Departments

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Civil War

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    5/24/2023

    Does Lincoln Hold the Key to the Debt Ceiling Crisis?

    by Roger Lowenstein

    Issuing "greenback" paper currency backed by the government's credit instead of gold was seen as a radical move in 1862, but Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase recognized the paramount importance of safeguarding the nation's credit and did it anyway. 

  • SOURCE: Smithsonian
    4/10/2023

    Preserving the Public History of the Fort Pillow Massacre

    by Erin L. Thompson

    On April 12, 1864 Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest slaughtered members of the US Colored Troops after they had surrendered. Until recently, the state of Tennessee has neglected the site, making it difficult for the public to explore that history.

  • 4/9/2023

    Excerpt: The March to Battle at Fort Sumter

    by Bruce Chadwick

    The words of Jefferson Davis, his inner circle, and his critics trace the path to war in an exerpt from a new book telling the story of the conflict through the firsthand observations of the participants.

  • 2/26/2023

    Kara Walker Disrupts the Visual History of the Civil War in New Exhibition

    by Allison Robinson and Ksenia M. Soboleva

    The artist Kara Walker's 2005 series of prints merged the historical illustrations that shaped Americans' understanding of the Civil War in its immediate aftermath and in the 1890s with her original subversive take on the tradition of silhouette art to highlight the erasure of Black experiences of war. Two curators are putting Walker's work in context in a new exhibition.

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
    1/17/2023

    Kidada Williams on The Reconstruction that Wasn't

    In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/23/2023

    The 14th Amendment Should Put a Stop to Debt Ceiling Hostage Taking

    by Eric Foner

    The provisions of the Reconstruction Amendments dealing with the national debt were tied to the nation's short-lived commitment to interracial democracy in the South; today they offer the Biden administration a possible tool to use if Congress pushes to the brink of default. 

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    1/19/2023

    Masculinity and Trauma in War and Football

    by Sarah Handley-Cousins

    Sports have been cast as a (relatively) peaceful way of inculcating a set of masculine virtues otherwise associated with war. But the experience of injury and grief will continue to confound the rules of manhood—and football fans and citizens should pay attention. 

  • 1/15/2023

    Teach the History Behind "Emancipation" with the Primary Sources

    by Alan J. Singer

    Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's "Emancipation" has rediscovered the life of an enslaved man variously called Peter or Gordon, who had been made famous through an 1863 photograph. Here's how history teachers can use the primary records of his life to accompany the film. 

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    1/12/2023

    The Black Widows' Struggle for Civil War Pensions

    by Hilary Green

    Black women's struggles to claim pensions earned by their late husbands' service in the Union Army reflected the incomplete realization of freedom after emancipation and the intrusive controls the pension system and growing administrative state placed on Black families. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    12/21/2022

    Was the Civil War Inevitable?

    by David W. Blight

    As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. 

  • SOURCE: New York Review of Books
    12/16/2022

    Was Emancipation Intended to Perpetuate Slavery by Other Means?

    by Sean Wilentz

    Protests movements have latched on to a misguided interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment that argues it allowed and even encouraged the system of mass incarceration as an extension of slavery. A new global history extends that critique to the age of emancipation in general.

  • SOURCE: Substack
    11/20/2022

    Push Confederates Out of Gettysburg for Good

    by Kevin M. Levin

    Why are the forces that fought to preserve slavery, and who invaded the free state of Pennsylvania and kidnapped free Black Americans into slavery in 1863, allowed to march in Gettysburg's Remembrance Day parade? 

  • 8/7/2022

    Healing a Divided Nation

    by Carole Adrienne

    From specialized trauma care to emergency transportation to board certification of physicians, when we encounter the medical system today, we are experiencing Civil War medicine.