Grape & Canister

Personal

Last night I delivered an online presentation to the Ann Arbor Civil War Round Table on the subject of my current book project about Robert Gould Shaw.

Robert Gould Shaw (Source: National Park Service)

Next week I will deliver a presentation on the history and ongoing controversy surrounding Civil War monuments at the Springfield Museums in Springfield, MA. You can attend in person or register to view it online.

Substack Community

I’ve added two new links to the navigation menu at the top of the page. The first archives all of the video posts on this site and the other one will keep you updated on important upcoming events.

News

Here is an interesting interview with Connor Williams, a graduate student at Yale, who assisted The Naming Commission with their recent survey of military asssets that honor the Confederacy and Confederate leaders.

Ultimately, these issues come down to three things: memory, history, and commemoration. Memory is something that’s individual or collective but exists within us. History, on the other hand, is the dispassionate recreation of the past from the facts. In this case, the facts clearly demonstrate that the Confederates committed treason to defend slavery. Commemoration is trying to find the best parts of our past that will inspire us for the future. So memory and history are about who we were, or who we think we were. But commemoration is about who we want to be. And as a nation committed to equal rights for all under the law, we just cannot commemorate a movement that committed treason for slavery.

Earlier this week Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed a bill authorizing plans for a mural honoring the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment.

Videos

Here is a sneak peek at the new program on Civil War battlefields featuring historians Peter Carmichael and Caroline Janney. In this clip they discuss the battle of Antietam. Click here for more information.

Check out Part 2 of Garry Adelman’s interview with Gary Gallagher about Hollywood portrayals of the Civil War era. I love this. Click here for Part 1.

C-SPAN has posted the sessions from the annual meeting of the Lincoln Forum in 2022. They are well worth watching.

New to the Civil War Memory Library

James C. Cobb, C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Committee (Harvard University Press, 2022).

William Link, The Last Fire-Eater: Roger A. Pryor and the Search for a Southern Identity (Louisiana State University Press, 2022).

John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America (Henry Holt, 2022).

Christopher Thrasher, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville (University of Tennessee Press, 2021).

David Waldstreicher, The Odysses of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journey Through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2023).

Otis