, a fact acknowledged by the author in the introduction, Haunted by Atrocity succeeds in weaving context and complexity into a topic that needs more voices. Cloyd's use of Andersonville as a case study provides an intriguing backdrop for the study of Civil War prisoners and their relationship to the contested memories of that conflict. This setting, both in terms of physical location and current monographs, makes this work an excellent tool for effectively comparing and contrasting the evolution of memories as they pertained to various aspects of the war. Haunted by Atrocity offers much food for thought regarding the way historians interpret the war's effect on prisoners, soldiers, civilians, and society, and will surely cast a long shadow on the field of Civil War and memory.

Ellipses made by CWL.
Full Text Source At: H-Net
Second Image Source: Georgia Encyclopedia Online
Third Image Source: spotsylvaniablogspot.com

New and Noteworthy---A Civil War Veteran Artillerist Evaluates The Use and Misuse of Saint Barbara's Thunder

The Artillery Service in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65, John C. Tidball, Lawrence M. Kaplan, editor, Westholme Publishing, 400 pages, 30 b/w illustrations, maps, notes, index, bibliography, $30.00. Release Date:October 28, 2011.

The Artillery Service in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–65, is a comprehensive overview and analysis of the U.S. Army’s field artillery service in the Civil War’s principal battles, written by John C. Tidball, a distinguished artilleryman of the era. The overview, which appeared in the Journal of the Military Service Institution from 1891 to 1893, and nearly impossible to find today, examines the Army of the Potomac, including the battles of Fair Oaks, Gaines’s Mill, Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; the Army of the Tennessee, including the battles of Stones River and Chickamauga, and the Army of the Ohio’s battle of Shiloh.

Tidball, a decorated Civil War veteran and superintendent of artillery instruction for the army, expertly presents the war through an artilleryman’s eyes in explaining the organization, equipping, and manning of the artillery service. His analysis highlights how the improper use of artillery, tying batteries down to relatively small infantry commands that diluted their firepower, seriously undermined the army’s effectiveness until reforms produced independent artillery commands that could properly mass artillery fire in battle.

The Artillery Service in the War of the Rebellion, edited by historian Lawrence M. Kaplan and presented here in one volume for the first time, includes additional material from an unpublished paper Tidball wrote in 1905 which contains further insights into the artillery service, as well as a general overview of the Petersburg campaign. A major new discovery in Civil War scholarship, The Artillery Service in the War of the Rebellion contains essential information that will change earlier historical interpretations of key battles and will be essential reading for all those interested in the war or contemplating writing about it.

John C. Tidball, 1825–1906, was a career army officer and Superintendent of Artillery Instruction at the Artillery School from 1874 to 1881. He served through the Civil War in most of the major campaigns in the Eastern Theater, from the first battle of Bull Run through the siege of Petersburg. He was brevetted five times for gallant and meritorious conduct on the field and ended the war as a brevet major general.

Lawrence M. Kaplan is chief historian of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. He has served as a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C., and as a staff historian at the U.S. Army Field Artillery Center, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He is the author of Homer Lea: An American Soldier of Fortune.

Text Source: Westholme Publishing

News---Lt. Alonzo Cushing's Medal of Honor: Ain't Got No Home, Yet.

Delafield Battling For Cushing Medal, Kelly Smith, Lake Country Reporter, Feb. 23, 2011.

The Common Council will send a letter to the White House as part of the city's effort to accelerate its campaign to become the home of the Medal of Honor that will likely be awarded to Civil War hero Lt. Alonzo Cushing. Cushing is a Delafield native who was one of four brothers for whom Cushing Elementary School and Cushing Park were named. Cushing, a West Point graduate with a brilliant career as a 21-year-old Union officer, is slated to receive the country's highest military award posthumously for his gallant, but fatal, stand against Maj. Gen. George Pickett's charge on Union forces at Cemetery Hill during the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

The letter urges President Barack Obama to approve the secretary of the Army's recommendation that Cushing receive the medal. "Even though he was horribly wounded several times during the largest bombardment in the history of this continent, he refused to leave his command. When his commanding officer told him to move to the rear and get medical attention, he requested permission to move his cannons forward, instead," according to the letter.

Cushing was fatally wounded as he fired his remaining canister charges at the attacking rebel forces, the letter added. "We speak for our community in letting you know how much it would mean to the Cushing descendants, our residents and to Americans who still remember the gallantry of those who fought and died in the name of freedom, for you to sign the approval for the Medal of Honor for Lt. Cushing," the letter states.

The letter was drafted by David Krueger, who was appointed by Mayor Ed McAleer last year to serve as the city's representative in efforts to have the medal donated to the city. Krueger said there are conflicting reports over whether the president's approval is the final step in the process of awarding the medal to Cushing or whether final action is also required by the U.S. Senate.

Cushing apparently has no surviving direct descendents, according to Krueger and city historian Margaret Zerwekh. The 91-year-old Zerwekh launched the campaign 30 years ago to have the Medal of Honor awarded to Cushing for his gallantry in the battle that was a turning point in the Civil War. "She started it by writing Sen. William Proxmire,(who served in the Senate from 1857 to 1989) and then she wrote Sen. Russ Feingold and Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush," Krueger explained in a recent interview.

Feingold announced on March 9, 2010, that the secretary of the Army had approved the medal for Cushing. Since then, Zerwekh and city officials have been urging military and congressional officials to hold the awards ceremony and display the medal in the City of Delafield, where Cushing was born. However, in a recent interview Krueger said that representatives of three other locations might also be vying to host the ceremonies and display the medal. He said there may be distant relatives of Cushing who are campaigning online to have the medal awarded in Fredonia, N.Y., where he spent much of his life. Another potential site is the Military Academy at West Point, where other posthumously awarded Medals of Honor are displayed. Krueger added there is also an online campaign by some Civil War buffs to have the medal awarded to the Gettysburg National Military Park where a $100 million visitors center was built four years ago.

Text Source: Lake Country Reporter
Top Image Source: Cushings Battery
Bottom Image Source: Richmond Howitzers

New and Noteworthy----Lincoln's Kentucky Ally And Prosecutor of The Conspirators

Lincoln's Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Jospeh Holt of Kentucky, Elizabeth Leonard, Univ. Of North Carolina Press, 448 pages, notes, bibliography, index, $40.00, Release Date: October 10, 2011.

Lincoln's Forgotten Ally, Review by William C. Davis, History Book Club.

First impressions are important, and for most people who first see his hard stare and cold features, impressions of Joseph Holt seldom improve upon familiarity. When he is recalled at all, it is as the implacable and merciless prosecutor of the conspirators involved in the kidnapping and assassination plots against Abraham Lincoln. Almost a century and a half after the trial of the criminals, Holt is still largely remembered for allegedly suborning perjury and paying for damning testimony to take the trial beyond just those immediately involved, seeking to implicate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and others in high position in the Lost Cause.

Elizabeth D. Leonard's new Lincoln's Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky is a welcome tonic to long-held prejudices. If Holt was indeed relentless in his pursuit of Lincoln's killers, still he was also firmly opposed to slavery and a staunch supporter of the Union from the outset despite being a Democrat from slave-holding Kentucky.

