Civil War Times August 2019

PRISONS AND MAGIC LANTERNS 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 gem I have never known about! Keep it up! Steve Davis, Atlanta, Ga. I WAS MOST HAPPILY surprised to find Melissa A. Winn’s fine article on the magic lantern (“Traveling Storytellers”) in the June 2019 issue of Civil War Times. She has brought to light a highly significant yet almost completely forgotten and overlooked form of popular entertainment in the years immediately following the Civil War. Multitudes of veterans traveled from town to town with cases of glass slides, projectors, prepared scripts, advertising broadsides, and tickets. They filled theaters,…

Sept. 20-22 Antietam: McClellan’s Military Masterpiece $550 Join historians D. Scott Hartwig and Dennis Frye for this comprehensive tour of the 1862 Maryland Campaign. We'll spend a day covering the events of the Battle of South Mountain and devote a morning to Jackson’s operation at Harper’s Ferry. Coverage will also include famous sites such as the Miller Cornfield, the West Woods, Bloody Lane along with the Burnside Bridge. In addition, this tour will include stops at sites outside of the park not usually visited even by veteran campaigners. Evening lecture by retired Antietam National Battlefield chief historian Ted Alexander. Sept. 27-29 Chancellorsville: Lee’s Greatest Victory $550 Follow historians Robert K Krick and Erik Nelson as we cover the historic sites associated with R. E. Lee’s dramatic victory over "Fighting Joe" Hooker at Chancellorsville.…

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. This April, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom was named both the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for history and the Lincoln Prize awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In the first major biography of Douglass in 25 years, the Yale University historian David Blight details not only Douglass’ long public life but also his private life and relationships—two wives, five children, and a sprawling extended family. One of the most photographed figures in the 19th century—sitting for 160 photographs over his lifetime—the self-educated Douglass boldly promoted…

In November, a four-mile stretch of creek in Monmouth County, N.J., formerly named Negro Run, was officially renamed Ashby Creek, honoring Sergeant George Ashby, who enlisted at age 19, served with the 45th U.S. Colored Troops, and died at age 102 when he was the state’s last living U.S. Civil War veteran. To effect the change, a local, P.J. Meara, gathered 50 signatures in a petition to the U.S. Board of Geographical Names to recognize Ashby. Meara learned about Ashby, once a distinguished member of the community, because of Monmouth County’s Historical Commission’s project to create a small park adjacent to a cemetery where he and other USCT veterans are buried. In a related piece of nomenclature, the federal naming board has given the name Freedom Creek to Runaway Negro…

IN MAY, Civil War Times launched a new social media initiative we’re calling #FirstMondays. On the first Monday of every month, we’ll be filming live on Facebook, bringing you stories from battlefields and Civil War sites near our office. Watch our Facebook page for times and locations in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Don’t worry if you can’t catch the videos live, we’ll post them to the page for viewing at any time.…

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) digitized through a partnership between the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Library of Congress, and hundreds of state institutions. Take, for example, when Confederate forces invaded Virginia’s Kanawha River Valley and seized control of Charleston in September 1862. Soon, their pro-Confederate newspaper The Guerrilla was sharing Confederate General William Loring’s promise “to rescue” locals from “the despotism of the counterfeit State Government imposed upon you by Northern bayonets.” Similar determination from a Union perspective echoed in the pages of the Beaufort Free South, an occupation paper in South Carolina. Editor James Gordon Thompson revealed strong Unionist opinions in…