America’s Civil War May 2011

Inside this issue:

Field Notes:

• Wilderness battlefield preservation victory
• The Lowry controversy
• Budget woes affect sesqui efforts
• Monitor restoration
• Georgia Dept of Agriculture removes controversial murals

5 Questions:

• Daniel Weinberg of the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop

Cease Fire:

• Harold Holzer discusses historical honesty

Legends

• Ron Soodalter points out some surprising lyrics in state songs that are unchanged to this day

Features

• Jackson, Johnston and Conflicting Interests – Dennis Frye: differing opinions on holding Harper’s Ferry in 1861
• Looking for a Few Good Men: recruiting poster photo essay
• An Omen a Philippi – Gerald Swick: early fight in Western Virginia, with an interesting sidebar on James Hanger, an amputee whose prosthetic manufacturing company lives on today
• The Common Soldier’s Recipe for Disaster: photo essay on the culinary delights of the Civil War
• Diary of a Morgan Raider – John M. Porter: in fact, a memoir. Extract form One of Morgan’s Men, Kent Masterson Brown, ed.

Reviews

• My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy – Nora Titone
• God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War – George Rable
• Faith, Valor, and Devotion: The Civil War Letters of William Porcher DuBose – W. Eric Emerson & Karen Stokes, eds.
• A Young Virginia Boatman Navigates the Civil War: The Journals of George Randolph Wood – Will Molineux, ed.
• Santa Fe Trail (Film)
• Harry’s Just Wild About
  • John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory – Brian Craig Miller
  • The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It – Brooks Simpson, Stephen Sears, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, eds.
  • Caught Between Three Fires: Cass County, MO, Chaos, & Order No. 11, 1860-1865 – Tom Rafiner
  • The Battle of Resaca: Atlanta Campaign, 1864 – Philip Secrist