History

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11274/15380

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Assessing the enemy: James Longstreet and John Pope at Second Bull Run
(Emerging Civil War, 2020-08-29) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Union general John Pope’s decision-making during the campaign of Second Bull Run has been justly scrutinized by historians and armchair generals alike. In large part this scrutiny has stemmed from Pope’s bombast upon his arrival in Virginia and his failure to back up his “headquarters in the saddle,” “only seen the backs of our enemies,” proclamation with a substantial battlefield result. Pope’s contemporaries gleefully took part in lambasting the Illinois-born, West Point graduate—among them Edward Porter Alexander, who called Pope a “blatherskite” in his personal memoirs. The index to Alexander’s Fighting For the Confederacy (UNC Press, 1989) includes the entry “Pope, John; EPA makes fun of” as if to underscore the degree to which Pope was a common subject of ridicule after the summer of 1862.
Braxton Bragg’s beach vacation – Pensacola in the early months of the Civil War
(Emerging Civil War, 2021-06-29) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Even the most casual of Civil War buffs knows that the war began in Charleston, South Carolina – when Confederate batteries opened fire on the Union-occupied Fort Sumter and its 85 defenders. Many may also know that war had an equally likely chance of beginning in the Gulf of Mexico, at Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida where Braxton Bragg, rather than P. G. T. Beauregard, might have made a name for himself as the first military hero of the fledging Confederate nation. As it happened, however, Sumter fell to the Confederacy and Pickens remained a Union bastion throughout the war, preventing the harbor town of Pensacola from ever falling into Confederate hands. A sampling of Braxton Bragg’s correspondence while in command in Pensacola, however, reveals several interesting themes that would come to define the Confederate war effort—and which are worth briefly surveying.
Civil War Savannah: The view from two parapets
(Emerging Civil War, 2021-06-11) Zander, Cecily Nelson
On June 1 I defended my dissertation in History at Penn State. One week later, I turned my trusty Subaru Crosstrek south from State College and set my GPS for Savannah. What better way to celebrate six years of intensely studying the Civil War era than taking a vacation to see some Civil War sites? Savannah’s rich Civil War history offers a great deal for historians and buffs to enjoy–it was, after all, probably one of the best Christmas gifts Abraham Lincoln could have dreamed of receiving.
Civil War summer reading - A Texas tall tale
(Emerging Civil War, 2022-07-19) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Down here in Dallas, Texas we have forgotten what double digits temperatures feel like. Owing to the fact that the forecast has been and will continue to be in excess of 100 degrees for the foreseeable future, my border collie Moe and I have been spending our time indoors — watching golf, playing Zelda, and revisiting some old favorite books — including John W. Thomason, Jr.’s Lone Star Preacher. Originally published in 1941 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Lone Star Preacher compiles several short stories about the Methodist preacher and sometime Confederate Soldier Praxiteles Swan, captain of the 5th Texas Regiment, Confederate States Provisional Army.
Civil War surprises: Dropping in on General Grant
(Emerging Civil War, 2023-04) Zander, Cecily Nelson
I have recently been reading through the manuscript of sculptor James E. Kelly’s memoirs, which have never been published in their entirety. [1] They contain more than a few surprises, though one came to mind immediately when ECW’s Sarah Kay Bierle asked if I could contribute a story to this series.
Civil War weather: The Regular Army and the weather
(Emerging Civil War, 2023-02) Zander, Cecily Nelson
On February 9, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill into law establishing a meteorological division with the United States Army’s Signal Service (specifically, the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce). Though not a direct result of the American Civil War, this new bureau joined myriad other post-war initiatives that sought to invigorate the professional army of the United States as it adjusted to the postbellum world. The first three army officers to oversee the new initiative were Albert J. Myer, William B. Hazen, and Adolphus Greely– all Civil War veterans with an interest in technology, exploration, and science.
Civilians under siege: A Confederate woman’s diary of the war in the Trans-Mississippi
(Emerging Civil War, 2021-09-16) Zander, Cecily
I first encountered Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861–1868 in an undergraduate course on the topic of great Civil War writers. Looking at the syllabus at the start of the term, I circled the diary as a text I was not particularly excited about. To me, the story of a woman living far from the war’s Virginia epicenter held little interest. What I quickly discovered, however, is that Kate Stone’s wartime record featured an intensely relatable story of civilians living in a place ravaged by war—as well as being the tale of a young woman who was only twenty years old in 1861, and who was just as concerned with skin blemishes and the latest fashions as she was with news from the front. The diary is an indispensable record of the war in the Trans-Mississippi West as lived by civilians.
