Grape & Canister

A roundup of Civil War news, books, videos, and an Otis pic.

Celebration in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste (Source: The Sun)

First, I want to thank all of you for the kind words regarding my father’s passing. Your comments, emails, and letters mean everything to me. I am slowly working toward returning to my regular routine in between sleepless nights and the endless waves of sadness and thoughts of dad.

I hope all of you have a safe and Happy New Year.

News

Roughly 20,000 Confederates fled to Brazil at the end of the Civil War. Their descendants have celebrated their ancestors and the Confederacy annually in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. Organizers of the festival have finally decided to cut ties with their Confederate past by renaming the the event and painting over Confederate flags located throughout the town.

David Cunningham, a professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, explores the impact of the decision to remove Confederate statues in Richmond, Virginia.

These approaches represent different and sometimes conflicting narratives about removed monuments. But the fates of all these statues and their grounds illustrate an unfolding movement to recast the connections between the past and today.

Who defines American values? In their respective reckonings with the Confederacy – and with modern racial justice movements – relocated Confederate statues are bellwethers of ongoing struggles to resolve this question.

(Source: Library of Congress)

Eli Wizevich writes about Ulysses S. Grant’s order to expel Jews from certain areas of the Confederacy in December 1862.

At The Civil War Monitor magazine, John Heckman, talks with historian Jennifer M. Murray about how the relationship between Union generals George Meade and Ulysses S. Grant operated during the Army of the Potomac’s pivotal 1864 campaigns against Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

Also from CWM: In its October 12, 1861, issue, The Scientific American reprinted a brief article that had recently appeared in the Philadelphia newspaper North American. In it, an editor at the North American wrote up his notes of a discussion with a Union veteran of the Battle of Bull Run, which had been fought the previous July. The editor’s goal: to inform his readers—including potential army enlistees—what the experience of combat was like in the months-old Civil War.

Books

Matthew Gabriele & David M. Perry, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe (Harper, 2024).

Bennett Parten, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emanciption (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

Timothy B. Smith, The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West (Louisiana State University Press, 2023).

Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of A Murder in Mississippi (Penguin Press, 2025).

William Willrich, American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Basic, 2023).

Videos

Eric Coddington does a fantastic job of contextualizing the famous photograph of Andrew and Silas Chandler that I used for the cover of my most recent book.

In February 1865, the outlook for the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate nation was grim. With little supplies for the army, no money, and Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's army marching north through the Carolinas, Gen. Robert E. Lee's options for survival were quickly dwindling. Two confidential letters between Lee and Lt. Gen. James Longstreet tell the tale.

Garry Adleman tours the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA. I’ve spoken there numerous times. It is well worth visiting if you find yourself in the area.

Here is historian David Blight lecturing on the legacies of Reconstruction and the origins of the Jim Crow era.

Otis

Plotting his next move.