Been out of the loop for a month now with my teaching and coaching duties. My HS Football team in the last 3 weeks alone has traveled over 1600 miles to play teams around the state of Colorado. Anyway, I had an article, “Robbed of Glory, the Aftermath of Gettysburg and its impact on Soldiers and Civilians,” published via the Smithsonian last month. Thanks to the Smithsonian it was an…

PART I During and after the Civil War surgeons began looking closely at a medical condition that affected some soldiers; what we today know as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). It was sometimes first referred to as “melancholy” or “nostalgia” during the war. Then when surgeon Jacob Mendes Da Costa observed symptoms that he classified as a heart issue, which came be to known as “Da Costa’s syndrome,” an idiom…

The average soldier was a white, native-born, single, protestant, male farmer between about 18 and 38 years of age. He stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed about 145 pounds. The tallest recorded being Captain David Van Buskirk (pictured right) of the 27th Indiana Infantry who stood 6’10” and 1/2 inches tall. Union soldiers were known as “Billy Yank” while their Confederate counterparts were called “Johnny Reb.” The…

As the armies melted away from Gettysburg the horror was just beginning for the town and surrounding community. Nurses and volunteers flowed in from as far as New Jersey even before the fighting had ended. One such volunteer was Cornelia Hancock. Hancock was born on February 8, 1840 in southern New Jersey and was one of five children of a Quaker family. By 1863 her brother and “every male relative”…

From what I can gather (discussed here and here) the main theme of the FCWH conference in Gettysburg was for a call to move our “public memory” of the war beyond a heroic understanding of soldiers and battle. I understand this mainly to be Battlefield Tours and such, as certainly within the classroom not a lot of this of this takes place from my experiences? Sure, for example, discussion about…

With all this nonsensical talk from various parts of the country regarding secession in mind, I came across the following article (editorial) at Slate.com, “If Every U.S. State Declared War Against the Others, Which Would Win?” Apparently the article was from an original question that appeared on Quora under its “hypothetical battles.” The simulation (or answer) was provided by a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, Jon Davis, a veteran…

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…

Just got a chance to read the June 2012 issue of the Civil War Times and in particular Dr. Gary Gallagher’s “Blue & Gray” column on Bloggers. I must admit I found his editorial to be self-righteous and self-serving. This was not a serious take on Civil War blogging. (I think the Civil War Times has done a more serious take on Civil War blogging before, or am I confusing…

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…