During my recent visit home to South Jersey, I stumbled across one of many cemeteries in Galloway Township. These cemeteries are filled with the extended Higbee, Pitney, and especially Leeds families. As I was casually walking through the Smithville Burial Ground, I came across the grave of Private Owen S. Clark of the 7th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

As you can see, his grave is cracked in half and lying on the ground.

Clark was born on December 18, 1840 in Galloway Township, New Jersey and died on July 20, 1863 as the result of wounds sustained at the battle of Gettysburg. His mother Ann L. Clark is buried next to her son, though it is unclear how much time he lived in her household as a child. In 1850, Clark is listed as living with Micajah Smith and his family.

Perhaps he had been apprenticed to Smith.

The 7th New Jersey was organized in the summer of 1861 at Camp Olden in Trenton, New Jersey, mustering into federal service on September 3 of that year under Colonel Joseph W. Revere. It was part of the great swell of patriotic enlistment that followed the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion.

Owen was one among a number of local boys who joined the regiment at this time. The men of the 7th New Jersey were laborers, farmers, tradesmen, and clerks who traded their civilian lives for the blue uniform of the Union Army.

The 7th New Jersey fought in nearly every major engagement of the Eastern Theater. The regiment was bloodied at the Battle of Williamsburg during the Peninsula Campaign in May 1862, endured the Seven Days Battles before Richmond, marched through the chaos of Second Bull Run, and suffered through the carnage at Fredericksburg in December 1862.

By the time the army moved north in the summer of 1863 to intercept Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania, the 7th New Jersey was a veteran regiment—hardened, experienced, and grimly aware of what battle truly meant.

At Gettysburg, the regiment formed part of the Second Brigade, Second Division of the Third Corps of the Army of the Potomac. The Third Corps, commanded by the controversial Major General Daniel Sickles, would occupy a central and disputed role in the fighting of July 2, 1863.

When the battle opened on the first day of July, the regiment numbered 331 men fit for duty and now under the command of Colonel Louis R. Francine. He was a capable and respected officer, and his fate on July 2 would come to symbolize the terrible cost the regiment paid that day.

At approximately four o’clock, on July 2, General James Longstreet’s Confederate First Corps launched a massive assault against the Union left. The attack rolled northward like a wave, crashing through the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and along the Emmitsburg Road. Against this tide stood the overextended divisions of the Third Corps, fighting ferociously but outflanked and outgunned.

The 7th New Jersey was positioned in the area of what has since become known as Excelsior Field, to the north of the Wheatfield and near the Peach Orchard. As Confederate forces under Generals Lafayette McLaws and Richard Anderson hammered into the Third Corps from multiple directions, the regiment first held an initial position some three hundred yards to the northeast before being ordered to advance and reinforce the battered brigade of Brigadier General Charles Graham.

It was in this movement that the regiment suffered most heavily and likely when Owen S. Clark was wounded. Twenty-four men in the regiment were killed outright that day, part of a total casualty count of 114 out of the 331 men who entered the fight—a staggering loss of more than one-third of the regiment’s strength in a matter of hours.

Colonel Francine himself was mortally wounded as the regiment fought near the position now marked by its battlefield monument. He died of his wounds on July 16. Major Frederick Cooper assumed command of what remained of the regiment and led it through the rest of the battle and the subsequent pursuit of Lee’s retreating army.

The monument to the 7th New Jersey stands today on the south end of Sickles Avenue in Gettysburg National Military Park, near the spot where Colonel Francine fell. It takes the form of a giant minié ball balanced upright on a stone base, a fitting symbol for a regiment of infantrymen who knew the weight and consequence of such projectiles better than most.

The inscription records the regiment’s losses simply and without embellishment: killed 24, wounded 77, missing 13. Behind those numbers are men like Owen S. Clark, individuals with families, histories, and futures that the war extinguished.

Owen died at West's Buildings General Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland eighteen days after his wounding.

He was originally interred in Loudon Park National Cemetery before being “sent home” and reburied in New Jersey.

Owen’s brother Jesse also enlisted in the summer of 1861 and served in the 57th New York Volunteer Infantry. He lost his right leg at the battle of Antietam, but survived the war and enjoyed his large family before his death in 1898. Jesse is buried near his brother.

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Having returned home from his wound, Jesse oversaw the reinternment of his brother in the Smithville cemetery and the placement of the gravestone. Though the stone is now broken and eroded, the words “for a brother’s love” can still be deciphered.

Lincoln was right. No words can fully consecrate what men like Owen S. Clark consecrated with their lives. But we can try to remember them. We can speak their names, place their lives in context, and refuse to let them vanish entirely into the silence of the past.

Private Owen S. Clark, 7th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, mortally wounded at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. Let that much, at least, be said.

On this day in 1865, the Confederate Congress passed legislation authorizing the recruitment of Black soldiers into the Confederate Army. It was a measure that would have been unthinkable at the conflict’s outset and remained deeply controversial until the very end. That it passed at all was due in significant measure to the sustained efforts and towering personal authority of General Robert E. Lee, who spent the final months of the Civil War lobbying politicians, writing public letters, and pressuring a reluctant Confederate establishment to embrace what many considered a radical and self-defeating idea.

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Lee’s role in this episode is one of the more complex and morally ambiguous chapters of his biography. A man who had commanded the Confederacy’s armies in defense of a slaveholding republic now urged that enslaved men be freed and armed.

Let’s dig in.

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This post was inspired by an essay written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published in The Journal of the Civil War Era (March 2026): 137-43.

We often speak of the American Civil War as though its outcome was written in advance, that the preservation of the United States and the abolition of slavery were always where the story was heading. This is a comfortable illusion. The war was, at nearly every juncture, genuinely uncertain in its outcome, and recognizing that uncertainty should give us serious pause about how confidently we claim to understand our own turbulent present.

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Consider how contingent Union victory actually was. In the summer of 1864, Lincoln himself believed he would lose the presidential election. The war had ground into bloody stalemate, Northern morale was collapsing, and the Democratic platform proposed a negotiated peace, which could easily have led to the independence of a new slaveholding republic in the western hemisphere. Then Sherman took Atlanta in September, the political weather shifted, and Lincoln won in a landslide. A few weeks’ difference in military timing might have produced a different America entirely.

That is not a footnote. That is the whole story.

Any number of battles from Bull Run to Appomattox could have taken a different turn for any number of reasons. Popular support for war; the willingness to volunteer to serve in the army; and the fate of elections, all hinged on the results of these bloody fights.

These moments reveal something uncomfortable. The people living through the Civil War had no idea how it would end. They were navigating genuine darkness and uncertainty. Frederick Douglass, whose moral clarity about slavery was unquestioned, was nonetheless racked with uncertainty about whether liberation would come in his lifetime.

