Huzzah for Jenny Mackowski, managing partner of Stevenson Ridge! We have a ton of news in the latest issue of the Emerging Civil War newsletter. Did you get your copy? In the April 2024 issue: We announced some important staffing changes, with new responsibilities for Neil Chatelain, Patrick Kelly-Fischer, and Brian Swartz, and a new role for Sarah Kay Bierle; We introduce our new social media manager, Darren Rawlings; We celebrate exciting news from our long-time partner, Stevenson Ridge, recently recognized as Small Business of the Year by the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce; We ..read more

Recently, both Civil War Times and America’s Civil War folded. For many, the death of Civil War Times was a hard blow, since the magazine had been in the business for a long time. America’s Civil War was personally, a bigger one. It was the first magazine I was gifted in the 1990s, and I was happy I got an article in on the Bermuda Hundred Campaign before they folded. These magazines will be sorely missed by Civil War historians and buffs, who often came together in their pages. America’s Civil War Winter 2023, the issue I was published in I thought back to a post on the end of Blue & Gray ..read more

Welcome back to a new installment of our 2024 Emerging Civil War Symposium Spotlight as we continue announcing the speaker list! This week we feature Zachery Fry. Dr. Zach Fry (photo by Emily Fry) Zachery Fry is an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He received his PhD in 2017 from Ohio State University and is the author of A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac (UNC Press, 2020). His work has received the Edward M. Coffman Prize from the Society for Military History, the Hay-Nicolay Prize ..read more

Emerging Civil War welcomes guest author Nigel Lambert On the morning of Sunday, February 5, 1865, two days after a failed peace conference, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant launched another offensive around Petersburg. As Union cavalry headed towards Dinwiddie Courthouse, Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys, with two 2nd Corps divisions, had to secure the critical Hatcher’s Run crossings on Vaughan Road and Armstrong’s Mill. Accomplished with ease by 10:00 a.m., Humphreys’s bluecoats poured over Hatcher’s Run at Armstrong’s Mill. They formed a battle line west and east of Rocky Branch and passed a relatively ..read more

Here’s a Letter from Thy Dear Son: Letters of a Georgia Family during the Civil War Era. Edited by Edward H. Pulliam. Macon: GA: Mercer University Press, 2024. Hardcover, 640 pp. $50.00. Reviewed by Tim Talbott During the American Civil War, family ties not only helped soldiers maintain distant connections with once very familiar people and places, relatives also often served as providers for some of the soldiers’ most basic needs when their governments were unable or unwilling to do so. Throughout the conflict, letter writing maintained and strengthened family bonds. Thousands of surviving le ..read more

Emerging Civil War is pleased to welcome guest author Nate Pedersen. Nate is manager of the Archival and Reference Team at the Georgia Historical Society. I collect old photo postcards of historic, or witness, trees. When this postcard of a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) at Pea Ridge, Arkansas popped up on eBay, I was excited to buy it as it depicted a tree with Civil War provenance that I had never seen before. Like many readers and contributors to this site, I also couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a bit of Civil War research to learn more about the tree. The battle-scarred walnut tre ..read more

CVBT History Wire – “Cordial Combatants: Fraternization on the Rappahannock” The April 2024 “CVBT History Wire” examines several accounts where Federal and Confederate let down their guard and interacted with one another on personal levels between the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Read here: Cordial Combatants: Fraternization on the Rappahannock The post CVBT History Wire – “Cordial Combatants: Fraternization on the Rappahannock” appeared first on Emerging Civil War ..read more

YORK, PA – On Tuesday, April 2, Lebanon Cemetery became the first Civil War Trails site in the City of York, Pennsylvania. The multi-state Civil War Trails program offers more than 1,500 sites for travelers, enabling them to stand in the footsteps of historic events and people. Lebanon Cemetery, located at 1412 N. George St., is administered by the Friends of Lebanon Cemetery who work to honor the early African American community members from York County. Joseph Richburg, operations manager for Lebanon Cemetery, reads the new Civil War Trails sign which recounts the story of Reverend Jesse S ..read more

ECW welcomes back guest author Kevin C. Donovan  The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. Anderson[1] that Colorado cannot use the “insurrectionist disqualification” clause (Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution) to exclude Donald J. Trump from that state’s presidential ballot is the latest rejoinder to any who claim that the Civil War no longer matters. Yet the common news media’s reporting of the court’s decision as unanimous masks the fact that the high court was in fact deeply divided over a key legal issue that will henceforth drive how the “insurrectionist disqu ..read more

Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History. Edited by Dwight T. Pitcaithley. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2024. Hardcover, 308 pp., $48.00. Reviewed by John G. Selby Historian Dwight Pitcaithley continues his fine analysis of the state secession debates in the South during the winter of 1860-1861, with his most recent volume, Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History. In focusing on the Old Dominion, he annotates 43 critical primary documents drawn from the 9,000 pages of the Congressional Globe, the journal of Virginia’s state convention, the Washington Peace Conference, and the p ..read more