Secrets of a Cemetery, Part V: A Brother's War

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part V: A Brother's War

The Civil War is often called a war of brother against brother.  Imagery of American fighting American and family fighting family during the war arouse sentiment of sadness and horror at the thought of families ripped apart by war.  While there are instances of family members fighting on opposite sides of the conflict, more often family members were fighting side-by-side for the same army.  Recruitment within towns and counties meant brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, and close friends often ended up in the same regiments, or fought in different units at the same time.  As a consequence, many families faced multiple tragedies during the war. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part IV: The United States Colored Troops

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part IV: The United States Colored Troops

For five men buried in the National Cemetery, the Civil War was the opportunity for a completely new future.  African-American men were not allowed to enlist until the second half of the war (black troops would see their first action in Virginia at Spotsylvania in 1864) but by the end of the war there were 166 black regiments in US service consisting of 180,000 troops.  For these Colored Troops and the rest of the enslaved population, the Civil War was the road to emancipation. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part III: Beyond the Field of Battle

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part III: Beyond the Field of Battle

When one thinks of battle casualties, combat deaths come first to mind.  Many more men were wounded than killed instantly; those that did not die within a short time on the battlefield were carried to field hospitals where overworked, undertrained, and undersupplied doctors tried to keep up with the stream of men coming off the field. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part II: The Toll of Battle

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part II: The Toll of Battle

Battle and violence are essential elements of war, and as a result many men become casualties.  These deaths were often sudden, gruesome, and disturbing and many occurred with little note taken of them.  Each grave in the cemetery obviously represents a death, and each deserves attention.  However, there are a few extraordinary stories that demonstrate both the courage of soldiers and the horrible nature of war.

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Bloody Field, Peaceful Field

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Bloody Field, Peaceful Field

Walk the field at Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle and you are struck by the peaceful beauty of the area.  Today, not a shadow of the violence, pain, and intensity remains on the fields where so many fell almost 150 years ago. But should battlefields be a place of peace?  Should fields which once soaked up the blood of countless men become beautiful, or does such a transformation detract from telling the story of their sacrifice and suffering? 

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Presidents' Day Review-Remembering Lincoln

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Presidents' Day Review-Remembering Lincoln

Today is President's Day, a day commemorating not only our first president George Washington, but also all subsequent American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln (who would've turned 207 this past Friday, February 12). Although busy schedules have prevented us from putting together a full Lincoln Week like last year, we did think it would be appropriate to share all our Lincoln-related posts again on this President's Day. It would do a disservice to Lincoln to make him a marble man, to allow the glow of his current position in America's civil pantheon to overshadow the very real, very human struggles he faced during the Civil War. This collection of posts should help shine light on Lincoln the leader and Lincoln in American public memory.

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A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead

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A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead

In 1863, Samuel Weaver carefully exhumed thousands of Union bodies from Gettysburg battlefield for burial in the new National Cemetery. Several years later, his son would pick up his father's work to send Confederate burials south.

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A Beginner's Guide to Researching Your Civil War Ancestor

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A Beginner's Guide to Researching Your Civil War Ancestor

For Americans, history is a personal matter. Whatever we do or don't learn in the classroom, read in books, see in films...Americans stillexperience and understand the past personally. I suspect many public historians are familiar with Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s work Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. The product of a 1994 survey, their book helps confirm and quantify the very personal ways in which everyday Americans experience the past...namely via their families. People feel most connected to the past when gathering with the families, and their most frequent “past-related” activity is looking at photographs with family and friends. Americans place greater trust in family stories than in college professors, high school teachers, or nonfiction books (personal family accounts were second only to museums). And of course, many Americans explore history through their own genealogy. Nothing helps bring history to life more than a personal connection; a realization that your family, your ancestor, lived and participated in the events of another age.

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Romanticizing Myths: the Role of Pop Culture in Civil War History

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Romanticizing Myths: the Role of Pop Culture in Civil War History

About a month ago I attended Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede in Gatlinburg, TN - fully expecting to be horrified by what might ensue. But after I left I was hesitant to apply too much criticism to something that advertises itself simply as a dinner show and is very clearly meant to exist in the realm of imagination and exaggeration.

Recent events, however, have convinced me that ending the myths that endure from the Civil War is not simply the job of historians.

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Confederate Meccas: The Unexpected Legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee

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Confederate Meccas: The Unexpected Legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee

So what is the legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee? The short answer is, not a good one. War came to East Tennessee in the form of guerilla conflicts that harassed the lesser-developed portions of the United States in 1861.

