Stephen Davis

Over the years, many distinguished speakers and authors have informed and enlightened its members on a wide variety of subjects related to the Civil…

entertainment and quotability (reader response) are just three of them.

That’s why Robert Patrick Bender, ed., Worthy of the Cause For Which They Fight: The Civil War Diary of Brigadier General Daniel Harris Reynolds…

consider, I value John J. Hennessy’s Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas (1993, Simon & Schuster) as one of my very…

T Confederate history is, unfortunately, being erased, covered up, hushed, closeted, and even rewritten in our current culture. In his time, Dr.…

They both wrote counterfactual narratives about Confederate victory in the American Civil War.

lad’s education, which included a stint at VMI. With the Institute’s Corps of Cadets, he charged at New Market and received a lieutenant’s…

Civil War with these words from Sherman in March 1864, just as he closes his second volume with them. Fort Sumter to Perryville (published in 1958)…

he had left in February 1861 to become President of the newly formed Confederacy. Shelby Foote begins the second volume of his The Civil War with…

Like you, probably, I grew up reading Mrs. Chesnut’s Diary from Dixie decades ago in a paperback reprint of the 1949 edition, as prepared by Ben Ames…

out Shelby Foote’s trilogy.1

ou might as well whistle “Old Dan Tucker” to a hurricane (to use the vernacular of the old time) as to write about the Army of Northern Virginia…

Pollard’s Southern History of the War, a 1,255-page tome whose heft alone discourages reading for many students.1

Ace Pyro LLC........................................................ 46 American Battlefield Trust...................................... 1 American…

Johnston: A Reappraisal” (January 1966), argues that Johnston had the potential to be a great general, but the circumstances of his several commands…

A curious calculation has passed through our mind, based on this information.

In their writing, historians have a way of being oblique. But they can also be quite direct, as when Prof. E. Merton Coulter once declared that when…

Richard Barksdale Harwell (1915–1988) was a distinguished librarian, bibliographer and historian.

He was so depressed that, referring to his work, he confided to his longtime friend, “I would consign every line of it to eternal oblivion for one…

Those behind them went madly rushing on, the drivers being quite indifferent whether glory or disgrace led the way, provided they could find it. In…

General Cooper reported to President Davis that he counted 233,586 men present for duty. No one knew the Yankees’ numbers, but they could be guessed…

when “Dixie” came around. “The whole ship would be in an uproar of enthusiasm” he recalled, “sometimes as many as a hundred voices joining in the…

outright, wounding many more & taking 11 to 1200 prisoners—A brilliant & important victory, achieved by ⅓ of our force & with comparatively light…

Soon “he grew more than usually loquacious. The truth is,” Douglas noticed, “the General was incipiently tight.”

traveled to Montgomery and let Dick Taylor in on the plan. (Taylor didn’t like it either.)3

Lo Armistead is famous for leading his brigade to the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge in the third day of Gettysburg. Lesserknown is the charge the day…

which has been won by the smaller over the larger force, where the inequality in numbers was so great that every participant in the struggle must…

who had opposed secession. In talking with him Fanny worked at being considerate. Once, after such a conversation, she confided privately,

May 19-21, Virginia. Period Firearms Competition The North-South Skirmish Association 147th National Competition near Winchester. Over 3,000…

General Scott was surely disappointed, as Dowdey observes, “It was known that Scott was finagling to hold a number of Southern officers in the army…

St. Albans Bank, pulled pistols, and stuffed money into satchels. One resident asked a raider if private property in town would be spared. The Rebel…

prophesied that seceding states could avoid bloodshed and get their share of federal property as well. Indeed, a united South would present such a…

the New York Times, Edward C. Stedman of the New York World, and of course C. Carleton Coffin of the Boston Journal.14 Writing at Centreville on July…

he confines his attention to the experiences of riverboating; he felt a genuine kinship with both men and locale. For instance, Twain takes…

Quick! Name a prominent historian of the Western theater!

Douglas Southall Freeman deemed it one of “the basic reference works” on the war.1 Ralph Newman and E. B. Long included it the same way in their…

“Timrod could not carry a musket for the land he loved, but he did something better and far more valuable.

On Feb. 28, 1865, at • Pageland, South Carolina (near the North Carolina line) a Union soldier, Pvt. Robert Woodruff, 30th • Illinois, was found…

Left: presented this informative display related items he dug in Savannah, Ga., including relics groups.