He served in the lackluster cabinet of the equally lackluster President James Buchanan, first as postmaster general, and then as secretary of war after scandal rocked the administration. When war broke out Holt at first took a commission as colonel of a Union infantry regiment, but in 1862 Lincoln appointed him judge advocate general of the Union army. No one likes a prosecutor as a rule, and as judge advocate, prosecution was Holt's mandate. He pursued the case against General Fitz-John Porter, a popular and capable officer who ran afoul of internal army politics, and then became the guiding force behind the trials of the Lincoln conspirators. The convictions were perhaps his greatest success, though the manner in which they were obtained tarnished his image ever after, and effectively ended any hopes he may have had for a postwar political career.

Lincoln's Forgotten Ally is the first full biography we have had of Holt, and the author is more than equal to the task of taking a two-dimensional figure and putting flesh on his bones. Throughout Holt's life his devotion to the Union comes through, from his efforts to keep Kentucky from seceding, to his work in making the Emancipation Proclamation effective, and his postwar efforts to use his office to make sure that military forces occupying the South during Reconstruction effectively implemented the reforms implicit in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, while combating the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists. When he died in 1894, his body was wrapped in a battle flag that he had kept for that purpose for almost 30 years.

Combining in-depth research and able narrative with measured judgment, Elizabeth D. Leonard has given Holt that necessary third dimension at last, and in the process filled an important void in our understanding of the men and measures that turned Lincoln's vision into a reality.

Text and Image Source: History Book Club

Opinion---Civil War Politics, The Tea Party, And The Decisions That Await Us

The Civil War at 150: The Past In The Present?, David W. Blight, Kansas City Star, October 3, 2011.

Why can’t we just get over the Civil War in America? Why does it still have such a hold on our imagination, on our political habits and rhetoric, on the stories through which we define ourselves as a people and a nation? Why is the Confederacy, a mere four-year experiment in revolution to preserve a slave holding society, still so interesting to so many people? Haven’t we had at least two “Reconstructions” — the first of the 1860s and ’70s, the second the civil rights movement a century later — to solve those issues at the war’s roots?

As we commemorate this most pivotal and transforming event — at the same time the country descends into some of the worst political polarization in modern times — it is important to visit these questions. The stakes are very high. And, ideologically, many of the issues of 2011 are much the same as in 1861. Given the hold the tea party seems to have on the base of the Republican Party, we should take notice when some in the group invoke the Confederate constitution as a model for anti-tax, anti-centralization libertarianism.

First, it was modeled closely after the U.S. Constitution. Second, its advocates may need a reminder of just how desperately the Jefferson Davis administration struggled to forge a centralized government out of the chaos of war, jealous localism, states’ rights and homegrown greed and individualism. Indeed, yesterday’s secessionists and today’s nullifiers have much in common. Both are distinct minorities who have suddenly seized an inordinate degree of power.

One acted in revolution to save a slaveholders’ republic; the other seems determined to render modern federal government all but obsolete for any purpose but national defense. Both claim their mantle of righteousness in the name of “liberty,” privatization and racial exclusion (one openly, the other using code that keeps it largely a white people’s party). Both vehemently claim the authority of the “Founders.” Compromise? Both professed disinterest, indeed seemed to welcome rupture. All this we might have thought all but buried in the mass slaughter of the Civil War. But, alas, history keeps happening.

This month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry chose to announce his presidential candidacy in Charleston, S.C., where secession and the Civil War began. Merely coincidental? This is the man who in 2009 suggested his state might consider “secession” as resistance to federal authority. Perry crafted this line for his now larger national audience: “I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.” What would the United States be if Abraham Lincoln’s administration and the federal government had decided to be “inconsequential” in 1861?

Texas secessionists would have realized their dream back then. But how would have West Texas farmers in Depression-era Haskell County — where Perry grew up — have gotten electrification but from a consequential federal government? Just how would racial segregation have been dismantled there or the rest of the country?

And would we prefer to have federal standards less consequential for food and drugs? Or how many national parks would there be if the feds had simply never bothered to be consequential in land use and natural resources. What kind of air might we be breathing if there were no Clean Air Act? Interstate highways? Social Security? Workplace safety? College loans and the GI Bill, which helped forge an American middle class? An endless list.

We all make the past useful to our personal present, some more than others who might negate a social contract with their fellow humans in the service of private “freedom.” Is it possible that at the heart of this dispute is that the federal government — however cumbersome amid the arcs of history bending forward and backward — has actually been a vehicle for the increase of democracy and equality, and that some Americans resent this?

We live in a society in 2011 not only divided over race and the advent of a black president, over the rights of immigrants, over religious tolerance, over a seemingly permanent state of war, over who and what are legitimate Americans and whether they shall be accorded birthright citizenship. And we have ceaseless debate about the proper relation of federal to state power. That “Union” preserved by the Civil War generation, turning 150 years old, is not a healthy organism.

Yes, the Civil War is rooted in states’ rights. But the significance of any exercise of states’ rights, like any other constitutional doctrine, is always in the issue to which it is employed. Today, states’ rights claims are advanced by many governors and Republican-majority legislatures in the very language of “secession” and “nullification” made so infamous in antebellum America. They are aided and abetted by a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, although the justices have not justified “nullification” by name. What indeed has brought those words back into our political parlance?

A short list of examples among many tells us just how alive some Civil War legacies are in our time. Kentucky has a bill pending to make that state a “sanctuary” from the Environmental Protection Agency. Arizona Republicans want to exempt products made in their state from federal interstate commerce laws. Montana has one bill that would “nullify” the federal Endangered Species Act and another to require the FBI to get a local sheriff’s permission to make any arrests.

Contexts change, of course, but we have a history with these ideas, and it had a terrible result in 1861. Put most directly, either the United States reborn in slave emancipation is based on a social contract, forged and reforged by the new historical imperatives of industrialization and urbanization in the Progressive era and by a horrible economic Depression in the 1930s and a civil rights revolution of the 1960s, all of which for real reasons necessitated the increased exercise of federal power to protect human liberty, welfare and survival, or it is not.

The conservative movement in America, or at least its most radical wing, seems determined to repeal much of the 20th century and even its constitutional and social roots from the transformative 1860s.

The Civil War is not only not over, it can still be lost. As the sesquicentennial ensues in publishing and conferences and on television and countless websites, one can hope that we will pursue matters of legacy and memory with one eye on the past and the other acutely on the present.

The stakes are high.

David W. Blight teaches American history at Yale University and is the author of the just released “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era,” as well as the multiple-award-winning Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.

Text Source: Kansas City Star, October 3, 2011

Top Image Source: Bedford St. Martins Press

CWL: CWL respects and has thoroughly enjoyed Blight's work. Having read his very new American Oracle, CWL's respect has grown even more. American Oracle reviews the Civil War Centennial as perceived by William Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, James Baldwin and others. It is part American literary history, part historiography and part biography. Read in the course of a week, it became a 'couldn't put it down' book. But the U.S. government of 1861, 1931 and 1981 is not the government of 2011. Those governments were all much smaller than the government today which seems not to be able to do levee maintenance well, clean up oil spills well, monitor investment firms well, management a budget well, nor guide the American economy well. Instead of being too big to fail, the national government may be too big to succeed. E.F. Schumacher wrote a book during the 1970s entitled Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. That small truth may be applicable today. By the way, CWL is a 'Wide Awake for Lincoln' man and scoffs at the Lost Cause but has come to understand that the current national government may itself need a 'Reconstruction'.

