by readmore | May 4, 2021 | African Americans, Civil War
Among the least-studied areas of Civil War history is the role played by enslaved African-Americans in helping Union soldiers return to their lines after escaping from Confederate prison camps. I have published many memoirs by Union soldiers who experienced this. To a... 
by readmore | Mar 1, 2019 | Civil War
October 3, 1889 Dedication Speech by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: A quarter of a century ago on this rugged crest you were doing what you deemed your duty. Today you come with modest main, with care more for truth than for praise, to retrace and record the simple... 
by readmore | Jun 22, 2018 | Civil War
The image at the top of this post is rare. Victorians seldom smiled in photographs and almost never grinned. The reason is that long exposure times for early photographic equipment meant holding a pose for an uncomfortable stretch; the slightest movement meant a... 
by readmore | Jun 5, 2018 | Custer, Little Bighorn
Court Recorder: “State whether it was cowardice or not that prompted you to leave the timber and the bottom.” Major Reno: “There was no use in my staying in the timber as I could assist no one and could make no diversion. When I left there I acted on... 
by readmore | May 31, 2018 | Civil War
Considering the eventual fortunes of Ulysses S. Grant and George McClellan, the start of the American Civil War promised a very different outcome for each. Grant stated to a reporter after his presidency: “I was anxious to see McClellan. McClellan was then in... 
by readmore | May 25, 2018 | African Americans, Civil War
“The negro in slavery, before and during the War, was lazy and idle—he will always be that—but he was simple, true, and faithful. What he has become since his emancipation from servitude is a queer comment on the effect of the liberty bestowed upon him.”... 
by readmore | May 22, 2018 | Civil War
“I don’t believe in Secession, but I do in Liberty. I want the South to conquer, dictate its own terms, and go back to the Union, for I believe that, apart, inevitable ruin awaits both. It is a rope of sand, this Confederacy, founded on the doctrine of... 
by readmore | May 1, 2018 | Civil War, Diaries
“‘A hospital is no place to form attachments,’ said one lady in this hospital to another. The former had surprised the latter in a sudden flood of tears, in the pantry of Ward 1. The occasion was the arrival of that order for the kitchen man, and... 
by readmore | Apr 27, 2018 | Civil War
In the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington one day, I found a remarkable little book. I was looking for vintage true crime. I found a gem. Carlotta Shotwell was a young, wealthy woman who had been defrauded by her “husband,” the former... 
by readmore | Apr 25, 2018 | The Old West, Westward Expansion
I had the good fortune to visit Virginia City last summer, the place to which a then-25-year-old Montana pioneer, Sarah Raymond, emigrated with her mother and brother in 1865 during the westward expansion of the United States. Do you know that feeling of getting close...