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Stone Heroes North and South: The Connection between Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain

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Stone Heroes North and South: The Connection between Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain

One displays the heroes of the Confederacy—Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson—all on horseback riding across the wide gray canvas that is Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia.  The other features four bust-style depictions of famous American presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—gazing formally from Mount Rushmore over the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Each was created out of pride for heritage and nation.  Each inspires awe at its size and wonder at the artistic skill necessary to carve such massive. 

And each have very different meanings.  One is a very nationalistic and patriotic piece featuring four of America’s favorite presidents that was conceived to bring tourism into the area.  The other is a monument to the Confederacy led by Southerners who wanted to honor and sustain the Confederate legacy.  One honors the United States of America, the other the Confederate States of America.  They stand a nation apart, both figuratively and literally (in terms of locations), yet they are connected by the life of one man, the sculptor who set out to complete both projects and ended up finishing neither.

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The Importance of an "Angel": Kirkland at Fredericksburg

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The Importance of an "Angel": Kirkland at Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is a largely unmonumented battlefield.  The most prominent monument on the southern end of the field is the “Meade pyramid” largely inaccessible to most visitors; besides that the remains of earthworks stand as a testament to what once occurred there ornamented by a few cannon the park service has placed to represent their use.  There are a few small monuments scattered through the town and up to the heights which mocked the efforts of Union soldiers in 1862.  The only large monuments to a body of troops, like those you would expect to see at Gettysburg or Antietam, stand in the National Cemetery, and there are only three of them. But there is one monument so large and prominent that is captures the attention of every visitor who walks down the Sunken Road, and that is the monument to Richard Kirkland.

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Calls to Arms: "The" Confederate Flag in American Culture

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Calls to Arms: "The" Confederate Flag in American Culture

When asked why the American Civil War still holds such power over the American imagination, author Shelby Foote once observed, “because it’s the big one.  It measures what we are, good and bad.  If you look at American history as the life span of a man, the Civil War represents the great trauma of our adolescence.” More recently, at the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, historian David Blight reflected, “The Civil War is a place we go to ask who we are and what are we becoming…it is our oracle.” The debates that tore the nation apart for four bloody years are eternal questions of the American condition, Blight explained. It is no small wonder then that the symbols of those conflicts remain contested as well, suspended in our national consciousness without a singular definition that holds true over time.

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The “great battle which would naturally decide the contest”: John Badger Bachelder and the Creation of Gettysburg

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The “great battle which would naturally decide the contest”: John Badger Bachelder and the Creation of Gettysburg

The creation of Gettysburg as legend and central turning point of the war and the creation of Gettysburg as a field of monuments centers on one man: John Badger Bachelder.  Bachelder was not a Civil War veteran, nor did he ever serve in the military, yet he is the key to answering the question of how Gettysburg came to be what we know today.

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The Creation of Gettysburg National Cemetery

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The Creation of Gettysburg National Cemetery

On July 4th, 1863 Meade’s Union army rejoiced as the sights and sounds of a Confederate army in retreat ensured them of their victory.  For the North, Independence Day 1863 was a day of rejoicing and confirmation with victory at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg.  But in the midst of victory, July 4th was also sobering for the men who fought around that Pennsylvania town for it was the first chance they had to inspect the battlefield and attend to the dead...The Union soldiers and Gettysburg civilians that looked over the battlefield on July 4th saw a level of death and destruction that was overwhelming and seemingly impossible to take care of.

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Hidden Gems of Gettysburg

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Hidden Gems of Gettysburg

If you are heading to Gettysburg for the anniversary this July or plan to travel there in the future, there is a lot to see!  Many visitors utilize the NPS resources and driving tour (which is certainly a good option), but if you want to get off the beaten path here are ten hidden (or less visited) gems of Gettysburg to check out.

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Slavery? States Rights? Secession.

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Slavery? States Rights? Secession.

However, if you listen to the public slavery is one of a variety of answers, and it is not always the answer that comes first or most often.  States’ rights is most often put forward as the cause of secession with Lincoln’s election, economic and cultural factors, and the settlement of the west also earning some votes.  Scholars and historians may but forward a (mostly) unified answer that slavery was the cause of secession, but the public will not.  And Civil War sites have to find ways to work through this divide, because no matter what you interpret at your site or how visitors will always ask the question: “What caused the Civil War?”

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