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Lincoln revised his strategies, his constitutional arguments, and his war aims repeatedly, not from weakness, but because circumstances kept refusing to resolve into certainty. The Emancipation Proclamation itself was a contingent document, issued partly because military and political conditions had finally made it viable, not simply because justice demanded it.

Had the Confederacy surrendered before the end of 1862, slavery would have remained largely intact in the United States.

Hindsight flattens all of this. We know the United States won, so the victory feels inevitable. We know slavery was abolished, so abolition feels like the momentum of history finally arriving at its destination. But this retrospective clarity is a cognitive illusion, and a dangerous one, because it suggests that history moves purposefully toward just outcomes if we simply wait long enough, and that the people who resisted or delayed were fighting against something foreordained.

In reality, nothing was foreordained. The right outcome required ferocious contingent effort, fortunate timing, and a degree of luck that should be sobering rather than reassuring.

What does this mean for how we read the present? We are living through our own period of profound national stress. For many people, our arguments about democracy, equality, and the character of the republic feel as though they rhyme, uncomfortably, with arguments that preceded the Civil War. It is tempting to believe we know how this resolves, that we can see the arc clearly from where we stand.

The Civil War’s history suggests we should be far less certain. The people who thought they understood the trajectory of events in 1860 were largely wrong. The crisis was deeper than optimists believed and more resolvable than pessimists feared, and almost no one predicted the precise shape of what actually happened.

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Acknowledging contingency is not a counsel of passivity. The Civil War’s outcome was shaped by people who acted with urgency precisely because they understood nothing was guaranteed, including abolitionists who kept organizing when the cause seemed hopeless, soldiers who fought when the war seemed lost, a president who kept reframing his mission as circumstances demanded.

Humility about outcomes did not diminish their effort; it sharpened it.

The war stands as a monument not only to what was achieved but to how narrowly, and how contingently, it was achieved. To forget that is to misread the past. And to misread the past—to mistake the survived crisis for the inevitable resolution—is to approach the present with a false confidence that history, in its recurring way, will not leave unchallenged.

Public memorials and historical markers are meant to do more than simply record the past. They are statements about what a community believes deserves to be remembered and seen. When a historical marker is installed in a location where few people will ever encounter it, the gesture risks becoming less an act of remembrance and more an act of quiet avoidance.

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In the case of a marker commemorating the January 6, 2021 insurrection, placing it somewhere obscure is tantamount to denying the truth of what happened that day.

And that is exactly what House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La has hoped to accomplish in his continued attempt to avoid acknowledging the truth of what happened on January 6.

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Historical markers are a form of public acknowledgment. Their power lies not only in the words engraved on them but in their visibility. They occupy shared space and invite the public to confront history as part of everyday life. When placed along busy sidewalks, outside government buildings, or at the sites where events unfolded, markers force a moment of recognition. They insist that the past is not hidden away in archives but present in the civic landscape.

A marker about January 6 should function in precisely this way. It should remind citizens that the peaceful transfer of power—one of the core principles of American democracy—was violently threatened.

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The first Civil War monument dedicated in the city, however, is far removed from the heavy foot traffic of the Common and downtown Boston. In fact, Boston’s first monument is located just a short walk from my home and is one of Otis’s favorite spots for his afternoon strolls.

Very few people have seen it.

I recently acquired a copy of the dedication program for this monument.

Let’s take a closer look at the program and the history of the monument.

The dedication of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument at Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston on July 3, 1867, holds particular historical significance because it reflects the earliest phase of Civil War remembrance in the United States. Occurring just two years after the end of the Civil War, the monument represents an early effort by the city of Boston to commemorate the sacrifices of Union soldiers and sailors.

Though I tend to spend a good deal of time discussing Confederate monuments, including those dedicated in the immediate postwar period, focusing on this particular monument is a reminder that Northern communities also sought to memorialize the dead, express collective grief, and define the meaning of the conflict.

During this early period of monument/statue dedications throughout the North and South, communities were still mourning those who had died and attempting to come to terms with the immense losses of the war. Memorials built in the 1860s tended to focus on honoring the dead rather than celebrating military victory or national power. As a result, early monuments often emphasized sacrifice, duty, and remembrance.

The Mount Hope monument is also significant because it was the first official Civil War memorial erected by the city of Boston. By dedicating this monument, Boston formally acknowledged the service and sacrifice of the men who had fought for the United States.

Interestingly, it could have been the first and last monument dedicated in Boston. At the time, Massachusetts law permitted only one soldiers’ monument per municipality. Because Boston had already erected the monument at Mount Hope Cemetery, the city was initially prevented from building another monument elsewhere until the law was eventually changed.

This suggests that the Mount Hope monument was regarded as the city’s primary public commemoration of its Civil War soldiers and sailors.

The location of the monument within a cemetery also reflects the character of early Civil War memorial practices. As has already been noted, in the immediate aftermath of the war, many communities chose to place monuments in burial grounds, particularly in areas associated with veterans or soldiers’ graves.

These settings emphasized mourning and remembrance rather than public display. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe Confederate monuments, located in cemeteries, should be removed or tampered with in any way.

Cemeteries provided a solemn space in which families, veterans, and community members could gather to honor the fallen. Over time, however, the focus of Civil War commemoration shifted. Later monuments were often placed in prominent civic spaces such as city squares, parks, and courthouse lawns. These later memorials were designed to be more visible and to serve as symbols of civic pride and national unity.

The dedication ceremony itself further illustrates the meaning attached to the monument in the immediate postwar years. The event brought together city officials, veterans, and members of the public in a formal civic ceremony that included speeches, prayers, and patriotic observances honoring those who had served in the Union army and navy.

Held on July 3, the ceremony deliberately coincided with the eve of Independence Day, linking the memory of the Civil War with the broader ideals of American liberty and national unity. Organizers also were thinking of the “victories achieved at Gettysburg, as most fitting and proper to enshrine the memories of our fallen braves.”

Speakers, including the mayor and local representative emphasized the sacrifice of the fallen and the duty of the living to preserve the Union for which they had fought. Such ceremonies were common in the early years after the war and played a crucial role in shaping public memory by framing the conflict as a struggle that had preserved the nation and honored the principles upon which it was founded.

Reverend Warren H. Cudworth offered the following prayer:

We would acknowledge, with devout appreciation of Thy wisdom and goodness, that providential control of human affairs so signally manifested during our recent war, which turned the plans of rebellion into foolishness, and brought substantial and enduring good out of seeming but transitory evil. We rejoice to believe then when we cried unto Thee during seasons of disaster and defeat, Thou didst incline Thine ear to hear, and dist finally save our land from destruction.