Dude, where’s my candidate?: Lincoln, the ballot, and the election of 1860
(Emerging Civil War, 2023-12) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Growing up in Colorado, I became accustomed to my home state being largely irrelevant to the national news cycle. This pattern has begun to change in recent years, however, as the Centennial State has asserted itself as a critical player in national politics. On Tuesday, December 19, 2023, Colorado’s Supreme Court affirmed its willingness to make political waves with a ruling declaring that Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, is disqualified from holding federal office because he engaged in “insurrection” against the United States in the lead up to the events of January 6, 2021. As a result, as of this writing, Trump will not be eligible to appear on the ballot for Colorado’s Republican Primary in March.
ECW Weekender: Andrew Johnson National Historic Site
(Emerging Civil War, 2023-01) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Greeneville, Tennessee nestles neatly into the northeastern corner of the Volunteer State — just southwest of Bristol, the famed Birthplace of Country Music on the Virginia/Tennessee border. It is a beautiful part of the country, where the town named for Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene rests in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. During the American Civil War, Greeneville (like much of East Tennessee) was home to a committed community of Unionists, who rejected the Confederate war for slavery.
Fort Abraham Lincoln - symbol of Civil War memory on the North Dakota prairie
(Emerging Civil War, 2022-02-22) Zander, Cecily Nelson
When Emerging Civil War asked us all to think about whether we might write something on this month’s theme of “Forts” my instinct was to write about Fort Union, New Mexico. In fact, I told our editorial maestro Sarah Kay Bierle that I was going to do just that. With my apologies to Sarah for fibbing, when I sat down and thought about which fort has meant the most to my life – and made the greatest impact on my work – I could not escape the pull to share a few words about a place I would wager even the most intrepid ECW explorers and readers have yet to visit: Fort Abraham Lincoln.
Gettysburg in Texas: The challenges and rewards of teaching military history beyond the battlefield
(Center for Military War and Society Studies, 2022-08-18) Zander, Cecily
When I began training to be a military historian my mentors repeatedly emphasized the value of bringing students to battlefields. There was no better way to teach about what happened, they explained, than to place students in the catbird seat of history—allowing them to see the places they were reading and learning about and to visualize history beyond the page.
Gettysburg, readdressed
(The Civil War Monitor, 2022-12) Zander, Cecily
From a rostrum in the town where, just four months previously, two of the largest armies ever assembled on the American continent waged a fierce battle. Lincoln used just 272 words to assess the battle's cost and the war's greater meaning. Since that long-ago day, seven presidents have delivered addresses at Gettysburg. Each of them celebrated the legacy of Lincoln's remarks--though Lincoln himself realized that they made little impression on his countrymen. Lincoln could not have known that by the time his successors faced the prospect of speaking at Gettysburg, he had become an impossible act to follow.
Home libraries: My Civil War bookshelf - the Macmillan Wars of the United States
(Emerging Civil War, 2020-09-21) Zander, Cecily Nelson
While conducting the research for my dissertation I spent more time in one archival collection than any other, a collection that does not appear in a single footnote and provided almost none of the information I had hoped it might for the project I am now undertaking. But even as my time at the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma wound down and stacks of archival boxes filled with accounts of life in the frontier army appeared at my desk, I found myself drawn every morning to the papers of Robert M. Utley, a historian who wrote many of the books that sparked my interest in the military history of the American West. Utley’s papers comprise 42 linear feet of journals, correspondence, calendars, and manuscript drafts, as well as research files. I had selfishly hoped to expedite some of my own research by looking at Utley’s already completed research and picking up a few tidbits that would fill out my chapters. What I found instead, in his voluminous correspondence, was a remarkable synthesis of the history of the American army in the nineteenth-century West.
