Category: Social History

  • Short Takes

    “The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty.” Who said it? Yep, that ol’ unreconstructed Neo-Confederate, Karl Marx himself! That and many other period quotes are […]

  • Are Slavery and Emancipation the ONLY Things Worth Studying from the American Civil War?

    There have been quite a few mentions of the Gettysburg Visitor Center over the past few weeks in the Civil War blogosphere, and some of this has spilled over into the question of what type of interpretation should be seen at our Civil War battlefield visitor centers. John Hennessy, National Park Service Chief Historian at […]

  • Black Confederates

    Update: Welcome to TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog for those of you who have found this page through a Google Search!  If you enjoy what you’re about to read below, feel free to Subscribe to TOCWOC’s RSS feed.  Be sure to check out the Civil War Book Reviews which have been posted here and […]

  • Civil War History, September 2008

    Civil War History Published Quarterly by the Kent State University Press Volume 54, Number 3 (September 2008) Civil War History Web Site Everyman’s War: A Rich and Poor Man’s Fight in Lee’s Army…..229 by Joseph T. Glatthaar Joseph Glatthaar, author of General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (2008), takes a statistically valid sample of […]

  • Traditional Views of the Civil War

    Traditional Views of the American Civil War by James Durney We do not know what happened during the Civil War. The participants were homesick, tired, hungry, frightened and/or bored much of the time. People usually have little knowledge of events outside of their immediate area and what they thought true was often wrong. After action […]

  • Let’s See If We Can Slip One Past The Readers…

    I was amused to see Dimitri asking the question, Why on earth would you include an essay on “Lost Cause” historiography in a collection called Battle: The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat? I agree. I see several problems with this one. First, could it be because some academic circles (note I said SOME) […]

  • Memorial/Decoration Day

    I hope everyone enjoys their Memorial Day today. Just remember it’s for the ones who didn’t make it back. The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely […]