Grape & Canister

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

(Vandalism at Oak Ridge Observation Tower at Gettysburg, Source: The Evening Sun)

Upcoming Speaking Dates

I have two upcoming presentations in September that will both focus on the life of Captain John Christopher Winsmith, whose wartime and postwar correspondence I am currently editing for publication. Winsmith served in both the First and Fifth South Carolina Volunteer Infantry.

• September 18: “John Christopher Winsmith’s Civil War,” Rhode Island Civil War Round Table, Warwick, RI.

• September 19: “John Christopher Winsmith’s Civil War,” Olde Colony Civil War Round Table, Dedham, MA.

News

The big news this week is the dedication of a statue honoring former Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis in Decatur, Georgia, at the location where a Confederate statue once stood. The dedication ceremony will take place tomorrow.

This week Gettysburg National Military Park reported two separate incidents of vandalism on the battlefield. The incidents took place at Little Round Top, which recently reopened to the public and at the historic War Department Observation Tower on Oak Ridge. I suspect has been identified.

I’ve already reported on the controversy surrounding the renaming of public schools in Shenandoah County, Virginia, but I thought this BBC piece was quite good.

The remains of 28 Civil War veterans and their spouses were buried this week in Seattle, Washington. My friends at Emerging Civil War have all the details.

John Heckman was able to get a live feed of the event.

Books

Court Carney, Reckoning with the Devil: Nathan Bedford Forrest in Myth and Memory (Louisiana State University Press, 2024).

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Don H. Doyle, The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom Remade the World (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Patrick A. Lewis and James Hill Wellborn III eds., Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games (Louisiana State University Press, 2024).

Edwin P. Rutan II, High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor (Kent State University Press, 2024).

Videos

In early 1880, Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes has declared he would not seek re-election. Former two-term president Ulysses S. Grant decided to seek the party's nomination in the hopes of earning an unprecedented third term. What unfolded next would become a major part of American history.

Kris White, from the American Battlefield Trust, examines numerous officer commissions signed by President Abraham Lincoln himself as well as by Jefferson Davis when he was President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War. The commissions featured are for Alexander Schimmelfennig, Dan Sickles, John Sedgwick, John Buford and Joshua Chamberlain.

On Sept. 6, 1869, U.S. Secretary of War John Aaron Rawlins lay in the throes of death, fighting a battle against consumption. As he clung to life, President Ulysses S. Grant hurried to say goodbye to the friend who had served as his loyal, intrepid chief of staff during the late Civil War. Here's an account of his final hours.

Perhaps no general enjoyed such faith and confidence in the government and people of the United States than George B. McClellan. He had it all—West Point education, martial bearing, charismatic personality, and a gift for building an army and its morale. And yet he failed to lead his Army of the Potomac to victory. Here's an honest appraisal by one of his staff officers, James Fowler Rusling.

Otis

Heading up to Otis’s favoite place in Maine in a couple of weeks.