Certainly there was no attempt at sectional reconciliation in this ceremony. No one mentioned slavery or emancipation by name, but Mayor Norcross came closest: “The chief cause of our national discord has been removed, and now let us strive, under the favor of Divine Providence, to make the peace we have attained lasting and unbroken[.]

Governor John Andrew was unable to attend, but sent a message to be read during the ceremony.

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Our collective attention over the past decade or so on Confederate monuments and the divisive question over what to do about them has overshadowed the many Union monuments throughout the United States. I recently read that there are significantly more Confederate than Union monuments. I’m not so sure this is the case, but even if it is, it doesn’t negate the fact that monuments commemorating Union and the end of slavery are pervasive throughout much of the country.

You can find a Civil War statue in just about every neighborhood in Boston and just about every town across the state includes one in its town square and/or cemetery.

They are part of our commemorative landscapes, but, with few exceptions, we have little reason to acknowledge their presence.

For those of you who are interested in visiting this monument, Mount Hope Cemetery is located at 355 Walk Hill Street, Boston, MA 02131. Here is an overview of the cemetery. The arrow points to the monument’s location.

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The other day I came across this AI-generated video about Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. I really like the cartoons that accompany the narrative, but you can clearly see the deficiencies that continue to hamper AI’s ability to accurately interpret history. The narrative is stale and while, in general, it gets much of the story correct, it is clearly based on a popular narrative that has been reinforced over time by the publication of Peter Burchard’s book One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw And His Brave Black Regiment (1965) and the Hollywood movie, Glory (1989).

Here’s the video.

Here are some highlights.

Clearly, one of the reasons the 54th failed in its assault on Fort Wagner is that they marched straight into the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently, when you type in the word “fort” into an AI-site, the algorithm interprets it as a walled European city set in the Middle Ages. Notice the regiment is presented as racially integrated.

That’s not exactly true. Shaw certainly believed that the Black soldiers under his command should be respected, but that did not rise to the level of racial equality. Shaw didn’t even believe that the Irish were equal to what he referred to as ‘American’ soldiers early in the war.

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The movie Glory depicts Shaw as a constant presence in camp while the 54th was in training at Readville. In fact, much of his time was spent away from camp coordinating with Massachusetts governor John Andrew and raising money and support from social groups in and around Boston. And just a few weeks before the regiment shipped out to South Carolina in late May 1863, Shaw married Annie Haggerty in New York City before spending time at her parent’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

The regiment was well trained, but that did not include learning how to fire on your own men.

While the assault on Fort Wagner failed, news of their heroic act did make it into many Northern newspapers. Coverage of the regiment’s assault, however, fell decidedly along partisan political lines. It did not lead to any sort of consensus among white Americans that Black people could fight or that they should be allowed to enlist.

Asking AI to generate an image of the Shaw monument in Boston is a bit of a challenge.

Closer, at least in terms of the monument’s proximity to the Capitol Building.

There we go, though the angel is moving in the wrong direction and the monument should be even closer to the Capitol Building. It’s also facing the wrong way. Oh well. Close enough.

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It will be interesting to see whether my book will gradually reshape these AI-generated narratives of Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts. That said, I am much more excited about the book giving real people the opportunity to think anew about a story that I believe is worth getting right.

Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter for more updates about when you can pre-order the book as well information about my planned book tour in the Fall.

You may or may not know that the reference goes back to the Civil War. Let’s review.

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The phrase “unconditional surrender” became closely associated with General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and helped define his reputation as a determined and relentless Union commander. Grant used the term to signal that he would accept nothing less than the complete submission of a Confederate force without negotiation, compromise, or special terms. His most famous use of the phrase came early in the war at Fort Donelson in February 1862.

When Grant demanded “unconditional surrender,” he meant that the opposing army had to lay down its arms and submit fully to United States authority. There would be no bargaining over conditions such as allowing troops to leave with their weapons, negotiate political terms, or secure special privileges. Instead, the defeated force would surrender entirely and be taken prisoner under the standard rules of war.

This approach reflected Grant’s broader philosophy of warfare. He believed the United States could only win by applying constant pressure and forcing Confederate armies into situations where they had no option but defeat. By insisting on unconditional surrender, Grant communicated both confidence and resolve. Confederate commanders would have to either continue fighting or accept total defeat.

Grant’s demand for unconditional surrender occurred after Union forces surrounded Fort Donelson in Tennessee in February 1862. The fort was defended by Confederate troops under commanders including John B. Floyd and Simon Bolivar Buckner. After a series of clashes and an unsuccessful Confederate breakout attempt, the Confederate leadership collapsed. Floyd and another general fled during the night, leaving Buckner in command.

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Historian Brooks Simpson writes that Grant wrote up his terms of surrender in consultation with one of his division commanders, Charles F. Smith, who said: “No terms to the damned Rebels!”

Buckner, who had known Grant before the war, sent a message requesting terms for surrender. Grant’s response became famous. He wrote that “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” He added that he intended to move immediately upon the Confederate works if the offer was not accepted.

Faced with little hope of escape or reinforcement, Buckner surrendered the fort on February 16, 1862. The Union captured roughly 12,000 Confederate soldiers, one of the largest surrenders of the war up to that point. The victory gave the Union control of key rivers in Tennessee and opened the path deeper into the Confederate interior.

It is important to point out that unconditional surrender did not imply “unlimited” power over the enemy. It could be qualified if necessary. As historian David Silkenat writes in his fantastic book Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War, Grant chose not to humiliate surrendered Confederates by having them parade and engage in the traditional stacking of arms. “There will be nothing of the kind. The surrender is now a fact. We have the fort, the men, the guns. Why should we go through vain forms and mortify and injure the spirit of brave men, who, after all, are our own countrymen?” (p. 67)

Silkenat also notes that when reports reached Grant that his men were confiscating the belongings of Confederate soldiers as well as the sidearms of officers, he ordered that it be stopped immediately. Grant also promised that the prisoners would be well treated.

After the victory at Fort Donelson, newspapers seized on the phrase “unconditional surrender.” Grant’s initials—U.S.—led journalists to nickname him “Unconditional Surrender Grant.” The label stuck and contributed to his growing national reputation as a tough and determined commander.

Despite the nickname, Grant did not usually insist on unconditional surrender afterward. In fact, his later surrender terms were often relatively generous. At Vicksburg, Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate forces under John C. Pemberton, but he allowed the Confederate soldiers to be paroled rather than taken into long-term captivity. This was more lenient than strict “unconditional surrender.”