Preservation News----Lacy House of Chatham Manor on Stafford Heights At Fredericksburg Needs Friends

Chatham May Get 'Friends' Group, Clint Schemmer, Fredericksburg.Com, September 26, 2011.

Lynda Baer admits she fell in love with Chatham at first sight. The beauty of the estate's physical setting, the elegance of its great house and the fascinating tales from the 18th-century home's long history worked their magic on her, starting years ago.

Now, the Fredericksburg woman wants to help ensure others who visit Chatham Manor for the first time can have that sort of magical moment, and feel a connection with the place. Tomorrow evening, Baer and other longtime area residents are inviting people to the Stafford County historic site to toss around ideas and organize a group to help the National Park Service care for the old plantation--the only home in America to have hosted George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. "It's a 'witness building' built before the American Revolution. That's amazing to me; just think about all of the people who have walked across its floors," Baer said.

"The Park Service and volunteers do a great job in interpreting it and keeping it open to the public. But these days, Chatham needs a little more TLC. It needs more money." That's where a Friends of Chatham group could be vital, she believes. A private, tax-deductible entity could fund costly and out-of-the-ordinary repairs, upgrade exhibits and finance special programs, Baer said. "I got to thinking, 'Wouldn't it be fun to start a nonprofit friends group to raise money and give the buildings and grounds a real shot in the arm?'"

That was more than a year ago. The thought took Baer to Mount Rushmore and a national conference where she met people from across the country who are doing all sorts of things to support national parks in their communities. Back home, she roamed all of the Fredericksburg-area Civil War battlefields, talked to friends and neighbors, and consulted local history-minded groups about the work they do. A few weeks ago, Baer and five others--Jane Conner of Stafford, Charlie McDaniel of Fredericksburg, Jim Padgett of Stafford, Sara Poore of Stafford and Scott Walker of Fredericksburg--wrote history-minded people proposing such a group. Tomorrow's meeting starts at 7 p.m.; everyone is welcome. Baer made clear that a new group, should it be established, would have a mission quite different from other local organizations such as the Chatham volunteers, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield or Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields. Pure and simple, it would be focused on fundraising.

Chatham's volunteers put in thousands of hours each year keeping the house--the largest and stateliest in the area--open to the public. FOWB does the same at Ellwood Manor on the Wilderness battlefield, and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore the circa-1790 house. FOFAB supports the park's education programs and has recently partnered with it in publishing a series of snappy, richly illustrated histories of Chancellorsville, Ellwood and the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. "Friends of Chatham would be super-inclusive," said Baer, who has volunteered her time at Chatham since 2005. "But all of its dollars would go to fix up Chatham and support programs there. It wouldn't duplicate what people are already doing."

The need for such a group became clear to Baer, she said, as she guided visitors through its ground-floor rooms and their historical displays. Those exhibits are the same "temporary" ones that the Park Service put in when it acquired the property as a gift from the estate of its last private owners, industrialist John Lee Pratt and his wife, Lillian.

Park Superintendent Russ Smith welcomes the idea, noting the strides that friends groups have made at places such as Ellwood, Gettysburg, Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Philadelphia's revolutionary-era sites. "Ellwood is open only because the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield staffs it for visitors, takes care of its grounds, and provides other programs and services," Smith said. "Because of them, Ellwood went from being a shell of a building to being a very nice introduction to the whole Wilderness battlefield for park visitors. We're very grateful for that."

Similarly, Chatham is kept open because of its dedicated volunteers, he said. Overall, volunteers do 25 percent of the work that gets done in the park, Smith said. "People have the idea that a lot of federal agencies have unlimited resources," he said. "The National Park Service has a $10 billion backlog in unmet maintenance needs. So we really count on friends groups to help the national parks achieve their mission. Chatham has a lot of physical needs, big and small, that we would like to tackle with help from the community."

"Parks' needs outweigh their resources," Smith added. "And there is every indication the federal budget will shrink. The National Park Service, as part of the government, isn't held harmless from budget cuts." With four major battlefields, the park includes 7,342 acres spread over 145 square miles in four counties. Of its $4.5 million annual budget, 98 percent goes to keeping buildings open, maintenance, interpretations and other things, Smith said. That leaves 2 percent for everything else. "For new programs or services, we have to rely on our friends for a lot of help," he said.

Text Source: Fredericksburg.ComTop

Image Source: NewShots.com

Middle Image Source: Trip Advisor.com
Bottom Image Source: Flickr

Forthcoming----Midnight Rising: John Brown And The Raid That Sparked The Civil War

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, Tony Horwitz, Henry Holt and Company, 384 pp, notes, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index, $29.00. Release date: October 25, 2011.

Others have noted that John Brown and his raiders are the stone in the shoe of historians. On October 18, 1859,thirty-six hours after launching 'the great work of of my life' he sat with two dead sons and a saber slash on his skull. Captured in the fire engine house of the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry Virginia, Brown was interogated by future CSA general Governor Henry Wise. "He is a fanatic, but firm, and truthful, and intelligent," Wise told a newspaper correspondent. Virginian and ardent secessionist Edmund Ruffin described Brown as he stood for 15 minutes on his gallows' trapdoor, hooded and a noose around his neck. "He seems to me to have had few equals." Thomas Jackson saw Brown behave "with unflinching firmness." In the past 150 years, in the eyes of others Brown has been viewed as inept, unrealistic, insane, saintly and a willing martyr.

Regarding Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising: John Brown Ant the Raid That Sparked The Civil War, Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts states "There’s a brilliance to this book that put me in mind of Truman Capote'sIn Cold Blood, only Horwitz’s Midnight Rising is set deeper in America’s dark past. With stunning, vivid detail, he has captured the sheer drama and tragedy of John Brown and that bloody raid at Harpers Ferry that helped propel America toward civil war."

Other notable historians are enthusiastic about Midnight Rising. "Tony Horwitz's gifts as a vivid narrator of dramatic events are on full display in this story of John Brown's wars in Kansas and his climactic Harpers Ferry raid in 1859. Brown's family and the men who joined him in these fights against slavery receive a more fully rounded treatment than in any other account. Of special note is the discussion of Brown's self-conscious emulation of Samson by pulling down the temple of bondage and dying a martyr in its ruins" states James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom.

"With his customary blend of rich archival research, on-location color, and lyrical prose, Tony Horwitz has delivered a John Brown book for our time. Part biography, part historical narrative, Midnight Rising is a riveting re-creation of the Harpers Ferry raid, told with an unblinking sense of Brown's tragic place in American history. Writing with enveloping detail and a storyteller's verve, Horwitz shows why Brown was—and still is—so troubling and important to our culture" recommends David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era.

