Civil War Times June 2016

SOLDIERS DREAMED OF BATTLE, LOVED ONES AND INFIDELITY. AND CHEESE PRINTS, ENGRAVINGS and postal covers abounded with titles like The Soldier’s Dream of Home, The Soldier’s Dream of Peace or The American Patriot’s Dream during the war. The images in them were similar: A sleeping warrior, dreaming of home. Sentimental depictions like these were especially popular with troops, as they captured the kinds of dreams so many young men experienced. “Is not this beautiful,” enthused one Ohio soldier to his fiancée in April 1862, referring to the poem “The Soldier’s Dream.” A Confederate man wrote his wife: “Did you ever see a picture called the soldiers dream? I have seen it somewhere, possibly in an old magazine. The artist had certainly seen life in camps and had a wife and baby.” SOLDIER…

Through the National Park Service’s Land and Water Conservation Fund, 17 battlefields in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia will all be receiving sizable grants to safeguard sites from encroaching development. Altogether the funding, announced in October 2015 and January of this year, will help to protect 1,640 acres. Sites designated for grants include Elkins Ferry and Prairie Grove in Arkansas; Rocky Face Ridge and Chickamauga in Georgia; Perryville in Kentucky; South Mountain in Maryland; Champion Hill in Mississippi; Shiloh in Tennessee; and Appomattox, Brandy Station, Deep Bottom, Fredericksburg, Gaines Mill, Glendale, Kernstown, Opequon and Sailor’s Creek in Virginia. No doubt most readers would agree with NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis’ statement on the program’s goal: “Safeguarding these battlefields is an essential part of preserving places that tell…

IN THE NAME OF ABE SINCE THE LINCOLN Bicentennial Foundation started making grants in 2010, it has provided nearly $600,000 for over 60 diverse projects, as well as colloquiums, museum and digitization projects. The Foundation announced a final round of grants amounting to $72,000, awarded to: Southern Illinois University Press, for its “Concise Lincoln” book series; Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University in conjunction with the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, to co-host a conference on “Abraham Lincoln and the Germans”; Philadelphia’s “Images of the Motherland” project; Chicago’s Newberry Library, to help fund a radio program on soldiers’ recollections of Lincoln; the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project; the Lincoln Bicentennial website; and President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C. Foundation Chairman Harold Holzer said, “We are…

SUMMER WILL BE HERE SOON, the very best time to get a different view of Civil War sites—from the water. During the warm-weather months, waterborne options are available for historic tourists of all ages and interests, for rugged Outward Bound-types as well as those of us who prefer, shall we say, a more leisurely approach. On June 23 and 29, and July 23, take a Ranger-guided tour of the Monocacy River in a canoe or kayak and explore Maryland’s Monocacy Battlefield from an intriguing new perspective. For full details and registration information, see apm.activecommunities.com/frederickcntyparksandrec/Activity_Search/monocacy-riverguided-paddle-trips/6854 If you’re planning to visit Tennessee this summer, two different canoe tours are coming up: On June 23, an NPS Ranger will lead the “Sherman’s Crossing from North Chickamauga Creek to South Chickamauga Creek” tour. Or on July…

http://american-south.org CIVIL WAR IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH “ivil War in the American South” is a digital repository focused on the antebellum and war years that includes 10,000 items from 30 libraries across the southeastern United States. It is part of the larger Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL), “the largest regional research library consortium” in the country. The beauty of this website is that the entire collection is keyword searchable or can be browsed alphabetically, and it features digital images of all the holdings, not just transcriptions. Admittedly, it would be nice to see this collection include Reconstruction, but visitors will be impressed by its breadth. Some of the diary and letter collections cover a single year or season, while others cover most of the war. Literature fans may gravitate toward the papers of…

THE CIVIL WAR’S marvelous photographic record is one of the reasons the conflict remains so popular as a field of interest. The science and art of photography had a little more than 20 years to develop before the conflict began, which meant there were dozens of “photographic artists” in America familiar with the new craft. Some of the era’s images are so clear and deep, so well staged and poignant that modern digital photography can seem soulless in comparison. But not every photo was an artistic tour de force. Take this image from Fort Woodbury, in Arlington, Va., one of the fortifications built to protect the U.S. capital. The Union soldiers appear uncomfortable with being soldiers, as well as with having their picture taken—and the photographer made things worse by…