Cease Fire: Civil War ‘Slang’
He’s starred unforgettably as menacing colonels in Broadway and in screen. But actor Stephen Lang has A Few Good Men Avatar on the big on long preferred directing the full power of his military...
View ArticleCease Fire: Nights of the Round Table
More than half a century ago, the late Ralph G. Newman of Chicago came up with a brilliant idea. Newman was a famous rare book and autograph dealer. He and his Abraham Lincoln Book Shop were featured...
View ArticleCease Fire: How Jefferson Davis Lost His Slaves
Pictures really do speak louder than words. In response to those who persistently maintain that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no actual slaves, here is irrefutable pictorial evidence to the...
View ArticleWar Around the Edges
Midway through the war, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. urged Atlantic Monthly readers to study the gruesome photographs taken after the Battle of Antietam by Alexander Gardner. “Let him who wishes to know...
View ArticleWhere Abraham Lincoln Went to Cry
IN THE SUMMER OF 1862—a season she called a “fiery furnace of affliction” following the tragic death of her 11-year- old son Willie—Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary, placed a souvenir photograph of a...
View ArticleCease Fire: Don’t judge a book by its author’s popularity
Any recent glance at the non-fiction best-seller list might convince the casual reader that presidential history New York Times is thriving. No fewer than three books about American presidents have...
View ArticleCWT Book Review: Colonization After Emancipation
Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, University of Missouri Press Abraham Lincoln may have been a “Great...
View ArticleCWT Film Review: The Conspirator
The Conspirator Directed by Robert Redford, at theaters nationwide Filmmakers don’t often claim to be historians, and vice versa (unless you’re D.W. Griffith, who virtually remade Civil War memory by...
View ArticleThe War on Canvas
Long after the guns were silenced, new generations of artists produced haunting images of America’s most painful conflict. In our own era of Künstler, Troiani and Gallon—eagerly collected illustrators...
View ArticleCease Fire: Here’s to the guardians of our heritage
Budge Weidman’s legacy is the preservation of our legacy. The passing this summer of Budge Weidman, the tireless organizer of volunteer Civil War researchers at the National Archives, brought to mind...
View ArticleCWT Book Review: Lincoln, the Cabinet and the Generals
Lincoln, the Cabinet and the Generals by Chester G. Hearn, Louisiana State University Press Fulltime Lincoln scholars may chew their nails at the thought, but there can be little doubt that Doris...
View ArticleLinking Lincoln’s leadership to the crises at hand
Lessons abound for the current occupant of the White House. This past June, while the sputtering economy, seemingly bottomless oil spill and the war in Afghanistan dominated headlines, a distinguished...
View ArticleAbraham Lincoln: The Anti-Politician
Few expected him to run for president; even fewer expected he would win. The headlines seemed uncannily familiar: Inexperienced underdog from Illinois upsets more experienced New York senator to earn...
View ArticleIncognito in Baltimore
Rumors of an assassination plot forced President-elect Lincoln to sneak through Charm City in 1861. When Abraham Lincoln left Spring- field, Illinois, on February 11 to travel to his inauguration in...
View ArticleLincoln the Homely
The 16th president’s unusual face evolved from an object of ridicule to an American icon that epitomized our Civil War ordeal. The German-born reformer Carl Schurz never forgot his first glimpse of...
View ArticleThe Art of Ironclads
Pieces from the USS Monitor Center’s collection illustrate that the famous Monitor-Virginia duel heralded a sea change in naval art as well as technology. Catching his first glimpse of the widely...
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Lincoln Memorial: A Temple of Tolerance
Cruel irony of segregated dedication ceremony has given way to reverence and rallies The brand-new Lincoln Memorial should have inspired a dedication ceremony of, by, and for the people—black as well...
View ArticleThe Photograph that Made Lincoln President
Mathew Brady’s Cooper Union portrait transformed a country lawyer into a national icon. On Washington’s birthday in 1860, Abraham Lincoln quietly boarded a train in his hometown to begin a long trip to...
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Clement Vallandigham Reexamined: A Review of Lincoln’s Northern Nemesis
Lincoln’s Northern Nemesis: The War Opposition and Exile of Ohio’s Clement VallandighamBy Martin Gottlieb McFarland & Co., 2021, $39.95 There is ample reason why Clement Laird Vallandigham’s...
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Abraham Lincoln’s Embrace of Foreign-Born Fighters
.image-13794877 { max-height: 100%; --left: 56.86%; --top: 35.98%; } In the earliest days of Union enlistment in New York City, anyone willing to volunteer was welcome at recruitment offices—including...
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