"Beautifully written and sparkling with fresh insights, Midnight Rising resurrects the multiple faces of John Brown: avenging angel or murderous terrorist; slavery's nemesis or deluded fanatic; abolitionist hero or subversive insurrectionist. In this thrilling, magnificent and essential book, Tony Horwitz shows how one man and a single event set the nation on a doomed course where the crimes of a guilty land could only be purged by blood" reports James L. Swanson, author of Manhunt and Bloody Crimes

News---Museum of the Confederacy Celebrates First Anniversary of Ground Breaking At Appomattox With Programming

The Museum of the Confederacy and Appomattox Court House National Historic Park present the Sesquicentennial Civil War Conversation Series of monthly lunchtime talks upstairs at Baine's Books and Coffee in Appomattox, VA. The topics and speakers are October 12, 2011 Jim Godburn, Hospital Systems, November 9, 2011 Linda Lipscomb, Letters and Diaries, December 14, 2011 Candace Hart, Christmas Traditions.

On November 5, 2011 from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM at the Central Virginia Community College's Appomattox Center will host three sessions on music, medicine and emancipation. On music David Wooldridge and Corbin Hayslett from the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park will cover Appomattox’s own Sweeney brothers and Teresa Roane of the Museum of the Confederacy will show copies of sheet music and other materials from the Museum’s archives. On medicine Dr. Peter Houck will lecture on the military hospital system and Jim Godburn of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park will focus on the civilian side of medicine. On emancipation: Reverend Thomas Tillerson will lecture on the different forms of emancipation throughout the war, from Ft. Monroe early on to Appomattox at the end. Pre-registration is required; tickets are $25 per person and $40 per couple. Admission ticket includes a continental breakfast and a boxed lunch.

The $7.5 milliom Museum of the Confederacy project in Appomattox broke ground a year ago on September 23. Upon raising $6 million toward the $7.5 million project, construction began in that autumn and is expected to end by spring 2012. The 11,700-square-foot museum is near the intersection of Virginia 24 and U.S. 460 and will house Civil War artifacts and exhibits. “There’s nowhere better to do it than Appomattox,” said S. Waite Rawls III, CEO and president of the Museum of the Confederacy. “The very word ‘Appomattox’ carries so much meaning in history.”

In 2010, Rawls said the museum’s exhibits would encompass three major areas: the events before the Civil War ended, the surrender at the McLean House and the reunification of the country. Williamsburg-based architect Carlton Abbott has designed the building Rawls has said it will evoke reverence so that visitors “are fully aware they’re on an important spot.”

Members of local governing bodies hope the new museum serves as an economic boost both to the Town of Appomattox and Appomattox County. “What I’m hoping will happen is more hotels and restaurants,” said Gary Tanner, chairman of the Appomattox County Board of Supervisors. “It’s not a big city, it’s relaxed — but it’s definitely where the Civil War ended and people should visit here.” Appomattox Mayor Paul Harvey said the museum would complement the Appomattox Court House National Historic Park, located about a mile from the museum site. “It’s a great connection with the (national) park and we see it as an increase in tourism and the number of people that visit Appomattox each year.”

Members of the museum’s board of trustees personally donated about $2.5 million to the project. “We have put our money where out mouth is,” Rawls said. Another $2.8 million came from the Virginia Tobacco Commission. The Appomattox museum is part of planned multi-site museum system, with three more museums proposed for Fredericksburg, Fort Monroe and Spotsylvania. Though the museum in Appomattox won’t be completed until 2012, Rawls said, museum officials plan to schedule Civil War lectures at libraries and schools in the area as a way to reach out to the community.
“The door may not be open, but we’re here,” he said. “This is all systems go.”

For more information: Museum of the Confederacy or contact Linda Lipscomb at 855-649-1861 x23 or llipscomb@moc.org.

News---The Civil War's Body Count: Was It Three Quarters Of A Million?

Recounting the Dead, J. David Hacker, New York Times, September 20, 2011.

Even as Civil War history has gone through several cycles of revision, one thing has remained fixed: the number of dead. Since about 1900, historians and the general public have assumed that 618,222 men died on both sides. That number is probably a significant undercount, however. New estimates, based on Census data, indicate that the death toll was approximately 750,000, and may have been as high as 850,000.

The notion that we’ve drastically undercounted the Civil War dead is not a new idea: in fact, Francis Amasa Walker, superintendent of the 1870 Census, estimated that the number of male deaths was “not less than 850,000.” So how did the lower number come to be the accepted count — and why does it matter that it was wrong?

Efforts to identify, rebury and count the dead began as soon as the war ended. A precise count proved impossible, however: both armies lacked systematic procedures to identify the dead, wounded and missing in action, as well as an official means to notify relatives of a soldier’s death. Men went missing; battle, hospital and prison reports were incomplete and inaccurate; dead men were buried unidentified; and family members were forced to infer the fate of a loved one from his failure to return home after the war.

United States Census Bureau History StaffFrancis Amasa WalkerInstead, postwar counts of the Union dead drew from regimental muster-out rolls and battle reports. An 1866 report compiled under the direction of Provost Marshal General James B. Fry estimated that 279,689 men in the Union forces died in the war. The estimated death toll increased to 360,222 by the late 19th century, partly as a result of widows and orphans bringing forward information when applying for pensions and survivors’ benefits.

But a direct count of the Confederate dead proved impossible. The destruction of the Confederate army and many of its records limited investigators to partial counts. The Fry report documented just 133,821 Confederate deaths from incomplete returns. That number didn’t change much: since Confederate widows and orphans were ineligible for federal benefits, the estimate was never supplemented with information from survivors.

Francis Amasa Walker’s interest in estimating the number of war-related deaths was a result of the 1870 Census returns. The final Census count put the population at 38,558,371, up just 22.6 percent from the count in 1860. All previous 19th-century censuses had documented decennial growth rates between 32.7 percent and 36.4 percent, a near-constant rate of increase that 19th-century Americans had come to expect and celebrate as a measure of the nation’s strength, progress and future prosperity.

The 31-year-old superintendent was understandably defensive. City boosters in Philadelphia and New York had charged the 1870 enumeration with excessive coverage errors, and President Grant had taken the unusual step of ordering a recount of those cities. Although the second counts failed to turn up many additional residents, the Census remained suspect. After all, if past growth patterns had continued, the population should have been 41.5 million. Had the Census somehow missed 3 million people?

Walker acknowledged that the 1870 census was far from perfect, but he refused to concede that it was more deficient in its coverage of the population than preceding censuses. Instead, he reasoned, the war was to blame. The disappointing growth rate, he countered, was the result of the “notorious and palpable effects of the war, which hampered the growth of the black population, checked immigration, limited marriages and births and led to the direct loss of close to a million men.”

Although the Surgeon General’s Office had at that point documented 304,000 Union deaths, Walker noted that the number was based only on those men who died during their terms of service. About a third of the 285,000 men discharged for disabilities and many of the remaining 2 million men who survived the war, he argued, subsequently died as a result of diseases and wounds contracted while in the Army. “Tens of thousands were discharged to die; tens of thousands died within the first few months after discharge,” he wrote. “Tens of thousands more lingered through the first or second year.” Together with the losses calculated by the Surgeon General’s Office, Walker concluded that “500,000 will surely be a moderate estimate for the direct losses among the Union armies.”

