TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Political History

  • 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 […]

  • Review: Trading With The Enemy: The Covert Economy During the Civil War

    Trading with the Enemy The Covert Economy During the American Civil War Philip Leigh Westholme Publishing 2014 248 pages 6 x 9 hardback 20 b/w illus., map $26.00 My post on “Bagdad, Back Door to the Confederacy” garnered a comment from author Philip Leigh about other trading arrangements, especially those between the United States and […]

  • 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 […]

  • Short Takes

    Most students of the Civil War have at least heard of Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio lawyer who served in Congress and stood for governor of Ohio during the Civil War. Vallandigham was a prominent Copperhead Democrat who advocated a peaceful solution to the bloodshed, and was arrested, convicted by a military court martial, and eventually […]

  • Short Takes

    It’s Black History Month, so let’s take a look at the African-American volunteers from Connecticut. It shows the two views of black soldiery. One legislator opined that the authorizing legislation was the most disgraceful bill ever introduced into the Connecticut Legislature,” Democratic Rep. William W. Eaton of Hartford said he “would rather let loose the wild […]

  • C-SPAN Alert: Washington Brotherhood

    Caught part of this last night but it will be broadcast again tonite at 10pm EST.  Shelden talks about the political culture of the time and some of the unlikely friendships formed such as that between Abe Lincoln and (future Confederate VP) Alexander Stephens; and Jeff Davis and William Seward. It’s a half hour and […]