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When Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, Grant offered very generous terms. In fact, as Brooks Simpson points out, Grant did not invoke the term at all in conversation with Lee. Confederate soldiers could return home, officers kept their sidearms, and soldiers who owned horses could take them home for spring planting.

Grant later explained that he wanted the surrender to help end the war quickly and promote reconciliation, not humiliate the defeated Confederates.

I have no idea what President Trump means when invoking “unconditional surrender” in reference to Iran. I suspect he doesn’t either. His adherence to principle or any idea for that matter is as solid as his October campaign message promising to keep the United States out of unnecessary wars.

One thing I do know is that Donald Trump is no Ulysses S. Grant.

I spent my teaching career in private schools in Alabama, Virginia and most recently in Massachusetts. I never had to deal with state standards or the rhetoric of politicians, who had a vested interest in shaping how history is taught.

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In addition to teaching, I have worked with history teachers in public schools throughout the country, who deal with these very issues on a regular basis. In many states today, the threat of censorship and the constant second guessing of what content to teach and how to teach it is palpable.

Now that Virginia Democrats have control of the state legislature, they are wasting little time in passing legislation that has failed to materialize in previous administrations. A number of bills that will further distance the state from its Confederate past will likely soon be signed into law by Democratic governor Abigail Spanberger.

This week I learned that the legislature passed a bill concerning how the history of what occurred in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 is taught. The bill allows schools to teach the topic but requires that instruction not describe the event as a peaceful protest or present claims of widespread election fraud as credible, and instead frame it as a violent attack on democratic institutions intended to overturn the 2020 election.

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All that stands in the way of this bill becoming law is the governor’s signature.

Supporters argue the law protects factual history. It doesn’t.

This bill is a horrible idea.

One major concern that I have is that laws like this set a precedent for government control over historical narratives. We’ve certainly seen plenty of this from Republican-controlled states over the past few years.

It also bypasses the state’s curriculum standards. Traditionally, legislatures establish curriculum standards—such as which time periods or documents students should study—while teachers and scholars retain freedom to interpret and discuss events.

When lawmakers mandate a specific interpretation in statute, the state begins to determine not only what is taught, but how it must be understood.

This bill represents a significant departure from educational norms. Instead of encouraging analysis, debate, and evidence-based reasoning, the law risks turning history lessons into recitations of officially approved conclusions. Democrats will do little more than push us further down the road of legislating historical interpretation and replacing professional judgment with political directives.

If one political party establishes this precedent, future legislatures controlled by different parties will feel justified in rewriting history standards to fit their own political narratives. Over time, history education will become even more of a political pendulum that shifts with every election cycle.

So much of my work with history educators involves exploring ways to encourage critical thinking in the classroom about controversial topics. A solid history education involves much more than memorizing dates or familiarizing oneself with a standard narrative. It hopefully includes learning how to think like a historian.

Good history education typically involves examining multiple sources, evaluating competing interpretations, and encouraging students to think critically about complex events.

A law that prohibits certain interpretations, even controversial ones, may limit teachers’ ability to discuss why different perspectives exist or how narratives evolve over time. Rather than exploring historical debates, teachers might feel pressured to avoid the topic altogether to prevent controversy or complaints.

Ironically, this could undermine the very educational goals the law seeks to promote. Instead of strengthening understanding of civic institutions and democratic norms, students may receive a simplified or rigid narrative that discourages questioning.

Another thing to keep in mind that is often overlooked is that the events of January 6 remain relatively recent and continue to be analyzed by historians, political scientists, and legal scholars. While many facts about the event are well established, its long-term significance in American history is still being debated and will continue to be debated for the foreseeable future.

When governments codify interpretations of contemporary events into law, they risk stifling historical conclusions before scholars have fully examined them. History is often reassessed as new evidence emerges or as scholars gain greater historical distance from events.

By fixing an official narrative in statute, policymakers may inadvertently limit the ability of future educators and students to incorporate and consider new scholarship or evolving interpretations.

My biggest concern is that if states begin to legislate how particular historical events must be interpreted, the practice could expand far beyond January 6.

Future lawmakers might mandate interpretations of other controversial topics, including wars, political movements, or social conflicts. Over time, education could become a battleground where competing political factions attempt to codify their preferred versions of history.

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You might say that this is already taking place and you wouldn’t be wrong, but much of the state legislation that I’ve seen focuses broadly on certain subjects rather than on specific events. Don’t get me wrong, that is bad enough, but the Virginia bill constitutes another dangerous step.

If the ongoing attempt on the part of the Trump administration to censor how history is told at National Park Service sites around the country concerns you, just imagine the same process taking place in our classrooms.

This trend would risk transforming history education from a discipline grounded in research and inquiry into one shaped, even more directly, by political power.

If Virginia Democrats care about how history is taught, they should provide funding to professional development programs across the state that support teachers and the important work they do with students to encourage critical thinking about history.

If the state can mandate history, is it still history?

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As a historian, I believe our first obligation is to understand the past on its own terms. We owe the people who came before us the effort to see their world as they understood it—not to conscript them into our present-day agendas, whatever those may be.

That challenge is especially clear in interpretations of the Confederacy’s evolving relationship with slavery, and in the narrower but revealing debate over whether enslaved men should be enlisted to support the Confederate war effort. In the hands of Confederate heritage organizations, enslaved laborers are too often recast—almost by sleight of hand—as hundreds or even thousands of so-called “loyal Black Confederates.”

In the process, the experiences of actual Confederate soldiers are pushed aside. Their words and actions are ignored, selectively quoted, or bent to fit narratives that obscure more than they illuminate. Even more troubling, such reinterpretations flatten the lives of enslaved men themselves, reducing them to symbols in a modern political struggle rather than recognizing their humanity and the coercive system in which they lived.

I was reminded of these tensions while reading Patrick J. Doyle’s Carolinian Crucible: Reforging Class, Family, and Nation in Confederate South Carolina (Cambridge University Press, 2025). In some respects, the book feels like a return to an earlier scholarly moment, revisiting the origins and durability of Confederate nationalism, a topic that drew significant attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

That said, the book breaks new ground by narrowing its focus to the upcountry of South Carolina and by examining Confederate nationalism through the lived experiences of “common white” families. By reconstructing the social world of this region, Doyle uncovers a deeply rooted nationalism shared by both “ardent” and “lukewarm” Confederates, men who differed in intensity, perhaps, but not in their underlying commitment to the slaveholders’ republic.

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In the book’s final section, Doyle returns to the Boyd family of Abbeville District. Robert Boyd sent three sons off to war in 1861, followed by three more sons and a son-in-law. Only Daniel Boyd, who enlisted in April 1861, survived. Even in the Confederacy’s final months, as defeat loomed, Daniel refused to desert alongside many of his fellow soldiers.

