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Articles by Peter S. Carmichael
Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher
by Caroline Janney, Peter Carmichael, and Aaron-Sheehan-Dean, editors Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2024. Pp. vi, 280. Notes, index. $32.95 paper. ISBN: 1469678896 Essays on the Civil War In collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, editors Caroline Janney, Peter Carmichael, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, have created a festschrift to honor noted Civil War scholar Gary W. Gallagher, who had helped train and inspire a whole generation of young historians.
Letters: Donald Trump's performance on COVID-19 much better than the public believes
In March, we were asked to shelter in place so the curve of hospital admissions would be flattened. It worked. Thereafter, the goalposts were moved to keep natural (and inevitable) spread of the China virus at bay by continuing to quarantine. Never was it said that any efforts to avoid the China virus would succeed. The lockdowns here and abroad delayed the spread, but the simple fact is that spread is going to happen and there is nothing that is going to prevent it from happening.
Gettysburg National Military Park and July 4, 2020: Personal Reflections
To be surrounded by men and women in festive patriotic attire and jungle fatigues, and holding a range of rifled weaponry was not how I expected my protest to end on July 4th. For much of the day my conversations with members of the Alt Right were uninteresting and largely forgettable. I was with my colleague Scott Hancock and a few other individuals in what can best be described as a teach-in at Gettysburg National Military Park.
CWT Book Review: Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade
Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade Virginian John O. Casler was the quintessential anti-Confederate hero. His service in the famous Stonewall Brigade was distinguished by his uncanny ability to evade the restrictions of military life.
CWT Book Review: The Life of Johnny Reb
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Great historians take intellectual risks, and the late Bell Irvin Wiley was fearless when it came to pursuing research topics that other scholars considered taboo. In the 1940s, when most of his peers wrote grand narratives of the war celebrating the heroics of politicians and generals, Wiley published books about Southern women and the experience of African Americans in the Confederacy.
Students and Secession in the Old Dominion
Virginia’s colleges became cradles of disunion as young people debated the necessity, and opportunity, of a new Southern nation. On March 15, 1861, in the black of night, seven students at the University of Virginia slipped away from their rooms and gathered at the famous Lawn in preparation for scaling the Rotunda, the architectural and intellectual centerpiece of the campus.
CWT Book Review: Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull
Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull Jarring blasts of thunder commingled with the cries of wounded Union prisoners during an unrelenting midnight storm after the Battle of Chancellorsville. A handful of men found shelter in a dilapidated cabin and few more found refuge under makeshift tents. Most were stranded in the open, the rain pelting their faces, their cries of help going unanswered, their weakened bodies sinking in the muddy earth.
CWT Book Review: The Journal of Jane Howison Beale
The Journal of Jane Howison Beale, Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1850-1862 Two Confederate cannon shots awakened Fredericksburg’s Jane Howison Beale on December 11, 1862. She did not rush out of bed and flee, even though the guns, unknown to her, signified the Union advance across the Rappahannock River.
CWT Book Review: The Autobiography of Samuel S. Hildebrand
The Autobiography of Samuel S. Hildebrand: The Renowned Missouri Bushwacker edited by Kirby Ross Missouri bushwhacker Samuel Hildebrand found refuge in a dank cavern after an exhausting all-night escape from his Federal pursuers. During the daylight hours, he stayed underground, where he was joined by comrades and sympathetic allies, one of whom informed Hildebrand that Union troops had executed his brother Henry.
CWT Book Review: Diary of a Southern Refugee During the War
Diary of a Southern Refugee During the War, by A Lady of Virginia by Judith W. McGuire Despite the constant flag waving and the endless rounds of patriotic speeches that inaugurate war, national unity eludes most countries when the fighting begins. Civilians are forced to confront practical and philosophical issues that challenge the most fundamental loyalties to family, to community and to nation.
CWT Book Review: Irish Green & Union Blue
Irish Green & Union Blue: The Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh Desperation inspired Irishman Peter Welsh to join the Army of the Potomac. While visiting Boston in 1862, Welsh had disappeared for days, falling victim to a drinking binge that exhausted his meager finances and destroyed his self-respect.
CWT Book Review: Richmond Redeemed
Richmond Redeemed: The Siege of Petersburg by Richard J. Sommers No Civil War campaign is less understood than the Siege of Petersburg. There are many books on the beginning and the end of the campaign, but few have explored the heart of this pivotal operation. The exception is Richard J. Sommers’ Richmond Redeemed: The Siege of Petersburg, which covers Ulysses S. Grant’s fifth offensive in the early fall of 1864.
Civil War Soldiering By: Dr. Peter Carmichael
Partner Event You are here Home › Events › Civil War Soldiering By: Dr. Peter Carmichael SHARE THIS Partner Event You may know about important battles of the Civil War and the generals who led the armies but do you know enough about the common soldiers who did the actual fighting and dying?
