In an excerpt from Bland Simpson’s nonfiction novel Two Captains from Carolina, we get a glimpse of Moses Grandy’s early career as a boatman—the freedom he felt on the water and the opportunities that lay ahead. Continue Reading Excerpt: Two Captains from Carolina, by Bland Simpson
Before the war began, few would have foreseen Hampton emerging as a die-hard Confederate. After President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the Southern rebellion, however, Hampton no longer hesitated. Continue Reading Rod Andrew Jr.: Wade Hampton, One of the Last Confederate Generals to Surrender
In this video, Bland Simpson reads from his epic tale of race and war, “Two Captains from Carolina,” at UNC’s Bull’s Head Bookshop, November 13, 2012. Continue Reading Video: Bland Simpson reads from “Two Captains from Carolina”
In years to come, he would gain a wider reputation as a moving, eloquent speaker and a fierce debater. But at no time of his life was he a more effective orator than in those first months of freedom on the North Carolina coast. The prodigal ex-slave was always at his best among other former slaves. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Fire of Freedom, by David S. Cecelski
The Civil War Monitor interviews Peter Carmichael about the Civil War Institutes at Gettysburg College and the state of public history. Continue Reading Video: Peter Carmichael “Behind the Lines” interview with Civil War Monitor
Spielberg based more than 40 of his characters on historical figures; included in this group is Elizabeth Keckley, an enslaved woman whose 1868 book (Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House) UNC Press and the UNC Library republished last year through the DocSouth Books program. Continue Reading Elizabeth Keckley in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”
In this video, Elizabeth Leonard talks to the Civil War Monitor about Joseph Holt. She says Joseph Holt is “a very much forgotten personage from our historical past, and he’s someone who I think is probably the most important people from Lincoln’s administration who has been forgotten about.” Continue Reading Video: Elizabeth Leonard talks to The Civil War Monitor
New Fall sale categories: business history and southern history. Throughout the fall, we’re offering 50% off selected titles in the disciplines listed below. Enter 01SALE12 at checkout. Spend $75.00 and the shipping is free. Continue Reading UNC Press Fall Sale: New categories
Glenn David Brasher, author of “The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation,” talks to the Civil War Monitor about the important role of African Americans in the strategy and tactics of the Civil War. Continue Reading Video: Glenn David Brasher talks to The Civil War Monitor
Throughout the fall, we’re offering 50% off selected titles in the disciplines listed below. Enter 01SALE12 at checkout. Spend $75.00 and the shipping is free. Continue Reading The UNC Press fall sale is underway! Save up to 50% on select titles
Bland Simpson, author of Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Maffitt, and the Coming of the Civil War, reveals how the stories of two men can tell the saga of race in the antebellum and Civil War-era South. Continue Reading Interview: Bland Simpson on Two Captains from Carolina
Military theory is an intellectually sophisticated and complex form of cultural expression. At the start of the Civil War, the U.S. Army and the people it defended barely had begun to demonstrate an interest in developing a capacity to think about war as an element of national life. They had done little to institutionalize such study. As a consequence, when the Civil War broke out, Northerners had few resources to turn to for insights on an American way of war, and they had no choice but to look to the military classics from across a cultural divide for the intellectual authority they sought. Continue Reading Excerpt: With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other, by Carol Reardon
For all the attention to Lincoln’s ideas and motivations, however, there has been very little focus on the delegates’ side of the story. For decades no one even knew who they were, much less what they stood for. Drawing on the work of the historian Benjamin Quarles, many believed that four of the five delegates were uneducated former slaves, hand-picked by Lincoln and his colonization commissioner, James Mitchell, to be pliable and subservient.
In fact, all five of the men who listened to Lincoln’s case for colonization were members of Washington’s free black elite, chosen by a formal meeting of representatives from Washington’s independent black churches. Continue Reading Kate Masur on Lincoln’s emigration proposal and the views of African American delegates
“Because the Civil War, by chance, began right at the beginning of an administration, that part of the Constitution that gave the president a four-year term and made the president the commander-in-chief was extremely important. That meant that, barring impeachment or assassination, there would be a determined Republican in the White House fighting the South until March of 1865.”—Mark E. Neely Jr. Continue Reading Video: Mark E. Neely Jr. on the advantage of the U.S. Constitution during the Civil War
He ordered them to leave the camp as soon as possible, but they received permission to stay one more day because of bad weather “if they behave themselves properly.” They did not. Continue Reading Excerpt: Battle Hymns, by Christian McWhirter
Glory is noteworthy as one of the few popular representations of the war to include African American music. The Civil War had a tremendous impact on black music but the songs created and sung by African Americans are rarely included in books and films. Although Burns makes use of black spirituals, even he does not incorporate those that were actually most popular among slaves, freedpeople, and USCTs. Continue Reading Christian McWhirter: Did They Get It Right?: Civil War Music in Popular Film
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