Doyle’s interpretation is especially striking:

Daniel Boyd understood that the Confederacy’s ability to wage war was crumbling. He saw tangible evidence of this not only in the men who deserted every night but also in the rumors he heard about the enslaved being made Confederate soldiers. “It wont do to put them with the white men for they wont stand it,” he predicted, before adding, “We are nie enough on equality with them now.” This was a vague though quite damning remark given the fundamental purpose of the Confederate project, and one that surely reflected the poor conditions southern soldiers were enduring and the deterioration of slavery across the Civil War South. Still, Boyd could not bring himself to leave the army. This refusal to desert during the moment of Confederate collapse was not due to a forlorn hope that victory could be snatched from the jaws of defeat but rather a form of what today might be termed a sunk-cost fallacy; Boyd had lost faith in the slaveholders’ republic yet could not forsake the cause that he had served for so long—and that his brothers had perished in defense of—by deserting. (p. 167)

Boyd’s reflections on the possibility of Black enlistment are deeply revealing. Yet before we unpack them, it’s worth recognizing how little we gain by fixating on the distracting question, “How many Black Confederates served?” That numbers-driven debate tells us nothing about Boyd himself, about what he feared, how he understood the Confederacy’s unraveling, or why he chose to remain in the ranks during the war’s final, desperate months.

Even at this late stage of the war, substantial numbers of enslaved laborers remained with Confederate armies. Boyd would have encountered them in a wide range of roles, including as teamsters, cooks, body servants, and laborers in fortifications. Yet when he reflects on the possibility of Black enlistment, he does not suggest that these men were already serving as soldiers. Nor does he express confusion about why officials in Richmond were debating something supposedly settled. For Boyd, it clearly was not.

What stands out in his remarks is not a prediction that white soldiers would refuse to accept Black men in uniform. It is his uneasy acknowledgment that the racial hierarchy itself seemed to be eroding: “We are nie enough on equality with them now.” He was not claiming that enslaved men and white soldiers had become interchangeable as combatants. Rather, he was recognizing that the shared deprivations of war—their physical exhaustion, ragged clothing, hunger, exposure in camp, on the march, and perhaps even under fire—had narrowed the visible distance between slave and soldier in unsettling ways.

And yet, the boundary still mattered. The distinction between enslaved laborer and armed Confederate soldier had not disappeared.

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This is where our attention ought to rest. Boyd’s wartime experience had changed profoundly since 1861. The mere prospect of Black enlistment struck at more than slavery as a labor system; it threatened the racial order that gave meaning to his sacrifice. For a man who had lost brothers and endured years of hardship, the idea of arming enslaved men signaled the disintegration of the very hierarchy he believed the Confederacy existed to defend.

By contrast, conjuring images of thousands of “loyal Black Confederates” streaming eagerly into the ranks carries us further from the historical Boyd. It substitutes a comforting myth for the harder truth of how one of the Confederacy’s most steadfast soldiers experienced the unraveling of his nation and of the racial world he thought the war would preserve.

Yesterday I shared the results of my dive into the massive file dump documenting the National Park Service’s ongoing effort to comply with the Trump administration’s executive order to “restore truth and sanity to American history.” Nothing that I found was problematic.

I was left feeling gutted after sifting through document after document of what has been a concerted and overall successful attempt on the part of the NPS to document our history, in all of its complexity, for all Americans. I am sad and I am angry that any of this history is being questioned as inappropriate or somehow ‘un-American.’

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In the previous post I made it a point to stick to the theme of this newsletter and present examples from Civil War related sites.

But the one site that I can’t stop thinking about today is the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama. Most of the flagged items were wayside markers and other informational panels. Someone connected to the review highlighted certain text for reasons that remain unclear.

It’s a place that I know extremely well having led countless student civil rights tours and other groups over the years. It’s a complicated town. A visit to Selma is one of the best places in this country to learn about the long struggle for civil rights and racial equality.

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It is sacred ground, but it is also a place that continues to face serious economic challenges.

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Yesterday The Washington Post published a story about newly linked files detailing the exhibits, publications, and other resources that have been flagged across the National Park Service system in response to the Trump administration’s executive order surrounding public history.

The Post article included links to two sites, where the files can be downloaded. I spent hours reviewing hundreds of files. It is so much worse than I initially thought. The flagged materials fall roughly into three camps: environment, Indigenous history, and African American history, specifically the history of enslavement.

The downloaded files comes with an Excel sheet that lists the parks by number, initial and the region of the country where it is located. You can see if any materials are flagged. If so, you then have to find the corresponding folder which includes photographs as well as PDF and Word files.

It’s important to note that the review is still in process, but as we have seen in recent months, steps have been taken to remove exhibits at a number of sites, most recently in Philadelphia at the President’s House.

The president’s executive order has placed the staff of the NPS in an impossible situation. In addition to the files of individual NPS sites, the downloaded files include two documents titled, “How To Censor Exhibits With HFC” and “Implementation of Secretary’s Order 3431.” Like the president’s executive order, the manual is incredibly vague leaving it to the discretion of the park manager or superintendent to interpret to his/her discretion.

This becomes clear as you review the files. A number of park sites chose not to report anything, but based on what has been reported by other park sites it is clear that there are no clear standards by which to judge a printed resource, wayside marker or other exhibits. It’s a total crap shoot.

There is also nothing to indicate who or how the flagged materials will be assessed.

As I have said numerous times in the past, I don’t blame the NPS for any of this. They have been placed in an impossible situation and deserve so much better.

That said, there is something incredibly sad to see so much of the park service’s work marked as somehow problematic. Over the past few decades, the NPS has redoubled its efforts to interpret history that has for far too long been pushed to the sidelines or mythologized. It represents the hard work and dedication of so many people from historians/front line interpreters to exhibit designers.

Below is a small sample of the materials that have been flagged from around the NPS system. In keeping with the theme of this site and the massive amount of information available to pull from, I confined myself to Civil War related sites.

I reiterate that the interpretive assets flagged by these individual sites do not constitute actual removals, though there is certainly the potential for it.

Thanks for reading. If you appreciate the importance of staying updated about the latest news concerning the NPS, I hope you will consider becoming a paid supporter. It took me hours to look through these files and put this post together. I want nothing more than to continue to do this work for you, but I need your help.

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Let’s start at Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick County, MD, where they flagged a wall panel asking visitors to reflect on the meaning of the Confederate battle flag.

