ARTICLE REVIEW: “The United States Army and Urban Combat in the Nineteenth Century” War in History April 2009 16: 157-188 Jonathan A. Beall Irregular warfare during the Civil War was problematic for most military leaders as well as the common foot soldier. According to Jonathan A. Beall, Nineteenth Century military tactical and strategic planning failed to consider how to train soldiers to deal with urban combat, which is somewhat surprising…

Yankee Correspondence: Civil War Letters Between New England Soldiers and the Home Front. University of Virginia Press, 1996. 169 pages. Nina Silber, Mary Beth Sievens These letters by New England soldiers and their families, many published for the first time, speak of the hardships of the war, especially frustrations with the army, homefront suffering, and government policies. They are grouped by six major themes: the military experience, the meaning of…

Levi Bird Duff, To Petersburg with the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Letters of Levi Bird Duff, 105th Pennsylvania Volunteers, McFarland; 240 pages; paperback; ISBN-13: 9780786444304. From the Publisher: The letters of Levi Bird Duff present a perceptive picture of life in the Army of the Potomac from 1861 to 1864. They are unusual for their literacy, descriptions and continuity, the strength of opinions expressed, and their source:…

Benton Rain Patterson, Ending the Civil War: The Bloody Year from Grant’s Promotion to Lincoln’s Assassination, Jefferson McFarland & Co., 2012. 332 pp. $38.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7864-6964-2. Mr. Patterson, emeritus associate professor of journalism at the University of Florida, via McFarland has written an uninspiring take on the final 13 months of the Civil War titled: Ending the Civil War: The Bloody Year from Grant’s Promotion to Lincoln’s Assassination. Awkward…

[posted originally on my old blog4history site] Received my copy of William L. Shea’s Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign (Civil War America). Publish date: November, 2009. Hardcover: 392 pages Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807833150 From the publisher: “William Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding Prairie Grove, Arkansas, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War that effectively ended Confederate…

As we know Civil War soldiers were some of the most prolific writers in the history of modern warfare (if you want to call the Civil War the first modern war or the last Napoleonic I don’t care!). As a collective they wrote easily hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of letters home. Some regiments had their own newspapers and published their own pamphlets. But also, countless soldiers wrote home to…

In The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi Earl J. Hess answers in his conclusion a much debated question, Which theater of operations was more important in the outcome of the Civil War: Western or Eastern? Dr. Hess declares that “The Union won and the Confederacy lost the Civil War largely due to what each did, or failed to do, in West.”…

The Civil War Monitor is a new publication which recently released its second issue. Their current issue lineup includes: Custer and the End of Innocence In little more than a decade, George Armstrong Custer—the “Boy General of the Golden Lock”—went from Civil War darling to Little Bighorn pariah. What went wrong? By Glenn W. LaFantasie Black Men in Blue A series of images highlights the story of the African-American volunteers…

Brave Men in Desperate Times: The Civil War Combat Experience is written by John McKay and published by Globe Pequot. Those of you who know the focus of this blog and my background know that I am a sucker for anything that focuses on “soldier studies” and the Civil War. Every day there are countless amounts of not seen before letters and diaries that appear online at places like Ebay…