John Wesley Powell and the wounds of war
(Emerging Civil War, 2022-10-03) Zander, Cecily Nelson
In the hundreds of pages Major John Wesley Powell wrote about his postbellum career as an explorer of the American West, he seldom mentioned the injury he sustained at the battle of Shiloh. During the fighting at Pittsburgh Landing in April 1862, Powell was hit by a bullet in his right forearm. The wound required the arm to be amputated below the elbow, leaving the 28-year-old Powell with an affliction that caused him excruciating pain for the remainder of his life. He lived to be 68.
Learning Civil War history: The pandemic perspective
(Emerging Civil War, 2021-02-19) Zander, Cecily Nelson
On January 18, 2021, I began teaching a Civil War history class at Penn State, where most instruction is currently taking place via the (now) ubiquitous Zoom platform. I have been fortunate to teach the department’s Civil War survey in person previously, so I had my course materials ready to go. I quickly realized, however, that Zoom presents challenges to my style of teaching, which relies heavily on students answering questions that I pepper throughout my lectures, and, more importantly, laughing at my very funny comments about George McClellan and Joseph Johnston.
Men to match my mountains?
(Emerging Civil War, 2021-11-12) Zander, Cecily Nelson
In the summer of 2016 I climbed my first 14,000 foot mountain—Mount Sherman—a peak in the Mosquito Range of the Rocky Mountains. Mount Sherman (14,038 feet) is one of Colorado’s 58 “14-ers,” a sobriquet that designates it as one of the tallest mountains in the United States (there are 95 total peaks in Colorado, California, and Alaska that surpass 14,000 feet). The following summer I climbed Mount Lincoln, which soars some 14,286 feet above the Colorado Front Range. While I relished the physical challenge of these climbs and enjoyed the views from their summits I chose to tackle them because they are historical monuments and, for me, that made climbing them all the more rewarding.
On the march: Respectfully, Jubal A. Early
(Emerging Civil War, 2022-04-13) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Any of us who suffer from the affliction of needing to walk at high speeds – and are miffed by those who prefer more laconic strolling – will immediately empathize with Thomas J. Jackson and Alexander S. Pendleton’s frustration after a tiring march in the early fall of 1862. Jackson, the master of the march, found troops belonging to Jubal A. Early’s division from his wing of the Army of Northern Virginia’s struggling to keep pace with the lead elements of his column. Never one to let sleeping dogs lie, or straggling men rest, Jackson asked his adjutant to enquire about the straggling to the division’s commander; and, for his trouble, received a typically acerbic Early reply.
Picturing Union victory - early images of the surrender at Appomattox
(Emerging Civil War, 2020-06-18) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Here’s a familiar story: On April 9, 1865, generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met in Wilmer McLean’s parlor at Appomattox Courthouse to sign the documents that would dictate the surrender of the most important national institution in the Confederacy—the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant sat at a small wooden table with spindle-turned legs and an oval top. His aide, Lt. Col. Ely S. Parker, sat at another small wooden table in order to write out copies of the surrender. Lee sat at a much grander table, with a large black wooden base and a marble top. It’s very probable that neither general made much of the seating arrangements (Grant, in fact, fails to describe them in his memoirs); but that has not prevented them from being the subject of much controversy and conversation in the fifteen decades since.
Recollections and reminiscences of the Stonewall Brigade
(Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, 2022) Zander, Cecily Nelson
Nicknames communicate a great deal about the people who participated in the events of the American Civil War. This was not only true in the case of individuals — much better to be known to your men as “Uncle Billy” than “Granny Holmes,” for example — but also in the case of regiments and brigades. The importance of nicknames is why, when asked to name some of the most illustrious units to serve in the war, many would call to mind the Midwesterners of the Iron Brigade or the Virginians who composed the Stonewall Brigade. The latter shared its nickname with its most famous commander, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who organized the men of the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 27th, and 33rd Virginia infantry regiments for service in 1861.
Review of Beilein, Jr. Joseph M., A Man by Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood
(The Civil War Monitor, 2023-12) Zander, Cecily N.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, historians of a much earlier American conflict began to see similarities between the guerilla warfare that played out in the dense jungles of Southeast Asia and the irregular fighting that characterized the Civil War experience in places like Missouri and Kansas. Men such as William Clarke Quantrill suddenly emerged as vivid and violent exceptions to the traditional story of Civil War combat. These Civil War guerrillas, like Tom Berenger’s crazed Staff Sargent Robert Barnes in Platoon, were bloody-minded aberrations from the typical American soldier—villains all.

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