Five Best Books on Life as a Civil War Soldier
No Freedom Shrieker: The Civil War Letters of Union Soldier Charles Biddlecom Edited by Katherine M. Aldridge (2011) As soon as New Yorker Charles Biddlecom joined the Army of the Potomac, he wanted to escape. Drafted in 1863, he shared none of the idealism of the volunteers of 1861. In virtually every letter to his family he complained about politicians, generals and, above all, army life.
CWT Book Review: Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac
Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac No victorious military force in the history of the United States has received less acclaim and more criticism than the Army of the Potomac. A string of defeats in 1862-63 under a string of mediocre generals has led many to conclude that the major Union army in Virginia stumbled to victory, largely because it had more men and more supplies than its adversary did.
CWT Book Review: Embattled Courage
Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War It should come as no surprise that Civil War soldiers were unable to build a psychological bomb shelter to protect themselves from the dehumanizing effects of war. Until the publication of Gerald F.
CWT Book Review: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War To suggest that the Northern war effort was inextricably tied to the antislavery cause does not mean that the Civil War was a struggle between Northern saints and Southern sinners. In reality, most Northern whites were opposed to abolition in 1861, hated blacks throughout the conflict and were largely driven to fight by the abstract cause of Union until the surrender at Appomattox.
CWT Book Review: Reluctant Rebel
When it rained, Confederate quartermaster clerk Robert Patrick could not resist the inevitable tide of melancholy surging over his personal levee, leaving him stranded and isolated from those close to him, but more in touch with his own feelings. “I am sitting alone gazing listlessly out upon the dreary prospect, the falling rain-drops, the dripping leaves, and the flying clouds rapidly chasing each other across the darkened heavens.
CWT Book Review: Desertion During the Civil War
Most people today consider desertion the ultimate act of rebellion against one’s nation. During the Civil War, however, many Americans had a more complex understanding of this act of defiance, refusing to condemn every deserter as a seditious traitor. The thousands of Northerners and Southerners who abandoned their military obligations did so for a host of reasons, many of which had little to do with nationalism or the war’s overriding political goals.
CWT Book Review: Gettysburg- A Journey in Time
Caught between two mammoth boulders in Devil’s Den was the lifeless body of a lone Confederate. His musket leaned against a constructed stone wall, his empty cartridge box was lying open by his side, and his knapsack rested under his head. This scene is perhaps the most famous of all the Gettysburg photographs, a poignant image that in its cold, lonely rendering of death conveys the tragedy and horror of men killing each other.
Gettysburg Then and Now: A Civil War Times Interview
Even a drive-by visit to Gettysburg can inspire a long fascination with the Civil War. But for many people, the love affair is born out of romanticism, not serious historical inquiry; emotion, not rigorous research; and a need to feel history, not a search for complexities.
CWT Book Review: Return to Bull Run
Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas It is rare that a book does not need the test of time to determine its status as a classic. The 1993 release of John J. Hennessy’s Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas, a fairly recent publication, was immediately recognized by reviewers as the most important book on the subject. Noted Civil War historian James I.
CWT Book Review: Diary of a Union Lady
Internal discord, debate and bitter disagreement afflict all nations at war. The latitude given to dissenting opinions tells us a great deal about that nation’s commitment to democratic principles. Northerners in the Civil War were quick to exercise their Constitutional liberties by protesting the war despite a systematic crackdown on free speech. Sympathy for the Confederacy was not the source of discontent.
CWT Book Review: Within the Plantation Household
Those whose understanding of slavery comes largely from the book (and movie) Gone With the Wind will find much to both contradict and confirm their opinions of the Old South in Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South.
CWT Book Review: Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life
Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 Historians have a short memory when it comes to the history of their own craft. Beginning in the 1960s, scholars increasingly looked at the past from what they believed was a radically different perspective. No longer content with the “big men” view of history, they started looking at the past from the bottom up, broadening our understanding of who should be included in the historical narrative.
Hunted Down After Gettysburg
By Peter S. Carmichael OCTOBER 2018 • CIVIL WAR TIMES MAGAZINE An illiterate North Carolina soldier paid the ultimate price for deserting the Confederate state On August 20, 1863, in the middle of the night, Private John Futch and 12 other veteran soldiers from the 3rd North Carolina Infantry slung on their ammunition-packed cartridge boxes and escaped into the woods, hoping they would eventually reach their North Carolina homes.
Worn Out, Hungry and Broke: Confederate Discontent after Gettysburg
“I feel very much like starting home,” 57th North Carolina Private James Zimmerman wrote on August 16, 1863, “sometimes when I get about half enough to eat and get to studying how thing is going on there it maeks me feel like some body was to blam[e] and not me[.] I am inocent of having anything to do to bring on this ware and dont feel rite suffering here as I do on account of some bodys misdoings.” That type of sentiment is not usually associated with Robert E.