Walker’s estimate of Confederate losses was necessarily rougher. He started with a guess at the number of men participating — about half of the aggregate number participating on the Union side — and his assumption that Confederate soldiers’ longer average terms of service and relative lack of nourishing food, medicine and skilled physicians resulted in a greater risk of death. “Without attempting to deal at all nicely with this subject,” he argued, “it is difficult to see how anyone could, upon reflection, place the losses of the confederate armies at less than 350,000 men.”

Unfortunately, Walker did not pursue the line of inquiry further. After his reappointment as superintendent for the 1880 Census, he had to explain the overly rapid growth of the South’s population between 1870 and 1880 and defend the Census from charges of fraud in the form of over-counting. After a field investigation by the Census geographer Henry Gannett failed to turn up any evidence of fraud, suspicion returned to the 1870 census. Gannett charged that many of the 1870 enumerators were appointed for their Republican political connections, not for their local knowledge or ability to conduct a census. The inevitable result, he concluded, was a large undercount.

This time Walker agreed. Having been successful in pushing through many costly reforms for the 1880 census, one of which was to shift enumeration responsibilities from federal marshals answerable to the Justice Department to a much larger field force selected for their qualifications and answerable to the Census Office, Walker must have felt some measure of justification from Gannett’s report.

But with the census discredited — a crude calculation by the 1890 census office subsequently indicated that the 1870 Census had undercounted the South’s population by 1,260,078 (10 percent of the region’s and 3 percent of the nation’s population) — the opportunity for a more comprehensive examination of the war’s human cost was lost to the political winds. The estimate of 360,222 Union deaths stood.

The count of Confederate dead was, however, heavily debated. William F. Fox, a private citizen and Union army veteran whose 1889 book on regimental losses remains a classic reference work for Civil War historians, relied on battle reports and unofficial estimates to obtain a total of 94,000 Confederate battle deaths. He complained, however, that records were incomplete, especially during the last year of the war, and that battlefield reports likely under-counted deaths (many men counted as wounded in battlefield reports subsequently died of their wounds). In 1900 Thomas L. Livermore, who, like Fox, was a private citizen and Union army veteran, put the number of Confederate non-combat deaths at 164,000, using the official estimate of Union deaths from disease and accidents and a comparison of Union and Confederate enlistment records.

Livermore’s estimate assumed Union and Confederate troops suffered an equal risk of death from disease, a conservative assumption that Walker had explicitly rejected. Despite acknowledging that his estimate of disease mortality likely undercounted Confederate deaths and his concern that Fox’s estimate of battle deaths could “be accepted only as a minimum,” Livermore combined the two estimates to arrive at a total of 258,000 Confederate deaths, a total that remains unrevised more than a century later.

So why should we now doubt that number? For one thing, Fry, Walker, Fox, Livermore and other early investigators were limited by the quality of the data available. Using new quantitative sources, we can now make a more comprehensive and accurate estimate of war-related deaths. With one exception, microfilm copies of the original manuscript returns have been preserved for all censuses since 1850 (the 1890 Census manuscripts were lost in a fire). Census microdata samples created from these returns at the Minnesota Population Center make it possible to estimate undercounts by age and sex in censuses back to 1850 and to construct a Census-based estimate of male deaths caused by the war.

Census undercounts are estimated using multiple censuses and a demographic method known as back projection. The results confirm that, indeed, the 1870 Census was the most poorly enumerated. It was not nearly as bad as Walker feared and as 1890 census officials charged, however: the net undercount was 6.5 percent in 1870, compared to 6.0 percent in 1850, 5.5 percent in 1860, and 3.6 percent in 1880.

War-related losses are estimated by comparing sex differences in mortality during the 1860s with sex differences in mortality in the 1850s and 1870s. The results indicate that the war was responsible for the deaths of about 750,000 men (using less conservative assumptions, the total may have been as high as 850,000). Although that estimate is 100,000 fewer than the 850,000 deaths suggested by Walker, it is closer to his guess than it is to traditional estimate of 618,222 deaths, which has been cited uncritically for too long. If the Census-based estimate is correct, the traditional estimate is about 20 percent too low.

Although there are limitations to using Census data to estimate of Civil War mortality — civilian deaths are too few to be measured accurately, and deaths cannot be reliably divided into Union or Confederate subtotals — the method provides a more complete assessment of the war’s human cost. In addition to the men who died during their terms of service, the Census-based estimate of male mortality includes men who died between the date of their discharge and the 1870 Census from diseases and wounds contracted during the war, as well as non-enlisted men who died in guerilla warfare and other war-related violence. It excludes, however, men dying from war-related causes who would have died under the normal mortality conditions of the late 19th century. This final group, included in all direct counts of the Civil War dead, represents about 80,000 men.

So what? Above a certain count, do the numbers even matter? Well, yes. The difference between the two estimates is large enough to change the way we look at the war. The new estimate suggests that more men died as a result of the Civil War than from all other American wars combined. Approximately 1 in 10 white men of military age in 1860 died from the conflict, a substantial increase from the 1 in 13 implied by the traditional estimate. The death toll is also one of our most important measures of the war’s social and economic costs. A higher death toll, for example, implies that more women were widowed and more children were orphaned as a result of the war than has long been suspected.

In other words, the war touched more lives and communities more deeply than we thought, and thus shaped the course of the ensuing decades of American history in ways we have not yet fully grasped. True, the war was terrible in either case. But just how terrible, and just how extensive its consequences, can only be known when we have a better count of the Civil War dead.

Sources: Drew Gilpin Faust, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War”; Joshua B. Howard, North Carolina Civil War Death Study; Francis Amasa Walker, Report of the Superintendent of Census to the Secretary of the Interior, Dec. 26, 1871; Henry Gannett, “The Alleged Census Frauds in the South”; Francis Amasa Walker, Documents Relating to the Taking of the Census of South Carolina, Oct. 5, 1880; Robert P. Porter, Henry Gannett and William C. Hunt, “Progress of the Nation, 1790 to 1890″; William F. Fox, “Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865″; Thomas L. Livermore, “Number and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-65″; Steven Ruggles et al., “Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.”

J. David Hacker is an associate professor of history at Binghamton University, SUNY.

Text Source New York Times September 20, 2011

Image Source: Civil War Librarian

New: A Pocket History of the Civil War

A Pocket History of the Civil War: Citizen Soldiers, Bloody Battles and the Fight for America's Future, Martin F. Graham, Osprey Publishing, 248 pp., bibliographpic notes, 54 charts, 19 b/w illustrations, appendices, index, $15.95.

With 98 quotations from participants, 54 charts, 80 quiz questions, and 56 entries in a glossary A Pocket History of the Civil War is practical and reaches a wide variety of readers.

The charts include the organization, uniforms, ranks, equipment, muskets/rifles/ carbines and pistols loading procedures of both the infantry and cavalry. Artillerymen are likewise covered. And that's just the first chapter. Twenty-two battles and campaigns are covered in the next four chapters with charts of commanders, engagements in the campaign, and casualties. The chapters' text is clear and concise.

Additional chapters offer the 1860 census, total casualty figures, number of major battles and engagements in each state, greatest percentage of regimental losses by state, nunbers of soldiers engaged by theatre, roles of commanders in battle, and higher ranking generals killed in battle. A chapter on prisons considers paroles and exchange issues, a listing of 12 Federal and 11 Confederate with population and death figures. The chapters' text is direct and extends the figures used by the charts.