A number of sites, like Vicksburg National Military Park, flagged so many materials that they needed more than one folder. This is a wayside marker located in front of the Shirley House. All it does is list the names of enslaved people who lived and worked on site.

This wall exhibit inside the visitors center simply quotes from the state of Mississippi’s declaration explaining why it seceded from the United States in 1861.

This panel identifies slavery as the cause of the Civil War.

Much of the material that you will see is relatively new to the NPS—traced roughly to the 1990s. We need to remember just how recent some of these changes are to the overall interpretation at Civil War related sites across the country. It took a great deal of work to make these changes happen.

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At Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, Tennessee someone highlighted text that was thought to be potentially problematic. Even the brochures didn’t escape scrutiny.

You can see the same approach in the materials submitted by Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, in Beaufort, SC, is one of the more recent sites added to the NPS system and the only one in this country devoted to telling the story of Reconstruction. I highly recommend a visit. It was tough seeing these three wayside markers flagged for review.

The first is a wayside marker of Camp Saxton, where some of the first Black men enlisted to fight for this country in 1862.

This particular illustration of an Emancipation Day celebration on January 1, 1863 was particularly sad to see. I use it to open one of the chapters in my forthcoming biography of Robert Gould Shaw.

Yes, that is Marvin-Alonzo Greer posing as a soldier in the 1st South Carolina Infantry.

One ways to get a sense of the unevenness of this review across the NPS is the fact that while some sites flagged materials referencing the history of slavery, emancipation etc., sites like Gettysburg National Military Park, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park and numerous others apparently submitted no materials for review even though I know for a fact that they also tell these stories.

Three folders were needed to contain materials flagged at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. Apart from a brief reference to “two free African-American women,” I have no idea why this wayside marker was flagged.

This one is much more obvious. After purchasing private land that included a statue of Robert E. Lee, the NPS placed this wayside marker on site to help visitors better understand the difference between history and memory. It’s quite good, but I guess a discussion of the Lost Cause is potentially problematic.

A number of sites included materials specifically geared for children.

Finally, like a number of other sites, Antietam also flagged a number of books about the African-American experience sold in the park bookstore. Titles include, but are not limited to, Black Antietam by Emilie Amt, How The Word Is Passed by Clint Smith, the NPS own handbook, Hispanics and the Civil War as well as the NPS’s wonderful collection of essays on Reconstruction.

At Lincoln Home National Historic Site a sign about economic and ethnic diversity in Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield was flagged for review.

Between 2018 and 2021, the exhibits at Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial underwent extensive revision as a result of a generous donation by David Rubenstein. Much of the focus was on the interpretation of the lives of the enslaved. I’ve visited numerous times with teachers since its opening and I highly recommend it. Here is just one example of the materials now under review.

I really like this wall exhibit, which gives visitors the opportunity to share their thoughts about what they’ve seen.

I didn’t even scratch the surface in terms of the sheer number and breadth of materials flagged for review. In fact, I only scratched the surface of the sites that I pulled materials from for this post.

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As I’ve said many times before, it is important to recognize that this review has absolutely nothing to do with improving the ability of the NPS to interpret American history for the general public. This is an attempt on the part of the Trump administration to censor history for purely self-serving political purposes.

We must remain vigilant as this process continues to play out. Call your state and federal representatives to demand that it stop with this nonsense. Our national parks should be fully funded and its staff should be allowed to carry out their mission without the threat of censorship and employment hanging over their shoulders day in and day out.

If you live close to a park site that has submitted materials keep an eye out for anything removed or revised. If you do spot something suspicius, please take a photograph. Bring attention to it through your local news and through me as well.

Thank you for reading. Stay safe. We’re all in this together.

If you look closely, you will notice that Shaw’s sword is broken. Unfortunately, this has happened numerous times since its dedication in 1897. I don’t believe it is the result of an intent to damage the memorial, but simply a lack of awareness of the sword’s fragility. When the memorial was restored a few years back, they decided to make the sword out of a more flexible material.

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You will also notice that Shaw’s face appears quite dark. This could be the lighting, but more likely this photograph was taken during the many stretches of time this memorial went without being properly cleaned.

I purchased this photograph not only because of the obvious connection to Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts, but because it highlights the commemorative efforts of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. It goes without saying that their efforts have almost always been overshadowed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy.

By the time this photograph was taken, there was only a small handful of Union veterans still alive. Albert Henry Woolson, the last surviving Union veteran and last surviving veteran on either side, whose status is undisputed, died in 1956.

With his passing the Civil War ceased to be a living memory. That transition could have meant the fading of Union memory altogether. Instead, much of the responsibility for carrying it forward fell to their descendants—organized most prominently in the SUVCW.

Here is a recent post in which I share the story surrounding another fascinating Civil War related artifact.

The SUVCW was founded in 1881 as the hereditary companion to the Grand Army of the Republic. The Daughters of Union veterans was founded four years later. Arguably, its real importance emerged only after the veterans themselves were gone. When the GAR dissolved in the 1950s, the Sons inherited not just its records and rituals, but its sense of mission. They saw themselves as guardians of the Union cause—caretakers of graves, monuments, battle flags, and, more broadly, of the war’s meaning and its legacy.

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SUVCW camps organized Memorial Day commemorations long after those observances had lost their exclusively Civil War focus. They decorated graves in small-town cemeteries, delivered speeches about loyalty and sacrifice, and reminded local audiences that the war had settled the question of national survival.

But their work was not simply nostalgic. Mid-twentieth-century America was preoccupied with new wars, including two world wars and then the Cold War. In that context, Union victory took on renewed symbolic weight.

The idea that the United States had endured a catastrophic internal conflict and emerged stronger resonated deeply in an age defined by global ideological struggle. The Sons reinforced that narrative. They framed the Civil War as the moment when the Union proved indissoluble—an especially potent message in a century that repeatedly tested national cohesion.

They also played a quieter role in preserving historical material. Local SUVCW members collected letters, photographs, and regimental histories. They safeguarded artifacts that might otherwise have been discarded when attics were cleaned out or family lines ended. Long before digital archives and expansive public history initiatives, they were performing grassroots preservation work. The historical record of ordinary Union soldiers is richer in part because descendants took the time to care.

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Perhaps most importantly, the Sons served as a counterweight to versions of Civil War memory that blurred moral distinctions between North and South, but as you can clearly see in this SUVCW newsletter, even they were not immune from the pull of reconciliation.

While the SUVCW certainly participated in gestures of national unity, they consistently framed the war as a defense of the Union and increasingly acknowledged emancipation as part of its legacy. In doing so, they kept alive an interpretation that tied Union victory to larger themes of citizenship and freedom—an interpretation that would gain new significance during the civil rights movement and beyond.

