TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Miscellaneous

  • Varney v. Burnside, a brief for the defense

    As discussed earlier this month, I recently read General Grant and the Rewriting of History by Frank Varney.  Though it is marketed as a book about the impact of Ulysses Grant’s memoirs on the writing of history,  I found that it is mostly about reframing the Civil War career of General William Rosecrans. In doing […]

  • The Top 13 Controversies at Franklin: Part 2

    Editor’s Note: After I’d posted my recent comments on Lee’s possible endorsement of John Bell Hood for army command in 1864, I started going back over a lengthy nine or ten part series I did on Eric Jacobson’s book For Cause & for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin.  I had totally […]

  • Frank Varney and the Mangling of History

    I have been working my way through General Grant and the Rewriting of History by Frank Varney, that was published by Savas Beatie this past July, and I have a problem: I am so annoyed by it I might not be able to finish. I wanted to like this book, but do not be surprised […]

  • Santa Monica Shooter’s Civil War Pistol

    I’m sure everyone has heard of the awful events in Santa Monica, CA, where a gunman shot several people. He used the ubiquitous AR-15, but he also had a pistol in his “arsenal” (which in California apparently means anything more than one firearm)—a reproduction Remington 1858 cap & ball revolver. Introduced in 1863, it was […]

  • How to Quickly Get Updated on Civil War Blog Topics of Your Choice

    Editor’s Note: This post has been repurposed from an earlier one at The Siege of Petersburg Online.  Though the links are to SOPO, the same idea applies here at TOCWOC.  Follow along on topics you are interested in by using this simple trick. Are You Interested in a Specific Civil War Topic?  A Lot of […]

  • Using Speech to Text Software to Transcribe Primary Sources?

    This post is really me taking an off the wall idea and bouncing it off of fellow Civil War buffs.  Over at The Siege of Petersburg Online, I’ve got tons of newspaper articles collected which are in PDF or image form.  My challenge is to get those items transcribed for use on my site, either […]

  • What Is a Content Blogger?

    Brooks Simpson questioned Robert Moore’s classification of Civil War blogs into “content blogs” and “controversy blogs”, I commented, and Brooks raised some questions both in the comments section and in a follow-up post to his earlier effort. First, I’ll respond to his questions in the comments section of his first post: Brooks Simpson: “However, you […]