Ten brief discussions of interesting characters and events include Sam Davis of Tennessee, Henry and Clara Rathbone [Lincoln's guests at Ford's Theatre], Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina, Ambrose Bierce of the 9th Indiana, The Great Locomotive Chase of Georgia, Federal drummer John Clem, and the reunion at the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg among others.

Of course, something is always left out of a pocket history. In this case, Forts Henry and Donelson, a consideration of the Federal blockade, the fall of New Orleans, emancipation issues, the Lincoln assasination, and any mention of Reconstruction. On the other hand, there are 183 notes for particular sources used in the text. Each of the charts relating to prisons receive a bibliographic citation. Overall new and general readers of Civil War history are well served by Osprey's Publishing's A Pocket History of the Civil War: Citizen Soldiers, Bloody Battles and the Fight for America's Future.

HNet Review: Were Southern Military Academies Making Southerners Into Yankees?

Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old South, Jennifer R. Green, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Illustrations. xiii + 300 pp. $80.00.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Thomas Perry (Purdue University), Published on H-Education (July, 2011)

In her 2008 book, Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old South, Jennifer R. Green seeks to fill a gap in the historiography of middle-class formation in the antebellum United States, as well as in the history of education. Compiling demographic data on over one thousand cadets who attended state or private institutions in the Old South during the 1840s and 1850s, Green contends that military education is one location to view the development of the middle class in regional and national terms. Families from the middle ranks of southern society--largely nonmanual, nonagricultural professionals--“mirrored their northern counterparts in leveraging education to develop professional occupations” (p. 2).

Taking advantage of funding opportunities and a nonclassical curriculum, southern, middle-class families sent their sons to such academies as the Virginia Military Institute, the South Carolina Military Academy, and the Kentucky Military Institute, among others, to attain an education with the hope that it could promote both social stability and social mobility. Many cadets, she claims, adopted northern, middle-class values stressing industry, morality, and self-regulation, yet at the same time their vision of manhood retained some southern variations. The emerging middle class in the South never threatened the southern elite’s dominance of the region, she insists, which was based on slave ownership and landholdings. Instead, members of the middling rank hoped to separate themselves “from the yeomanry, plain folk, and any developing urban working class” (p. 181). The benefits of a military education, however, coupled with alumni networks and the increased professionalization of certain occupations, does suggest that the standards for mobility and social status were changing during these years.

Green argues that the middle class in the antebellum United States did not possess a class consciousness. Rather, they were a class “in itself,” whose members realized they held similar economic, occupational, and behavioral characteristics with a larger group of people but lacked a shared sense of identity. She agrees with much of Jonathan Daniel Wells’s book, The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861 (2004) but she furthers his analysis by “defining the group more specifically” to investigate what social mobility, status, education, and professionalism meant to the middling ranks of southern society (p. 20).

Although one-third of military cadets’ fathers labored in agriculture, most worked in professional occupations--“they were attorneys, physicians, and ministers, in order of frequency”--and looked to military education to instill discipline and useful knowledge in their sons to solidify or enhance their social status (p. 25). They were successful, Green asserts, as matriculates from the academies were more prevalent in professional occupations than their fathers.

The book review is continued at the following link. Text Source: HNet/HCivilWar

CWL: With an $80 price tag, readers may wish to go to their local library and request it through inter-library loan.

News---Gettysburg NMP Adds The Josiah Benner Farm To the Battlefield Park

NPS Acquires Benner House, Mark Walters, Gettysburg Times, September 22, 2011.

The Gettysburg National Military Park announced its most recent property acquisition Wednesday afternoon, the Josiah Benner House in Straban Township. Purchased in May, GNMP took possession of the nine-acre, 980 Old Harrisburg Road property Monday. In 2001, the park purchased the three-acre parcel next door, which includes the Josiah Benner barn, but this $405,000 purchase of the farmhouse and springhouse completed the package.

The farmhouse, springhouse and barn are all contributing features to the park's listing on the National Register of Historic Places according to GNMP spokesperson Katie Lawhon. Lawhon said that the property was previously a private residence and that billboards removed from the site in June. "Even though there is a Congressionally authorized boundary of the park, inside that boundary there is still more than 900 acres of non-protected lands," said Katie Lawhon of the 5,989 acre park.

Lawhon said that GNMP received help from the Civil War Trust, America's largest non-profit organization devoted to the preservation of America's Civil War battlefields. In a 24-year span, the Civil War Trust has worked to preserve more than 30,000 acres of battlefield land at 110 battlefields in 20 states.

"It's a really exciting property," said Civil War Trust spokesperson Mary Koik of the Josiah Benner property. "Not just the land itself but the historic structures that played a role in the battle and its aftermath." According to Lawhon, the Josiah Benner Farmhouse predates the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. Lawhon said that the house's location on Old Harrisburg Road placed it in line of advance by Gen. Jubal Early's Confederate Division on the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the first of the three-day battle.

"In an effort to attack and outflank Union positions on and near Barlow's Knoll, Confederates had to pass around these solid obstacles," Lawhon said of the two-story brick houseset on a stone foundation and the two-and-a-half story stone, Pennsylvania Barn. "The walls of the buildings provided cover for skirmishers of both sides during various portions of the July 1 conflict. At the close of fighting on that day, the house and barn were pressed into use as temporary Confederate field hospitals. Several Union soldiers and officers were also carried there for treatment."

Lawhon added that the one-story springhouse just east of the farmhouse was likely used as a temporary cover for skirmishers of both armies and would have provided water and "refrigerated" food for wounded soldiers in the hospitals of the Benner house and barn. Lawhon said the National Park Service works closely with the Civil War Trust in acquiring historically significant properties, primarily from willing sellers. She said the poor economy and housing market contributed to the recent selling of many properties.

In March, GNMP purchased the 95 acre Gettysburg Country Club in Cumberland Township for $1.4 million, protecting what is now known as the Emanuel Harman Farm from future development. In June, the Adams County Commissioners sponsored the Civil War Trust for two grants totaling approximately $217,000 to partially fund the acquisition of two properties along the Baltimore Pike - 1200 and 1230 Baltimore Pike - which are part of what once was Henery Spangler's farm, where scores of Union and Confederate dead were buried.

Text Source: Gettysburg Times
Image Source: Gettysburg Daily

News--- From Wills and Court Records A Database Of Virginia Slave Names Emerges

Database Of Virginia Slave Names Made Public, Linda Wheeler, Washington Post, September 15, 2011.

Names of people enslaved in Virginia, pulled from some of the Virginia Historical Society ’s 8 million documents, have been compiled into Unknown No Longer, a searchable database now available to the public.

The online tool includes more than 1,500 names found in letters, wills, court records and other sources. Each name is connected to a digital copy of the original document in which it was found. Society spokeswoman Jennifer Guild said the work of extracting the information began more than a year ago. “It is possible these names have never been seen before,” she said. “This is the first time we have published them.”

The database can be searched by keywords such as name, occupation and plantation. “For instance, if all you knew was your great-great-great-grandmother was named Ann and she had been a slave in Virginia, that is enough to begin a search with this database,” Guild said. “Or, if all you have is a plantation name, you go to that name and you will find what we have on the slaves who lived there.”

