America’s Civil War March 2011

Inside this issue:

Letters

• It turns out that newly elected Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is the great-grandson of Union Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, who commanded an Ohio battery at Shiloh and is depicted in the famous Thomas Corwin Lindsay painting of The Hornet’s Nest.

5 Questions

• Civil War Preservation Trust President Jim Lighthizer

Cease Fire

• Harold Holzer looks at current Virginia Civil War controversies brewing, and brings up an old one by yet again mentioning the governor’s proclamation from earlier last year.  He seems to have a little trouble letting go.

Legends

• Ron Soodalter discusses David Twiggs’s choice between loyalty and, well, not-loyalty.

Features

• A Shot in the Dark by Winston Groom – The Crisis of Fort Sumter
• Lee, Grant and Their Steadfast Steeds by Ron Soodalter – Self explanatory
• The Teenage Terrorist of Roane County by H. Donald Winkler – Rebel guide and scout Nancy Hart
• Survival in an Alabama Slammer by Peter Cozzens – The Confederacy’s Cahaba Federal Prison was pretty well managed, all things considered
• The One-Way Voyage of the Stone Fleet by Greg Bailey – A fleet of old ships, mostly whalers past their prime, set out from New Bedford, CT in November 1861 to become an integral, if stationary, part of the southern blockade.

Reviews

• The New York Time Complete Civil War, 1861-1865, Harold Holzer & Craig Symonds, eds.
• Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg, Earl J. Hess
• Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War, Gail Stephens
• Roughshod Through Dixie: Grierson’s Raid, 1863, Mark Lardas
• Wicked Spring (Film from 2003)

And I was Just Wild About (or maybe I wasn’t)… 

• The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” About the “Lost Cause”, James Loewen & Edward Sebesta, eds.
• Sacred Ties: From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story from the Civil War, Tom Carhart
• The Mechanical Fuze and the Advance of Artillery in the Civil War, Edward B. McCaul, Jr.
• The First Assassin, John J. Miller (novel)