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

American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860. By Edward L. Ayers. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2023. Hardcover, 368 pp. $32.50. Reviewed by Evan Clapsaddle In American Visions, Edward Ayers presents a young America trying to find its identity while emerging from its founding era into an unknown and uncertain future. Progressing through the years 1800-1860, Ayers discusses how our country created a uniquely American identity through commercial pursuits, artistic and literary endeavors, as well as social and spiritual movements. These cultural outlets held potential ramifications re ..read more

Aloha! On the latest edition of the Emerging Civil War Podcast, we spend some time at the island kingdom of Hawai’i during the age of the American Civil War. As author Paul Taylor explains, America’s civil war left its fingerprints all over Hawai’ian history even though the country itself was neutral in the war. Paul is the author of “Ke Kaua Ma America”: The Impact of the American Civil War on the Kingdom of Hawaii, a digital booklet available from Amazon. Plus, he gives us a sneak-peak at his upcoming book, ‘Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the Civil War North, coming in June f ..read more

ECW welcomes back guest author Katy Berman Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee got his first taste of disunion when he returned to San Antonio, Texas on a February afternoon in 1861. To his distaste, he was confronted by newly minted Texas Confederates who demanded to know what side he was on. The old flag was no longer flying over the Alamo, and men with strips of red flannel attached to their clothes were milling about. Lee entered a nearby hotel and changed into civilian clothes. He meant to find out what was going on. Lee had been stationed in San Antonio only months before, in temporary comm ..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 ECW member, Cecily Zander. Cecily N. Zander is an Assistant Professor of History at Texas Woman’s University and a Senior Fellow at Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History. She also currently serves as Chief Historian for Emerging Civil War. Her book, The Army Under Fire: Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era, was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2024. She has published essays on the Civil War and the Ameri ..read more

Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America. By Peter Radan. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2023. Hardback, 389 pp. $44.95. Reviewed by Kevin C. Donovan, Esq. The Civil War did not resolve the question of whether states had the right under the Constitution to secede. Rather, the war simply established that the Confederate States did not have the military power to enforce their position against a rival combination of states (the Union) that insisted that no right to secession existed. Secession as a legal doctrine on ..read more

Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes. By Ralph Lindeman. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2023. Softcover, 240 pp. $39.99. Reviewed by Robert Grandchamp A significant amount of scholarship has appeared over the years covering several of the Confederate operations in Canada during the Civil War. Canada, a British possession until Confederation in 1867, witnessed some 50,000 of its citizens serve in either the Union or Confederate forces during the conflict. Although the soon-to-be nation had been a beacon of freedom for enslaved people escaping n ..read more

The latest release in the Emerging Civil War Series is sure to be a crowd-pleaser for Gettysburg fans: Race to the Potomac: Lee and Meade after Gettysburg, July 4-14, 1863 by Bradley M. Gottfried and Linda I. Gottfried, available now from Savas Beatie. Even before the guns fell silent at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee was preparing for the arduous task of getting his defeated army back safely into Virginia. It was an enormous, complex, and exceedingly dangerous undertaking. General Lee’s first major decision was the assembly of two wagon trains, one to transport the wounded and the other to delive ..read more

Many of our readers may have seen the news that the last USS Arizona survivor has passed. The historian Alex Kershaw offered some perceptive thoughts in this post. It is yet another marker showing that the World War II generation is indeed passing from the scene. As I read Kershaw’s post, it occurred to me that the World War II generation could have written something similar about the Civil War generation. The 1939 GAR reunion ended on September 1 of that year, the day Germany invaded Poland to start World War II. The last GAR reunion was 1949, and the final veteran passed in 1956. I invite yo ..read more

It’s Tax Day in the USA, so with a play on words… What do you find the most “taxing” (challenging) part of learning/studying Civil War history? Is there something that would make this easier for you? The post Question of the Week: 4/15-4/21/24 appeared first on Emerging Civil War ..read more