Month: January 2011

  • In the Review Queue: Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd

    Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd Editors/Authors: Mary Jordan and Joyce Hatch BTC’s Take: An interesting little book filled with illustrations and photos, Dear Friend Amelia features the letters of a homesick soldier in the 109th New York who was involved in some of the worst of the fighting in […]

  • Civil War Book Review: The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur

    The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur George G. Kundahl (Editor) Product Details Hardcover: 392 pages Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (May 15, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0807833738 ISBN-13: 978-0807833735 Stephen Dodson Ramseur was the youngest major general in the Confederate Army. An 1860 graduate of West Point, he […]

  • Assassination, Blame, and Gun Control

    In the wake of the recent shootings in Arizona, Wired magazine looks at at a Secret Service study on the motivations of assassins. Although they vary, politics plays a surprisingly small role. Contrary to popular assumptions about public killings, the attackers didn’t conform to any particular demographic profile. But when Fein reconstructed their patterns of […]

  • Army of the Potomac Morale at the Siege of Petersburg

    Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at The Siege of Petersburg Online: Beyond the Crater on Monday, January 17, 2011.  Bryce Suderow is an author, researcher, and Siege of Petersburg specialist. “The Troops Did Not Meet the Attack with Vigor and Courage and Determination”: Union Army Morale at the Siege of Petersburg by Bryce Suderow […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joe Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign

    Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joe Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign by David Powell Product Details Hardcover: 408 pages Publisher: Savas Beatie (November 19, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1932714871 ISBN-13: 978-1932714876 “Would you like to go on a battlefield walk in Chickamauga?”  Answering “yes” to this question introduced the […]

  • Lincoln Quote Genuine?

    Any Lincoln experts out there? I am looking to verify a quote attributed to him that’s been floating around the internet lately. The government, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary […]

  • Bryce Suderow Comments on Grant and Meade’s Leadership Early in the Petersburg Campaign

    Many dedicated students of the Civil War, and especially the Petersburg Campaign, are probably familiar with Bryce Suderow.  Bryce did quite a bit of research for Gordon Rhea’s famous series of books on the 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign, and he is the author of Thunder in Arcadia Valley: Price’s Defeat, September 27, 1864 about Sterling […]