Civil War Times February 2018

I just watched your video about the Confederate soldier buried near Schellsburg, Pa. I actually have a degree in History and studied Civil War photography in college, so I really enjoyed the short video. I drive right through Breezewood when visiting my family near Pittsburgh….I might just have to check the Old Log Church out and see Hinson’s grave site. Very interesting piece of history. Thanks for sharing! Willis Bretz Washington, D.C. To see the video about Confederate William Hinson’s grave site, one of several Civil War Times has recently posted to the HistoryNet website and shared via Twitter and Facebook, go to: http://trib.al/nuU5oUg. ONE MORE ON MONUMENTS Recently I had a chance to personally come face to face with the issue of revisionist history. There was the edifice of Robert E. Lee…

An obelisk honoring Canadians who served in the Civil War was dedicated at the Lost Villages Museum near Cornwall, Ontario, on September 16, 2017. The reenactor group Grays and Blues of Montreal raised funds to commemorate the roughly 40,000 Canadians who served—about 36,000 in the Federal Army and the rest in the Confederate Army. “It’s a part of Canadian history that very few know about.... it is almost like a black hole in our story,” explains Grays and Blues President Rob McLachlan. Roughly 7,000 Canadian-born soldiers were killed or died of their wounds in the Civil War. The group timed the event to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Canadian nationhood in 1867. ¶ At the time of the Civil War, Canada was still a collection of British colonies, and…

THE PHRASE “KICK ASS” may sound like, totally, modern, but the aggressive wording was recently spotted in a letter by a soldier serving in the 38th Virginia Infantry. Slate reported that Jonathan Lighter, author of The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, found the phrase in a February 17, 1862, letter by John Gregory of Pittsylvania, Va. The wording “I want to kick ass” shows up clearly in the soldier’s handwritten letter, squeezed above a sentence mentioning his captain’s efforts to get the men to volunteer again. According to Slate, the origin of the phrase was previously dated to 1956 or 1962. The letter is one of thousands recently made available at the online archive Private Voices. Linguists Michael Ellis and Michael Montgomery had scoured the country for letters by common…

Vermont celebrated October 16, 2017, as John Brown Day, marking the 158th anniversary of the abolitionist’s raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal and failed slave insurrection. Bradley Archer of Montpelier, Vt., the history teacher who approached legislators to recognize the date, told the Valley News: “It’s strange to me that John Brown was executed for treason for his failed uprising at Harpers Ferry, when Robert E. Lee, who actually committed treason against the United States, was freed and is celebrated with statues and monuments.” John Brown had supporters in Vermont for his antislavery campaign. In 1849 he was working with escaped slaves on land in New York donated by wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith near the Vermont border. To aid Brown and his band when they headed to Kansas in the…

Two Civil War Times advisory board members recently received awards. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, whose most recent book is the 2014 Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, received the 2017 Empire State Archives and History Award from the New York State Archives Partnership Trust on September 6, 2017. Megan Kate Nelson, author of the 2012 Ruin Nation, was named a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, a program that awards $1 million annually to authors penning accessible works for the public. Nelson’s book will explore the Civil War as an impetus to settle the West.…

digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/home/collections/civil-war “The North Carolina Digital Collections” website offers an example of just how rich and varied digital repositories can be. The collection includes over 90,000 manuscripts, photographs, and state government publications related to the history of North Carolina that are housed in the State Archives or the State Library. In the section on the Civil War, researchers can study letters to the governor that highlight North Carolinians’ preparations for war and frustrations over the limited resources that would plague the state later in the conflict. Petitions offer insights into efforts to limit or reshape military service. Newspaper articles capture the perspective of middle- and upperclass citizens on home front events like the 1863 bread riot in Salisbury, N.C., which revealed the economic pressures on poor families by the second year of fighting.…