TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Civil War Memory

  • Review: Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies by Philip Leigh

    Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies By Phillip Leigh Illustrated, photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 224 pp. softcover $18.95 Westholme Publishing 2015 www.westholmepublishing.com Phillip Leigh, whose last book, Trading With the Enemy, I reviewed a while back, has produced another volume for the Civil War reader. This one is a series of essays […]

  • The End of the War in Western North Carolina

    Rob Neufeld, a writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, pens an excellent article about the closing days of the war here in Western NC. I have already linked to a previous article about the last Confederate victory here, but this time he takes up the sack of Asheville and the treatment of civilians in the area […]

  • Was General Sherman Smeared?

    This being the 150th anniversary of Sherman’s March to the Sea, the venerable New York times has an article questioning just how bad Uncle Billy really was. Seems we have a new crop of historians who think that the Southern demonization of him was unwarranted, a sour grapes myth by the defeated Confederates perpetuated by […]

  • Bagdad – Back Door to the Confederacy

    In my reply to Spengler I noted the difficulties of making a land link with Mexico to supply the Confederacy. After doing a bit more research I found that there really was a land link, although subject to all the difficulties I mentioned. When the Union blockade went into effect Southern cotton became both scarce […]

  • Reply to Spengler

    David P. Goldman is something of a polymath – scholar, investment banker, musicologist, and pundit. In the latter capacity, under the handle Spengler, he has written on a variety of subjects, including the Civil War. There, unfortunately, he comes off as being rather uninformed. Indeed one is tempted to use the characterization of Noam Chomsky […]

  • As I Remember: the Reminiscence of Lewis Cass White 102nd PA

    As I Remember: A Civil War Veteran Reflects on the War and Its Aftermath by Lewis Cass White Joseph Scopin (editor, designer), forward by Benjamin Franklin Cooling Hardcover: 184 pages Publisher: Scopin Design (2014) ISBN-10: 0615983480 ISBN-13: 978-0615983486 You never know what you’ll find in a basement or attic. That moldering pile of papers just […]

  • Sharpshooter Glasses – Or Sighting for Sore Eyes?

    Quite a number of books and articles mention sharpshooters (presumably Union & Confederate) using special glasses to gain clearer vision of their intended targets, and at any given time you can find several for sale on Ebay and other outlets, and at Civil War shows. Usually these are nickeled steel frame spectacles with orange lenses […]