TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Month: November 2010

  • The Fate of Guerrillas and Their Sympathizers

    Guerrillas posed a major problem for Union occupiers, who resorted to harsh (but ultimately ineffective) measures to suppress them. Here is a circular letter from Maj. Gen. David “Black Dave” Hunter that was delivered to suspected sympathizers in the Shenandoah. Just how they were to refute these charges or stop guerrilla activities is unspecified. IN […]

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    Hope everyone is having a fine day feasting with family and friends. Let’s take a moment to remember that it was  Abe Lincoln who proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a national holiday in 1863. The idea, however, came from a tireless agitator named Sarah Josepha Hale, whose other accomplishments included writing the children’s poem “Mary Had […]

  • Short Takes

    Civil War novelist Kim Murphy takes a look at contraception during the mid-Nineteenth century. In the decades before the Civil War, there was no organized movement to advocate or control contraception. Freethinking printers and publishers began spreading the word about reproductive choices, and Charles Knowlton became the first American legally tried for the publication of […]

  • The Long Recall

    In honor of the upcoming Civil War sesquicentennial The American Interest has begun The Long Recall: An Aggregator of the Civil War. Walter Russell Mead explains: We will use a modern form to present the daily news: our Civil War aggregator that combines a short daily summary of the news along with links to articles […]

  • Ancestry.com Free Weekend

    Ancestry.com is honoring Veteran’s Day by having a free access weekend (Nov. 11-14), so here’s your chance to save some money (a TOCWOC specialty). You don’t even have to be a veteran (but you do have to give them your email address). Tarheel AP  history teacher Betsy Newmark takes a look at some of what’s […]

  • Short Takes

    The city of Harrisburg, PA, held a Civil War Grand Review Saturday to honor Black soldiers in the Civil War. The event itself is a re-enactment of a similar review held in the fall of 1865 for Colored regiments that were unable to participate in the Grand Review in Washington. Hari Jones, curator of the […]

  • The Real Abe Lincoln

    The secret’s out—Lincoln was actually a cyborg sent from the future to save the Union and find Sarah Connor’s great-grandmother. Will the next Terminator movie be set in the 1860s with Ah-nold as John Wilkes Booth? (via Gizmodo) Somehow I like this better than Lincoln the vampire slayer. Speaking of Abe’s contemporary appearances, he’s been […]