This post contains a list of Civil War/History articles published this past week around the Internet. Click on the title to go to the full article.
Alas, Disunion, the source of many of these articles from the New York Times, is publishing its last column on Sunday May 31.
All right, we’re beginning to see articles about reconstruction. Here is a post by Cynthia Lynn Lyerly at the We’re History blog. An excerpt …
“In the renewed efforts to encourage the National Park Service to commemorate Reconstruction, we should keep in mind that there actually are public commemorations of Reconstruction already in our nation. In Newberry, South Carolina, the Sons of Confederate Veterans erected one such roadside marker in 1994 to commemorate the “murder” of Calvin Crozier in September of 1865.
“Some elements of the actual story are indeed rendered truthfully on the marker. Crozier was escorting two white women when he knifed a soldier in the 33rd. He was summarily tried, convicted, and executed, under Trowbridge’s orders. Trowbridge was indeed brought to trial at a court martial. But the rest of the story is far more complicated …”
An article in the NY Times by Boyd Cothran and Ari Kelman. Boyd Cothran is an assistant professor of Indigenous and cultural history at York University in Toronto and the author of “Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making ofAmerican Innocence.”Ari Kelman is the McCabe-Greer Professor of the Civil War Era at Penn State and the author of “A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek,” which won the Bancroft Prize in 2014, and, with Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, “Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War.” Cothran and Kelman are both writing books about the relationship between Reconstruction and Native American history. An excerpt …
“On Dec. 21, 1866, a year and a half after Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ostensibly closed the book on the Civil War’s final chapter at Appomattox Court House, another soldier, Capt. William Fetterman, led cavalrymen from Fort Phil Kearny, a federal outpost in Wyoming, toward the base of the Big Horn range. The men planned to attack Indians who had reportedly been menacing local settlers. Instead, a group of Arapahos, Cheyennes and Lakotas, including a warrior named Crazy Horse, killed Fetterman and 80 of his men. It was the Army’s worst defeat on the Plains to date. The Civil War was over, but the Indian wars were just beginning.
“These two conflicts, long segregated in history and memory, were in fact intertwined. They both grew out of the process of establishing an American empire in the West. In 1860.”
An article in the NY Times by Thom Bassett. An excerpt …
“Early on the morning of May 24, 1865, a bright, pleasantly warm day in Washington, D.C., Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman calmly guided his horse to the head of his army. He was about to lead his veteran troops on their last march, this time down Pennsylvania Avenue, before tens of thousands of thronging, wildly cheering citizens and the nation’s leaders, as part of the two-day Grand Review that celebrated the Union victory.
“For Sherman, this was more than simply a commemoration of the war’s end. It was also a grimly pursued vindication of himself against his enemies — and not just the men in gray. After relentlessly levying a hard war to force their submission, this marauder of the South had sought a soft peace to ease their reunion with the rest of the country. Now, in Washington, aimed to triumph over those he saw as his Northern enemies— viciously hypocritical journalists as well as the capital’s paranoid, backstabbing political and military elite.”
Grant & The Red River Campaign
A series of blog posts by Ned B. at TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog. TOCWOC (The Order of Civil War Obsessively Compulsed) is a group Civil War blog formed in September 2007. Our purpose is to enlighten and entertain readers on every aspect of the Civil War, whether it be Social, Political, Military, or other history.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Missouri 150 Years Ago
Every week, Len Eagleburger (co-edited by Beverly Shaw) edits a newsletter called “Ozarks Civil War Sesquicentennial Weekly.” One of its sections is entitled “Missouri 150 Years Ago.” These are the links to articles which appeared in the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper published in Columbia, Missouri.