It is a continuing work: the society will add new information to the database as it continues to go through the 8 million documents in its collection. This is the society’s first database that specifically compiles names of enslaved people from Virginia and is taken from their own materials. In the past, all that was available to anyone searching the society’s holdings online was a list of the titles of books or other published material that contained slave-related information; anyone wanting to know more about what those papers contained would have to go to the society to do the research.

Text Caption: Ambrotype from Virginia Historical Society's collection shows an unidentified woman. The organization has launched Unknown No Longer, a database of slave names. (Courtesy Virginia Historical Society)

Text and Image Source: Washington Post September 15, 2011

News---John Brown's Gallows Site For Sale

For Sale: Historic Mansion On Site Of John Brown's Hanging, Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 11, 2011.

A few weeks before Christmas of 1859, John Brown, the fiery abolitionist convicted for treason, swung from a gallows in Charles Town, W.Va.

John Gibson, who commanded the first troops to battle Brown after his ill-fated raid on a federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, built a mansion on that historic ground more than 30 years later. Now, the five-bedroom, 6 1/2-bath home, which has undergone a restoration overseen by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will be offered for sale today in an Internet auction that starts at 6 p.m. EST. The minimum bid is $950,000. The website is historichometeam.net.

Located on a one-acre corner lot, the home was built in 1891 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Current owners Gene Perkins, a contractor and entrepreneur, and his wife, JoAnn, are moving to Florida. A previous owner, Mrs. Augustin Jacquelin Todd, donated it to the trust in 1982. In November of 1989, the Perkinses submitted a successful sealed bid to buy the property from the National Trust.

The Perkinses finished the third floor, installed a gourmet kitchen, a new heating system and upstairs plumbing. They also restored elegant woodwork and a widow's walk. They put in an outdoor pool. All of the mansion's eight fireplaces are wood-burning. There's one in each bedroom. "It's been on the market for probably a year," said Gary Gestson, who works for a marketing firm in Gaithersburg, Md. and believes the mansion would make a great bed and breakfast. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, he added, had to approve all restoration plans before the Perkinses began the work.

"They did a lot of restoration. There were rooms that had been bricked over. They opened up the house. They are responsible for bringing it back," said Mr. Gestson, who has toured the property. His favorite space is the large dining room. "There is china in the china cupboard that was designed for the house," he said, adding that the china will be sold with the property. The main floor has 11-foot-high ceilings. On the second floor, ceilings are nearly 10 feet high.

A two-story barn being used as a garage could be turned into guest accommodations, too. The front of the property has wrought-iron fencing while a 6-foot brick wall at the back affords privacy. In the closet of one bedroom, there are signatures and notes from past visitors, including Amy Vanderbilt, Mr. Gestson added.

The mansion is two blocks from Main Street in Charles Town, an hour-and-a-half drive from Washington, D.C. Laid out by and named for George Washington's brother, Charles Town has thoroughbred racing, casinos, outdoor activities and Lollapaloosa, a music festival. Col. Charles Washington's home, Happy Retreat, was built in 1790 and still stands.

If the Perkinses do not receive the price they want, they can cancel the auction. They may consider financing up to $1.5 million. There is a white plaque on the property marking the historic execution. Every five years, re-enactors recreate the drama of John Brown's execution, minus the hanging, of course. But there's a gallows in the background.

Image Caption: Abolitionist John Brown was hanged on the grounds of this home in Charles Town, W.Va., in 1859.

Text and Image Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 11, 2011.

New and Noteworthy---The Civil War, A Visual History: Rare Images and Tales of the War Between the States.

The Civil War, A Visual History: Rare Images and Tales of the War Between the States, no author, Paragon Press, 225 pages, index, photocredits, 2011, $14.95.

Amazingly, The Civil War, A Visual History: Rare Images and Tales of the War Between the States has no author because it is an extensive collection of primary text sources with period illustrations. 100% of the text is authored by those who participated in the Civil War, as soldiers or civilians.

For example, there are three highly detailed images of the Great Seal of the Confederacy, the resolution to create the Great Seal, and the letter of authenticity Langham Chambers Company of London, England that designed and engraved it. Two paragaphs of South Carolina Governor Robert Haynes' inaugural speech are presented along side a Lincoln campaign button. Federal accounts of life in Andersonville Prison appear with period photographs of the camp. Sketches by soldiers and news journalists, engravings from newspapers, carte d'vistes, front pages of Harper's Weekly and other newspapers, and posters that include the regulations for training camps.

Nearly all the photographs, documents and letters are from the Library of Congress. Some are familar and have appeared in many books and magazines. Others have been less often seen. Many have been enlarged and cover two pages, which reveals greater details. Overall, as a coffee table book, The Civil War, A Visual History: Rare Images and Tales of the War Between the States, is satisfactory and will capture the attention of those between the ages of 8 and 80 whose attention is being drawn to the Civil War's sesquicentennial.

New----National Geographic Offers Exploring History With Lincoln and the CSS Hunley Featured

What propelled Abe Lincoln from the obscurity of frontier life to leading the nation, and becoming the most written about president of the United States? Understanding the young Abraham Lincoln -- his early life, influences and motivations -- takes center stage in “Exploring History,” a new National Geographic magazine special issue. The history-themed magazine, priced at $6.99, will be available on newsstands beginning Sept. 13, or by ordering online at www.ngm.com/history.

Offering a feast for history lovers, the lavishly illustrated special issue also probes the inner workings of the Roman Legion, examines Aztec Emperor Moctezuma’s tragic fall, follows Joan of Arc’s incredible teenage journey and uncovers the little-known story of the medical heroes who stemmed the tide of bubonic plague in San Francisco a century ago. Additionally, there are articles on the earliest Egyptian pyramids, the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley and the life of Viking raiders, as well as listings of the best new history books, TV specials and apps.

For the Lincoln cover image, illustrator Tim O’Brien peeled back layers of age to create a never-before-seen portrait of the young, future president as he may have appeared in his mid-30s, long before the war years and the presidency furrowed his brow.

In cover article “Born Radical,” writer K.M. Kostyal looks for clues to understanding Lincoln’s character in his early years. A poor, rawboned, self-educated frontier boy, Lincoln had a sharp intellect and a natural streak of independence. As a youth, he went against the grain when he saw fit: In a world of overt religiosity, he was a skeptic; in a family where his father abhorred bookishness, he was a “constant and stubborn reader”; in a society preoccupied with physical labor, he disdained it; and in a rough-cut male culture, he didn’t smoke, chew, curse, gamble or drink.

Inordinately ambitious, Lincoln had a clear sense that he was destined for high things. A legal colleague said three things propelled Lincoln toward greatness: a super-magnanimity that made him a very poor hater; deep intelligence; and a profound sense of justice. Illustrated with photographs, drawings and a map from 1857, the article includes a timeline of major moments in Lincoln’s life and a sidebar profiling him as a family man.

Text And Image Source: National Geographic

CWL: Last night, CWL bought it from a supermarket magazine rack and spent some time with it. Fine text, well illustrated, good maps. A social studies teacher's delight. Subscriptions are six issues for $18.00. Seems a good buy.