The SUVCW is still active, including nine camps here in Massachusetts.

I also thought it might be a nice distraction from the news of the past few days.

Have a great day, everyone.

I really wanted to enjoy the new Amazon miniseries The Gray House, which is based on the story of Richmond, Virginia’s Elizabeth Van Lew, who organized an extensive spy ring for the Union Army in the Confederate capital during the American Civil War.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get passed the first 20 minutes of the first episode.

The opening scene in the Van Lew residence followed much too closely with the opening of Gone With the Wind right down to Elizabeth in her bedroom dressing for a soiree with the help of her enslaved servant. John Wilkes Booth shows up to the party, while men debate war and the merits of secession. It was much too predictable. Perhaps I will give it another go at some point.

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I was also disappointed with the depiction of Richmond, especially what appeared to be Capitol Square. The only identifiable object that I could see was the Virginia Washington Monument or Washington Monument. You can see the base of it in this trailer clip, which is used as a setting for the burning of Lincoln in effigy.

It happens to be one of my favorite monuments in Richmond.

Let’s take a closer look.

Your paid subscription not only unlocks all of this site’s content, it also allows you to participate in this newsletter’s Civil War book group as well as live chats with the author. Thanks as always for your support.

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One article that I didn’t highlight is Lerone Bennett Jr.’s account of the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, which appeared in Ebony in 1975. Bennett is best known for his highly critical study of Lincoln, titled Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, which was published in 2000.

Bennett wrote extensively for Ebony magazine well into the 1980s using the publication to highlight Black military service during the Civil War, emancipation and challenge a collective memory still steeped in the Lost Cause and reconciliation.

The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm a.k.a the Battle of New Market Heights (September 29–30, 1864), fought just southeast of Richmond, Virginia, featured several regiments of United States Colored Troops (USCT). In Bennett’s interpretation, the performance of these troops stands at the center of the story. His narrative emphasizes their courage under fire, their willingness to endure devastating casualties, and their determination to prove both their manhood and their right to equal citizenship.

Bennett narrative highlights the extraordinary valor displayed during the assault on Confederate defenses. The heavy casualties suffered by USCT regiments underscore both the intensity of the fighting and the soldiers’ resolve. Fourteen Black soldiers received the Medal of Honor for their actions at New Market Heights, and Bennett treats these recognitions not as isolated acts of heroism, but as collective testimony to the broader significance of Black military service.

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Their bravery, he argues, struck at the ideological heart of slavery and white supremacy by contradicting long-standing racist assumptions about Black inferiority and cowardice.

The real reason I am highlighting this article, however, is to showcase Orville A. Hurt’s illustrations, which offer the perfect visual accompaniment to Bennett’s narrative.

Hurt’s illustrations leave little to the imagination. Hurt depicts Black troops engaged directly in combat. Rather than portraying them as laborers or passive figures (a common racist trope of the era), his images show them advancing under fire, manning fortifications, and participating in coordinated assaults.

Hurt’s visual emphasis on determination, discipline, and sacrifice underscores the extraordinary bravery displayed by these men and the dangers that they faced in the event of capture by Confederates.

In 1864, the very presence of armed Black men in uniform challenged deeply rooted ideas about race and citizenship. By showing them as soldiers—organized, uniformed, and courageous—Hurt’s illustrations visually reinforced the argument that military service was a claim to full citizenship.

Confederate propaganda often portrayed Black troops as inferior or incapable fighters. Images like Hurt’s countered those claims by documenting discipline and battlefield effectiveness.

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Finally, both Bennett’s narrative and Hurt’s illustrations work to connect the experience of African Americans in the Civil War to more recent conflicts, including Vietnam and the continued fight for equality.

Hurt’s illustrations specifically preserve an image of Black military action at a moment when Lost Cause ideology still defined public memory in monuments, textbooks, and veteran culture. His illustrations help us see that the Lost Cause was never universal. It had opponents from the very beginning, and African Americans were among its most consistent and principled critics.

Today I returned the copy-edits for my forthcoming biography of Robert Gould Shaw to the University of North Carolina Press. The official publication date is set for September 29 and the book will be available for pre-order in April. For now, here is a look at the cover if you haven’t yet seen it.

Originally I set out to write a book that was divided equally between history and memory. Think of Joan Waugh’s fantastic study of Ulysses S. Grant. As I got into things, however, I became much more interested in Shaw’s story, much of it I believed had not been adequately explained, especially the first two years of the war.

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I ended up focusing the final chapter on commemorative activities related to Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts, which was centered, in large part, around Rob’s mother, Sarah Blake Shaw, who worked tirelessly to memorialize her son as a martyr of the “emancipationist” cause. The chapter ends with the dedication of the Shaw Memorial in Boston in 1897.

A short epilogue offers some final thoughts about how African Americans kept Shaw’s and the 54th Massachusetts’s memory alive throughout the twentieth century before much of the white population rediscovered the story through the movie Glory in 1989.

Needless to say, a lot of really good material was relegated to the cutting room floor. I especially regret not being able to use some wonderful material from the 1960s, specifically accounts of Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts from popular magazines like Jet and Ebony. I used these sources in my first book on the history and memory of the Battle of the Crater and they were incredibly revealing once again for the Shaw book.

With that in mind, I went ahead and worked up some of this material for the newsletter today. Stay tuned for some bonus material tomorrow about my favorite issue of Ebony from 1975.

I think you are going to find it interesting.

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Mr Barnes’s passion for this history is a reminder that there has never been a better time to study the history of slavery and the Civil War era. It continues to pull us in ways that other moments simply do not. Give it a listen before you read further.

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The years surrounding the war were defined by fierce political division, debates over citizenship and equality, struggles over federal and state power, and conflicts about the meaning of democracy itself. These are not distant concerns. They are the very questions that shape public life in the present. To understand the Civil War era today is not simply to look backward; it is to gain perspective on who we are and how we arrived here.

The Civil War era forces us to confront the central contradiction at the heart of the American experiment: a nation founded on liberty that tolerated and protected slavery. But it is also a contradiction that reaches down into individual families as Mr. Barnes’s personal story so eloquently reveals.

The war and Reconstruction marked a turning point in resolving that contradiction, at least in constitutional terms. The destruction of slavery and the expansion of citizenship and voting rights fundamentally reshaped the country. Yet the unfinished struggles of Reconstruction—over racial equality, civil rights, and political power—continue to echo. Studying this period, from the local level on up, helps clarify how deeply rooted many contemporary debates truly are. It reminds us that issues often framed as new have long and complicated histories.

