TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Civil War Memory

  • Echoing Bad History

    The other day Dimitri Rotov had a blog post comparing a quote from James M. McPherson’s new book with similar quotes from other books.  What bothers Dimitri is that McPherson isn’t original; what also ticks me off is that McPherson mimics bad history. The quotes in question link the Red River Campaign of 1864 to […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Lee and His Generals: Essays in Honor of T. Harry Williams

    Hewitt, Lawrence Lee (ed).  Schott, Thomas E. (ed).  Lee and His Generals: Essays in Honor of T. Harry Williams (The University of Tennessee Press, June 15, 2012). 368 pages, illustrations, maps, bibliography, endnotes by essay, index. ISBN: 978-1-57233-850-0 $45.95 (Hardcover). Who was Robert E. Lee’s worst corps commander during the Civil War?  How has Robert […]

  • Short Takes

    A large group of scholars and enthusiasts are gathering Tuesday at UNC Wilmington for a symposium on the remnants of the blockade runner Modern Greece. Sorry, it’s sold out. From the archives of the Manchester Guardian comes an editorial from 1861 about the impending “war to the knife” in the US. Like most of the […]

  • Confederate Veteran Magazine Available Online

    It looks like many volumes of Confederate Veteran are online in their entirety at the Internet Archives.  I periodically go back to both Google Books and the Internet Archive from time to time to see what has been newly posted, but I’ve been lax lately in that regard.  It looks like most of these were […]

  • Short Takes

    What did the fabled Rebel Yell actually sound like? Smithsonian magazine digs up an old reunion tape to find out. The proposed slavery museum at Fredericksburg is on hold and is looking more doubtful by the day. It’s been dogged by controversy and poor financial management since its inception. Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) looks at the […]

  • What were they doing over there?: Walker’s Div. at Chattanooga

    The selection of Confederate reports for the battle of Chattanooga that made it into the Official Records is skimpy.  There is a report from Bragg, the army commander, but not from either of his corps commanders, Hardee or Breckenridge, and there are no reports from several of the division commanders or their subordinates.  Consider the […]

  • Take Your Damn Quote Back To Ohio!

    We recently passed the 150th anniversary of the Battle of  Shiloh which prompts me to discuss a quotation which bothers me.  Anyone who has read a modern book on Shiloh has probably seen some variation on “Take your damned regiment back to Ohio.  There is no enemy closer than Corinth.”  Allegedly this statement was the […]