CWT Book Review: Thank God My Regiment an African One
Thank God My Regiment an African One: The Civil War Diary of Colonel Nathan W. Daniels In early 1864, when the black soldiers of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards landed on Ship Island, “a dreary desolate sandbar” just 65 miles east of New Orleans, they immediately knew that their skin color was the reason for their “banishment” to an obscure corner of the war.
CWT Book Review: Meade’s Headquarters
The Army of the Potomac was a political black hole for many aspiring officers who crossed swords with the Lincoln administration or the Republican-controlled Congress. The wartime letters of Theodore Lyman published in Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865 reveal the intrigue that permeated the high command at a time of incredible public pressure to defeat Lee’s Confederate army.
Interview with A. Wilson Greene: Wartime Suffering in Petersburg
What does the executive director of Pamplin Historical Park, an expansive museum dedicated to the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, do in his spare time? He writes books about his adopted hometown. The very busy A. Wilson Greene recently sat down to discuss his new book, Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of the Civil War, and explain how the South’s seventh largest city figured in the Confederate war effort.
CWT Book Review: The Stonewall Brigade
At a desperate moment during the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, when the Confederate battle line was coming unhinged, one Virginia regiment stood firm under a relatively unknown officer named Thomas J. Jackson. Wounded and demoralized soldiers streamed to the rear, giving the Virginians warning of what was coming next. Union infantry and artillery soon appeared, rising above the crest of Henry House Hill to deliver what was to be the final blow against the Rebels’ shaky position.
CWT Book Review: Hardtack & Coffee
Images of Civil War soldiers in camp usually feature men sitting around a roaring fire, laughing as they tell stories, enjoying the fraternity of fighting men. We are drawn to such scenes. Not only do they take us far away from the horrors of the battlefield, the idea that hardened veterans can unite as a band of brothers is also appealing to our need to sanitize war. However, though a spirit of comradeship animated many camps, every regiment had its share of rivalries, resentments and jealousies.
CWT Book Review: Fighting for Defeat
Fighting for Defeat: Union Military Failure in the East, 1861-1865 In December 1862, on the muddy banks of the Rappahannock River, a semi-literate soldier from Indiana became convinced that the Union Army was powerless to end the rebellion.
Interview with Chandra Manning: Common Soldiers and Slavery
Chandra Manning is an assistant professor at Georgetown University whose provocative book What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War earned an honorable mention at this year’s Lincoln Prize contest. Based on wartime letters and accounts by common soldiers, it highlights the centrality of slavery in the views of participants from the war’s outset. In your book you say the war was about slavery. Why is that difficult for so many people to embrace?
CWT Book Review: A Volunteer’s Adventures
The diaspora that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was not the first time New Orleans residents have been dislocated. In 1862 a tidal wave of black refugees washed through the Crescent City, too—a cataclysm no one was prepared for, largely because whites refused to believe that slaves possessed the ability to act upon their own interests.
CWT Book Review: Lee Considered
For those who called for a book burning of General Robert E. Lee and Lee Considered: Civil War History in 1991, little did they know that the author, Alan Nolan, was not fazed by such bigotry and narrow-minded thinking. As a boy growing up in Evansville, Ind., he and his mother—a Protestant married to a Catholic—were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. That experience left a profound impression on Nolan and deeply affected his historical scholarship.
Interview with Joseph T. Glatthaar: General Lee’s Army Through Thick and Thin
Joseph T. Glatthaar is the Stephenson Distinguished Professor of History and chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense at the University of North Carolina. He recently authored the acclaimed book General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (Free Press), which he discusses here. Who made the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee or its soldiers? Both of them made the army, both the soldiers and Lee.
Interview with Lesley J. Gordon: Scarred by Memories of Antietam
Lesley J. Gordon, who teaches at the University of Akron, is the author of General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend, and editor of the Kent State University Press “Civil War in the North” series. She is writing a history of the green 16th Connecticut, which met with a harsh fate at Antietam, and then had many men captured at the 1864 Battle of Plymouth. One question she explores is how their views of courage and cowardice changed after they experienced combat.
CWT Review: Attack and Die
Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage Were Confederate soldiers culturally programmed to charge like screaming savages even though they knew they were committing suicidal acts of annihilation? Grady McWhiney and Perry D.
CWT Book Review: One Gallant Rush | HistoryNet
Desperate courage almost always assures historical immortality to those who embrace death for cause and comrade. There are instances, however, when our collective memory fails us, when we purposefully induce amnesia to forget troubling aspects of our past. The African-American soldiers of the famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry were, like so many of their black comrades, whitewashed out of history.
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