Civil War Times

CONGRATULATIONS on another fine issue of Civil War Times! I am particularly impressed by Dana B. Shoaf’s piece on artist James E. Taylor’s prison paintings, and the part about Union veteran Ezra Ripple projecting them as “magic lantern plates” is a g

Born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey never knew the exact year of his birth, but he fled slavery in his teens and remade himself as the brilliant activist, author, and orator Frederick Douglass. Thi

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov Civil War–era soldier or occupation newspapers can offer valuable insights about questions that motivated men to fight. A number of these can be found at “Chronicling America,” an online database of newspapers (1789-1963) d

» Battlefields Burning This past April, as part of an ongoing National Park Service effort to restore battlefield viewsheds to their Civil War–era appearance, maintain wildlife habitat, and control invasive species, carefully controlled burns took pl

WHEN HE CAN’T SLEEP at night, William Griffing sometimes will slip out of bed, walk several steps to his second-floor home office and plop his weary body into a brown, wooden chair in front of his Mac. He’s surrounded by historical artifacts and oddi

THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG STOOD SUPREME in its ability to spark postwar controversies among officers in both the Confederate and Union high commands. Infighting among former generals of the Army of Northern Virginia has garnered the most attention fro

WES COWAN worked as professor and museum curator before starting Cowan’s Auctions in 1995. A boyhood love of collecting arrowheads led to a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Michigan, and all the while he nurtured an interest in collecti

WHITE CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS wrote thousands of letters that today help us understand their motivations, fears, and hopes. But the army of African-American slaves in Confederate camps (P. 28) and runaways serving the men in blue left scant, if any, recor

The African Americans accompanying the Army of Northern Virginia as camp slaves were noncombatants. The myth of “Black Confederates” has misconstrued and distorted the nature of slavery within Confederate armies. Many proponents of the myth point to

For eight days in July 1863, the Virginia slave Beverly was free. Long since denounced as “a rascal” by his owner, Beverly was hired out to a Confederate soldier and brought northward as part of Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania. Amid the chao

ON FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1893, HUNDREDS OF RECORDS AND PENSION Division clerks, some of them Civil War veterans, filed into their jury-rigged offices in the old Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Many considered the three-story building dangerously unsafe,

The Civil War service records housed at Ford’s Theatre and the pension files administered at Montgomery Meigs’ pension building (P. 42) are now at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in a massive collection of records dubbed “the stacks.” The

ON A FRIGID MID-DECEMBER DAY IN 1914, JOHN Greenawalt had finally mustered the energy to return to work. At 74 years old, Greenawalt was the principal examiner and reviewer for the U.S. Pension Bureau, located in a massive red-brick building in downt

It wasn’t easy living in the shadow of the Confederacy’s greatest general, but Robert E. Lee Jr. had an interesting and accomplished Civil War career. He fought in the artillery and cavalry and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He later became one of h

George M. Newton, a sailor aboard USS Minnesota, had a spectacular and dangerous view of the revolutionary Battle of Hampton Roads on March 8-9, 1862, which pitted CSS Virginia against the USS Monitor. His vessel was one of the three Union blockaders

IN SEPTEMBER 1862, ridges overlooking Cincinnati from the south side of the Ohio River rang with the sound of workers building earthworks. Major General Lew Wallace had dragooned workers to build positions for fending off any invasion by Confederate

Embattled Freedom offers a compelling account of the experiences of enslaved people gaining their freedom during the Civil War. Author Amy Murrell Taylor, an associate history professor at the University of Kentucky, answers a basic question about Ci

REVIEWED BY LOUIS P. MASUR Over four years of war, more than two million men served in the Union Army. Some have argued that most soldiers enlisted for patriotic reasons. Others have stressed the camaraderie of young men who chose to enlist and fight