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Our current moment of political polarization makes the era especially instructive. In the decades before the war, Americans increasingly sorted themselves into hardened camps, convinced not merely that their opponents were wrong, but that they threatened the republic itself. Compromise became more difficult, mistrust more common, and political rhetoric more extreme.

Understanding how and why those divisions intensified can help illuminate the dangers of dehumanization and the fragility of democratic norms. The Civil War was not inevitable. It was the result of human choices. Recognizing that fact encourages us to see our own political environment as shaped by choices as well.

The era also offers a powerful lesson about the meaning of citizenship. The Reconstruction amendments redefined national belonging, asserting birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law. These ideas remain foundational to ongoing discussions about immigration, voting rights, and equal justice. By studying how these principles emerged from war and were contested in its aftermath, we gain a clearer sense of their significance and their vulnerability.

One of the things that stands out to me in Mr. Barnes’s story is the wealth of scholarly sources and databases of primary source that are now available to students and researchers. This has encouraged the expansion of perspectives and interpretations available to us. For generations, the story was often told primarily through political leaders and battlefield narratives.

Today, historians and students like Mr. Barnes’s draw on a much wider range of voices: enslaved people, women, immigrants, free Black communities, and ordinary soldiers. Digital archives and public history projects make letters, diaries, and government records widely accessible. This broader lens reveals a more complex, inclusive, and human story—one that challenges myths and deepens understanding.

The period also invites reflection on memory itself. How societies remember war, assign blame, and construct narratives of heroism or victimhood has lasting consequences. Monuments, textbooks, and public commemorations shape collective identity. In recent years, public debates over historical symbols have intensified. Studying how Civil War memory evolved over time—how interpretations were shaped by politics, race relations, and regional identity—helps explain why these debates remain so emotionally charged.

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History is not only about what happened. It is also about how it has been remembered and used. Here is a very recent example of the continued fight over Civil War memory from one of my biggest fans.

What I love the most about the video is Mr. Barnes’s display of empathy and humility. He appreciates that people of the mid-nineteenth century lived in a world that felt uncertain, unstable, and morally urgent. They struggled to define freedom, justice, and national loyalty under extraordinary pressure. Engaging seriously with their choices, fears, and aspirations reminds us that history is made by human beings confronting difficult circumstances. It encourages us to ask not only what they did, but what we would have done and what we should do in our own time.

In short, anyone who tells you that young people today have no interest in history simply don’t know what they are talking about. Mr. Barnes’s passion for history is a reminder that there has never been a better time to study history.

This conversation pretty much comes down to two friends having a good time and talking about subjects that we care deeply about.

Give it a listen.

And if you are a fan of the Allman Brothers Band, check out Bob’s wonderful book about his favorite band on the planet.

I got some great feedback on a recent post I wrote about Robert E. Lee in which I delved briefly into a little historiography. It seems like many of you are looking for more references to quality books to further your study of the Civil War era. With that in mind, I want to try the same in reference to a popular claim about the Confederate war effort, namely whether it can be properly characterized as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.”

To really do this justice I would have to cover an extensive body of scholarship, but for our purposes today I will focus on just two recent studies that challenge this popular thesis.

The popular Civil War refrain that the conflict was a “rich man’s war” and a “poor man’s fight” has long shaped both popular memory and scholarly debate. Two of the best recent examples are the Hollywood movies Cold Mountain, based on Charles Frazier’s work of historical fiction and the more historically-anchored movie Free State of Jones based on Victoria Bynum’s fantastic book by the same name.

This narrative is almost always rooted in Confederate grievances over conscription policy. The phrase itself suggests a stark class divide in which wealthy slaveholders manipulated poorer whites into fighting on their behalf. It’s a popular argument that is often wielded by people, who seek to dismiss the Confederacy without seriously engaging the relevant history.

Recent scholarship, however, has substantially complicated this interpretation.

Let’s jump in.

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In May 2025 the city of Richmond, Virginia discovered more than 700 graves in its Manchester neighborhood after a survey was conducted at a city-owned site used for for utility-related purposes. The people buried at this site are thought to be Confederate soldiers who died in area military hospitals during the Civil War, as well as private citizens. The soldiers are believed to have been buried there between 1861 and 1862.

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According to a spokesperson for the City of Richmond, a draft report from a vendor conducting a Ground Penetrating Radar survey of 2313 Wise Street identified 742 graves—with 472 probable and 270 possible.

Richmond’s importance during the Civil War gives the discovery particular importance. As the former capital of the Confederacy, the city served as a political center and a vast hospital hub for wounded soldiers. Thousands passed through its makeshift medical facilities, and many never returned home. While some were interred in well-known cemeteries like Hollywood and Oakwood cemeteries Others were buried in smaller, less formally maintained grounds that faded from public memory over time.

The catalyst for the renewed attention on this particular site was a stone marker that had been placed there to honor “more than one hundred” Confederate soldiers from South Carolina who died in a Manchester hospital between 1861 and 1865. This marker was placed in 1939 by a South Carolina chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

As Richmond reevaluated its public commemorations—removing prominent Confederate statues and reassessing civic spaces—the existence of this small memorial drew public scrutiny. Questions arose about what lay beneath it and whether public funds should maintain a site that was so little understood and, at the time, clearly divisive.

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The discovery raises important questions about memory, mourning, and the physical legacy of the American Civil War.

The implications are layered and likely to stir strong emotions from multiple constituencies. On one level, the discovery demands practical decisions about preservation, access, and commemoration. City officials must balance infrastructure needs with respect for the dead, while consulting historians, descendants, and community stakeholders. On another level, the site challenges simplified narratives of the past. Confederate burials evoke painful associations with a rebellion fought to preserve slavery.

Most importantly, we must remember that burial grounds also represent human loss—individual lives cut short by war, disease, and hardship. Recognizing that complexity does not require glorification; rather, it calls for sober acknowledgment.

The Manchester burial ground also illustrates how landscapes evolve. Over generations, urban development obscured the cemetery’s boundaries, and collective memory narrowed to a single marker and a limited story. The rediscovery underscores how easily marginalized histories—whether Confederate, Union, civilian or enslaved—can slip from view when documentation fades and land changes hands.

According to a recent news report, the city currently has no plans to protect or interpret this historical site.

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Ultimately, the unmarked graves in Richmond serve as a powerful metaphor for the nation’s ongoing engagement with Civil War memory. As statues fall and public narratives shift, the physical remnants of the conflict remain embedded in American soil. The challenge lies not only in deciding whether to memorialize them, but also in confronting what they represent.

The Manchester site offers an opportunity to approach the past with humility. To honor the dead without romanticizing the cause for which they fought, and to integrate historical truth into a broader, more inclusive civic story.

What do you think?