$1 off with this ad 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign presents a riveting collection of George Barnard’s camera work. Most of…

cruel punishments for various infractions. Yellow fever, malaria, scurvy, and diarrhea posed serious issues for the prisoners and the hospital…

Grip is made from spirally cut wood with leather cover and wire wrap. Much of the leather has chipped away due to the dry environment where it was…

remain in position until reinforced. As he waited, the Union feint was activated; when Capt. William Duff’s 18th Miss. company skirmished with the…

100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign presents a riveting collection of George Barnard’s camera work. Most of the photographs are…

I first visited Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle on Memorial Day weekend in 1998. My family had spent the holiday camping on the beach at the Outer Banks…

100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign presents a riveting collection of George Barnard’s camera work. Most of the photographs are…

392 page, full-color book, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book.

Lincoln signed the bill into a law that stipulated a fine of up to $10,000 and a two-year term in prison as the potential punishment for accepting…

looks as if McClellan was pushing the enemy hard to the river.”

1943, 1952. Start your study of Civil War soldiers with Bell Wiley. Outdated in some respects, but the wealth of first-hand accounts and quotations…

Emerging Civil War is pleased to honor Jack Melton with its Brig. Gen. Thomas Greely Stevenson Award for 2020. Melton and his wife, Peggy, own and…

denying the rights of newly freed blacks. The third disadvantage was especially prevalent during his second term. As race relations intensified, and…

Civil War soldiers’ letters are still being discovered, 150 years after the conflict ended. Letters from Florida soldiers are especially rare, given…

or book, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book.

or book, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book.

100 Significant Civil War Photographs – Charleston in the War. By Stephen Davis & Jack W. Melton Jr. Maps, photos, illustrations, bibliography…

The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson. By Lolita Buckner Inniss. Notes, Bibliography, and Index. 272 pp., 2019. Fordham…

Lieutenant and Drill Master at a Georgia Camp of Instruction. He was already serving, but his official appointment date was July 29, 1862. He…

Civil War: What Your History Teacher Didn’t Teach You Philip Leigh, U. S. Grant’s Failed Presidency Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., The Greatest Lynching in…

Interestingly, both men were separated by thousands of miles during the period of 1844–1853. King served as a minister to France, while Buchanan…

Look at the cover of this paperback (price 95 cents!) and you’ll know just how long I’ve been reading Sam Watkins’ famous memoir, “Co. Aytch.”

Some notable titles in Civil War writing are listed below. Match the book with the author.

Voices of the Civil War Series, Peter Carmichael, Series Editor.

So they’re talking about removing the seventh U.S. president from the twenty-dollar-bill because he was a slaveowner. What about taking the face of…

George C. Rable, DamnYankees! Demonization & Defiance in the Confederate South. Louisiana State University Press, 2015.

I think I learned the word funky from Rockford (James Garner) back in the ‘70s.

Most readers wishing to bone up on Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, or check on a specific fact about his life, will probably turn first to…

Brigade: Diehard Western Confederates

if any papers ever produced a more thorough sensation than did the letters written by Major Smith during the War.”5

Irenus Watson Landingham was born in Alabama in 1839. His family moved to the vicinity of Houston, Texas, before the war. Landingham enlisted in the…

Lincoln’s Final Hours: Conspiracy, Terror, and the Assassination of America’s Greatest President. By Kathryn Canavan. Photos, notes, index…

“Confederate history has survived its eras of apology, of brag and bombast, of pietistic biography, of de-bunking, of reappraisal and revisionism,”…

When an historical event is passing into legend, it helps to have a poem written about it.

In my column last March I wrote about The Bell Irvin Wiley Reader, a collection of the great Civil War historian’s writings assembled by Hill Jordan…

The American Heritage Short History

Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln

Following the battle of Franklin, Nov. 30, 1864, Confederate Gen. John B. Hood had few tactical options when Union Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s army…

Quick: what do Winston Churchill and Newt Gingrich have in common?

J. William Jones, Personal Reminiscences

In our last column, we related how Douglas Southall Freeman’s “Confederate Book Shelf,” published in 1939, led Ralph G. Newman of the Abraham Lincoln…

“What shall I read next?”

Civil War soldiers’ writing can be judged by any number of criteria. Accuracy and factual detail (content); intelligence and articulateness (style)…

Indispensability is measured by the distance of an item from one’s desk. In my case, the indispensable Nevins, Robertson and Wiley, eds., Civil War…

What makes a good battle book?

Is Cooke’s Wearing a memoir, a history, or a romantic novel? Well,

Civil War historians have estimated that over 70,000 books have been published pertaining to the “the late unpleasantness” since the rebellion…