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American Civil War

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Shades of green.
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Green Sprigs of Courage

How the mythologizing of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade helped dispel anti-Irish sentiment.
via BackStory on March 3, 2015
A guide to classical learning- or, Polymetis abridged Fleuron
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The Practical Humanities

Caroline Winterer tells Peter about a debate over practicality and purpose in higher education after the Civil War, and how the humanities offered a solution.
via BackStory on September 26, 2014
Raised scars on the back of a formerly enslaved man.

“A Typical Negro”

Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the story behind slavery's most famous photograph.
by David Silkenat via American Nineteenth Century History on August 8, 2014
Death Bed of Lincoln
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This Republic of Suffering

The enormous scale of death in the Civil War, and how it altered the American way of dying.
via BackStory on May 23, 2014
Exhibit

Civil War Memory

Historical understandings and myths about the Civil War's causes, meanings, and legacies still shape American culture and national discourse about the country's future.
The house of Alfred Iverson Jr. behind a white curtain.

My Civil War

A southerner discovers the inaccuracy of the the myths he grew up with, and slowly comes to terms with his connection to the Civil War.
by John T. Edge via Oxford American on April 8, 2014

150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War

As the 150th of the Battle of Gettysburg approaches, it's time to question the popular account of a war that tore apart the nation.
by Tony Horwitz via The Atlantic on June 19, 2013
Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861.

The Incredible Life of Lew Wallace, Civil War General and Author of Ben-Hur

The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.
by John Swansburg via Slate on March 26, 2013

War and Prosthetics: How Veterans Fought for the Perfect Artificial Limb

The needs and entrepreneurship of wounded soldiers have driven many of the most significant advances in prosthetic technology.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford via Collectors Weekly on October 29, 2012

Lincoln and Marx

The transatlantic convergence of two revolutionaries.
by Robin Blackburn via Jacobin on August 28, 2012
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How Suffering Shaped Emancipation

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
by Jim Downs, Robin Lindley via HNN on August 6, 2012

A Topic Best Avoided

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of sorting out a nation divided over the issue of freed slaves. But what were his views on it?
by Nicholas Guyatt via London Review of Books on December 1, 2011

Thanks a Lot, Ken Burns

Because of you, my Civil War lecture is always packed with students raised on your romantic, deeply misleading portrait of the conflict.
by James M. Lundberg via Slate on June 7, 2011
Confederate soldier with wife and baby.
partner

Fighting for Home

How the idea of “home” motivated Confederate soldiers, and strengthened their resolve to fight.
via BackStory on March 31, 2011
African American soldier
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Fighting for Liberation

The important moral and tactical contributions of African-American soldiers in the Union Army.
via BackStory on March 31, 2011

How Poverty Was, and Was Not, Pictured Before the Civil War

Images were important in defining the Republic between the Revolution and the Civil War and they distinctively both did and did not show Americans in need.
by Jonathan Prude via Commonplace on April 12, 2010

Making Sense of Robert E. Lee

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”— Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg
by Roy Blount Jr. via Smithsonian Magazine on July 1, 2003
Circus Sideshow, by Georges Seurat, 1887–88.

Unforgettable

W.E.B. Du Bois on the beauty of sorrow songs.
via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 1, 1903
Political cartoon of Freedman's Bureau agent separating angry whites from defensive freedmen.

The Freedmen's Bureau

“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth: What shall be done with slaves?”
by W.E.B. Du Bois via The Atlantic on March 1, 1901

The Johnson Party

An 1866 essay presents Andrew Johnson as "the virtual leader of the Southern reactionary party."
by E. P. Whipple via The Atlantic on September 1, 1866
Ken Burns

What’s Wrong with The American Revolution by Ken Burns 

Ken Burns’s latest PBS series is long on muskets and bayonets, but the history of the American Revolution remains strangely understated.
by Jack Rakove via Washington Monthly on December 18, 2025
Declaration of Independence and American flag.

Declaration of Independence’s Promises Ring Out Today as Loudly as They Did for 249 Years

Americans have looked to the Declaration of Independence when they sought to remedy contemporary problems and create new visions for the country’s future.
by Graeme Mack via The Conversation on December 4, 2025
Drawing of Yale University, from likely the 17th century.

Reckoning With Yale’s Ties to Slavery

An institutional history of the “peculiar institution.”
by James Steichen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on November 14, 2025
'A slave auction at the South' by Theodore R. Davis, from Harper’s Weekly, July 1861

Speculation in Human Property

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.
by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on October 30, 2025
Diagram of a cotton gin

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.
by Ariel Ron via Commonplace on October 14, 2025
Illustration of Karl Marx in front of map of the United States.

The Triumphs and Travails of American Marxism

Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he and his ideas left an imprint nonetheless.
by Robin Blackburn via The Nation on October 13, 2025
A screenshot of Aveline, the Black protagonist of Assasin's Creed: Liberation.

The Canceled Civil War Assassin's Creed Game Was a Powder Keg Waiting to Explode

Ubisoft was reportedly working on a game set after the Civil War era, but canceled it due to politics and protagonist backlash.
by Patricia Hernandez via Polygon on October 9, 2025
Collage illustration of a founder, Declaration of Independence, and the body of an enslaved person whose arms are in chains.

Whose Independence?

The question of what Jefferson meant by “all men” has defined American law and politics for too long.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The Atlantic on October 9, 2025
Black and white icons of people gathered into the shape of the US.

Are You a ‘Heritage American’?

Why some on the right want to know if your ancestors were here during the Civil War.
by Ali Breland via The Atlantic on October 7, 2025
Ruins of Mrs. Henry’s House, Battlefield of Bull Run.
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Reactionary Revolutionaries

In the mid-19th century, governments on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border set out to recast North America’s political landscape.
by Erika Pani via HNN on September 23, 2025
Robert Barnwell Rhett; Richmond burning in April 1865.

Beware Today’s ‘Fire-Eaters’

There are echoes in our political rhetoric of the men who helped talk the United States into civil war.
by Mark Hertling via The Bulwark on September 22, 2025
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