New---Handy and Dandy: The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War, William L. Barney, Oxford University Press, 2001, revised and updateted 2011, 378 pp., b/w illustrations, maps, index, appendices, $18.95.

With about 250 entries, a general chronology, a list of museums and historic sites, a list of websites and a bibliography, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War is a fine resource at a reasonable price. The binding is well made and the book opens easily and the spine does not crease. The illustrations are on nearly every page and support the text. Cartoons, sheet music, portraits, sketches, posters, flags and black and white period photographs are among the illustrations, some of which are familar and others are those that are less frequently seen.

Among the entries are military commanders, political leaders, legislation, social groups, advocates, ideologies, and documents. The range of the entries run from antebellum to postbellum subjects. How about the Kenner Mission? Yes, Jefferson Davis sent Duncan Kenner to Europe in January 1865 with authority to state that the Confederacy would emancipate its laves in return for the immediate recognition of it exstence as a legal government. A surprise to Confederate ambassadors abroad, they gave the opportunity to England and France, which rejected it. Upon learning of the rejection, Davis lobbied for the for a Confederate programs of arming and then freeing slaves.

What was the role of gold during the war? What role did political dissent play in the Union and the Confederacy? What was the platform of the Constititional Union party during the 1860 election? What was the role of the U.S. Congress' Committee on the Conduct of the War? These questions, as well as others, are addressed in the The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War. Each entry is concluded with 'Further Reading' that mentions of the standard books on the topic. Also, See Also guides users to related topics. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War well serves both casual and frequent readers of Civil War history.

1861 News---Letters To The Editor From Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh Regiments Aim For Quality Civil War Gear, Len Barcousky, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 2011.

Harrisburg's Camp Curtin, set up by and named for Pennsylvania Gov. Andrew Curtin, did not meet the standards of Col. Samuel Black, commander of the 62nd Pennsylvania Volunteers, when the regiment shipped out from Pittsburgh in the summer of 1861. So Black "scoured the country around" the state capital and found "the most beautiful camp ground in the country" for his men, according to a report in the August 14 edition of The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette and Commercial Journal.

The men set up their tents and dug their latrines on farmland just east of Harrisburg belonging to Simon Cameron. Cameron was a Pennsylvania politician recently named secretary of war by Abraham Lincoln, and the soldiers named the site Camp Cameron in his honor. As was common during the Civil War, the report to the newspaper on the activities of the 62nd was submitted by a soldier in the unit, identified only by his initials: J.T.C

"Our tents are of good material, afford ample protection against rain, and are situated just west of a fine woodland of stately forest trees," he reported. A nearby stream provided water for bathing and washing clothes. The camp was laid out with names familiar to soldiers from Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, now the North Side. They included East and West commons and Federal and Liberty streets.

Their commander, Pittsburgh-born Samuel Black, had fought in the Mexican War and later became territorial governor of Nebraska. He was a no-nonsense officer. "No obscene language or swearing whatever is tolerated," J.T.C. wrote. "Discipline of a very strict character is enforced, and six or seven men are detailed every morning to clear away all rubbish, 'level the ground,' pull up roots &c." Cameron himself made a brief visit to the camp, "promising to send our uniforms, and equipments, &c, from Washington city directly."

Conditions were much less promising during the early months of the war for another local regiment: the 9th Pennsylvania Reserve Corps. The unit, primarily Allegheny County volunteers, was assigned to Camp Tennally, northwest of Washington, D.C. The Pennsylvania Legislature had promised the men that they "were to be equipped in a superior manner," a soldier correspondent wrote in the August 17 edition of the Gazette. He identified himself with the single initial "K."

Instead "they were armed with old Harper's Ferry altered muskets, the general appearance of which would indicate that they were manufactured by some backwoods blacksmith and wagon maker," he wrote. "Not one bayonet out of every dozen can be fixed or unfixed in under fifteen minutes," he claimed. He wrote that the musket barrels were so thin that "after firing three or four rounds they become so hot, it is almost impossible to hold them ..."

In an effort to cover up the defects in the outmoded weapons, the muskets had been given a fresh coat of paint. The inadequacies of their guns placed the men in danger from nearby Confederate forces. "I really wished a few days since, when on picket duty, almost in sight of the enemy, that Curtin himself occupied the position of the men in the ranks," K wrote. The Allegheny County men risked being "picked off at the distance of a thousand feet, when our beautiful, well painted muskets would not reach half that distance. "K" closed with a challenge to Pennsylvania legislators and the governor. "If Govenor Curtin wishes to redeem his character ... let him at once procure with the millions at his disposal, ten thousand stand of improved arms.

Text and Image Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.com

Image Caption: Andre Curtin, Governor of Pennsylvania

New---Two From The History Press: Antietam and African American Federals at Petersburg

Battle of Antietam: The Bloodiest Day, Ted Alexander, History Press, softcover, $19.95.

From The Publisher: The heavy fog that shrouded Antietam Creek on the morning of September 17, 1862, was disturbed by the boom of Federal artillery fire. The carnage and chaos began in the East Woods and Cornfield and continued inexorably on as McClellan's and Lee's troops collided at the West Woods, Bloody Lane and Burnside Bridge. Though outnumbered, the Rebels still managed to hold their ground until nightfall. Chief historian of the Antietam National Battlefield Ted Alexander renders a fresh and gripping portrayal of the battle, its aftermath, the effect on the civilians of Sharpsburg and the efforts to preserve the hallowed spot. Maps by master cartographer Steven Stanley add further depth to Alexander's account of the Battle of Antietam.

Ted Alexander is the chief historian at the Antietam National Battlefield, where he has worked for more than twenty-six years. He is the author, editor or contributor to ten books on the Civil War and other aspects of American history. Ted is also the author of more than two hundred articles and book reviews for publications such as the Civil War Times, Blue and Gray, North and South and the Washington Times.

The Battle of New Market Heights: Freedom Will Be Theirs by the Sword, James S. Price, History Press, 128 pages, softcover, $19.95.

From the publisher: In the predawn darkness of September 29, 1864, black Union soldiers attacked a heavily fortified position on the outskirts of the Confederate capital of Richmond. In a few hours of desperate fighting, these African American soldiers struck a blow against Robert E. Lee's vaunted Army of Northern Virginia and proved to detractors that they could fight for freedom and citizenship for themselves and their enslaved brethren. For fourteen of the black soldiers who stormed New Market Heights that day, their bravery would be awarded with the nation's highest honor--the Congressional Medal of Honor. With vivid firsthand accounts and meticulous tactical detail, James S. Price brings the Battle of New Market Heights into brilliant focus, with maps by cartographer Steven Stanley.

James S. Price is a Civil War historian, blogger and educator who specializes in the history of African American Union soldiers. He has worked for many Civil War sites and museums, including Petersburg National Battlefield, Pamplin Historical Park and the American Civil War Center at historic Tredegar. In 2009, he received his MA in military history from Norwich University. For the past three years, he has dedicated himself to the study of the Battle of New Market Heights and has sought to raise awareness of this important battle by leading specialized tours of the preserved portions of the battlefield, lecturing throughout the metro Richmond area on the topic and writing about different aspects of the battle on his weblog. It is his hope that by raising public awareness of the services rendered by United States Colored Troops that the fields on which they fought will be preserved for future generations.