Putting Thoughts to Paper
Like all history-inclined folks, I write entirely too much. It’s very hard to pick out favorites when the corpus is so large. From 2011-2015, I was co-editor of the “Interpreting the Civil War” blog - trying to mix together the worlds of cutting edge interpretive theory and the era I have loved studying for decades. Sometime, unfortunately, the two go together like oil and water. Here are a few favorite selections from the blog.
One Year On: New Gettysburgians
It's been one year since freedom was preserved on a black man's farm.… And in the intervening year, many of Gettysburg's black citizens, who had fled from rebel capture, have slowly returned. Now it is the time in 1864 to celebrate that moment of victory, to celebrate American freedom….
Loading Chekhov’s Gun in 9-Times: The Fundamental Disconnect in Historical Interpretation
Anton Chekhov, famed 19th Century Russian playwright, died of Tuberculosis in 1904. I like to envision Chekhov’s parlor. I have no clue what his parlor looked like or where it even was. I would presume it was in Russia, or perhaps the Ukraine...
Out of Sorts: Finding the Passion behind the Article
The individual letters used to layout and print a newspaper in the 19th century were called sorts. Each letter was a sort. But the individual sorts that make up the words don't always give you the full story behind an article. They often aren't quite enough…
Fruit of a Vile Tree: The Eshelman Family's War
Frederick Eshelman's father wasn't home. He was in Petersburg, the chilly and treacherous trenches stretching to his right and left as far as the imagination might take them. That's where the danger was. That's where war lived…