Tag Archives: Antietam
Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College Day Four
Today was a day of battlefield tours. I was on “The Citizens’ War: Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown During the 1862 Maryland Campaign” with Professor Jim Broomall of Shepherd University. We began with some classroom time discussing the effects of war on the civilian population and what the civilians of Shepherdstown and Sharpsburg had to deal with […]
Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College Day Three
Day Three was chock full of Civil War learning. We began with three concurrent sessions. The first I attended was Professor Robert S. Levine of the University of Maryland College Park and “Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the Failed Promise of Reconstruction.” He gave us some good excerpts from various Douglass speeches regarding Johnson and […]
The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution 1862-1863
This is the sixth book in Allan Nevins’s magnum opus, The Ordeal of the Union. This book, Nevins tells us, ”takes up the narrative a four leaders step forward in powerful roles: Lincoln disclosing his plan for slavery, Stanton taking over the War Office, Grant delivering the first heavy blow in the West, and McClellan preparing […]
Robert E. Lee Endured a Precipitous Reset in Maryland
This article comes from the Winter 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “Debate about the importance of the loss of Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 to the outcome of the September 1862 Maryland Campaign has long revolved around the response of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan upon reading the document found […]
Observations on the Carnage of a Dreadful Day at Sharpsburg
This article by Robert Hodge appears in the winter 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “In 1866 Private Alexander Hunter, formerly of the 17th Virginia Infantry’s famed ‘Alexandria Riflemen,’ wrote an illuminating personal account of his Civil War experiences, ‘Four Years in the Ranks.’ That account was later used for Hunter’s popular ‘novel’ Johnny Reb […]
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