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Interview: Preserving Authentic Experiences
David Duncan (Courtesy of the American Battlefield Trust/Photo by Buddy Secor) In October 2020, David Duncan took over the position of president of American Battlefield Trust, following Jim...
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The Complicated Legacy of Matthew Maury, the ‘Scientist of the Seas’
Scientist Matthew Maury modernized navigation techniques but his racist politics have made him a pariah In October 1862 world-renowned scientist and former U.S. Navy officer Matthew Maury, sextant in...
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Ancient Cave Art Panoramas found in Pecos, Texas
Ancient rock art recently discovered in Pecos, Texas, matches similar findings further south in Mexico, establishing a regional continuity of culture in myths and traditions After a five-year campaign,...
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Camp Nelson Revived
Located about 19 miles south of Lexington, Ky., Camp Nelson served as a critical supply depot, training center, and forward base for the Federal Army during the Civil War. Built in April 1863 on an...
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Losing the Lost Cause: An Interview with Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule
.image-13762186 { max-height: 100%; --left: 44.18%; --top: 15.95%; } Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule spent two decades teaching history at West Point. His new book, Robert E. Lee and Me: A...
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The Hard-Luck Regiment of the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry
(Courtesy of Sam Houston State University) While Brian Matthew Jordan, assistant professor and chair of history at Sam Houston State University, worked on an essay about the court-martial of the...
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Think You’re a Gettysburg Fan? Meet the Man Who’s Made It His Life’s Work
In May 2021, Wayne Motts was named president and chief executive officer of the Gettysburg Foundation, an organization founded in 1989 to help preserve Gettysburg National Military Park. A lifelong...
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At First, Antietam Was Her Summer Job. Now She’s Calling the Shots—and Making...
.image-13763462 { max-height: 100%; --left: 46.24%; --top: 72.89%; } Susan Trail (NPS Photo) For Susan Trail, superintendent of Antietam National Battlefield, a summer stint doing archaeology...
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A True Rebel Alliance: Why the Choctaw Fought For the Confederacy
.image-13777520 { max-height: 100%; --left: 49.58%; --top: 70.82%; } To piece together the surprising history of the Choctaw Nation’s surprising alliance with the Confederacy, cemented by a treaty in...
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From Crickets to Camels: One Historian Examines the Animal Cost of War
Earl Hess has added the study of human-animal relationships and their roles in the Civil War to his long list of scholarship. In his new Animal Histories of the Civil-War Era, he gathers essays on...
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Hill’s Country: How One Man Connected the Pacific Northwest
Famous in his time, Sam Hill of the Pacific Northwest is perhaps remarkably distinguished for his present-day obscurity. The Sam Hill in question is not the Sam Hill referenced in “What in the Sam...
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The Largest Cavalry Battle Site of the Civil War Will Soon Be a Virginia...
.image-13780013 { max-height: 100%; --left: 40.85%; --top: 83.52%; } A Virginia state park focused on the battlefields of Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain, as well as the site of a ridgetop Union...
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Meet the Smuggler Who Brought Birth Control to the US
.image-13782208 { max-height: 100%; --left: 42.79%; --top: 26.37%; } Through the 1920s, Katharine Dexter McCormick periodically sailed from Europe to New York with garment-stuffed trunks. Had U.S....
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A Closer Look at One of the Union’s First Black Cavalry Units
.image-13781612 { max-height: 100%; --left: 51.03%; --top: 34.21%; } More than 20 years ago, John D. Warner Jr., a graduate student at the time, came across an arresting account by Union officer...
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History of the Condom: Why It’s Still the Only Contraception for Men
.image-13782971 { max-height: 100%; --left: 27.48%; --top: 40.08%; } While scholars argue about the murky origins of the word “condom” — first documented in print in English as “condum” around 1706 —...
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Bullets Weren’t the Only Thing to Worry About at Gettysburg — The Heat Could...
.image-13783229 { max-height: 100%; --left: 48.48%; --top: 73.75%; } Soldiers recalled the sweltering heat during the Battle of Gettysburg, and historical records say it was 87 degrees in the shade at...
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A 19th Century Black Success Story: The Downing Family
.image-13783116 { max-height: 100%; --left: 49.51%; --top: 19.31%; } A wonder of the New World, the vast oyster beds supported by the great estuaries of the mid-Atlantic shore allowed free Blacks —...
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A Confederate Love Affair: Was This the Most Romantic Couple of the Civil War?
.image-13785782 { max-height: 100%; --left: 57.20%; --top: 38.05%; } William C. “Jack” Davis Civil War historian William C. “Jack” Davis, retired professor of American History at Virginia Tech in...
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Antietam Aftermath: How the Ravages of War Devastated the Town of Sharpsburg
.image-13787220 { max-height: 100%; --left: 44.85%; --top: 69.44%; } Steve Cowie spent 15 years researching how the Battle of Antietam and the following military occupations affected the prosperous...
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Did This Guy Invent the Selfie… in 1839?
.image-13787402 { max-height: 100%; --left: 59.12%; --top: 37.41%; } In 1839, Robert Cornelius took the first photographic self-portrait. What in the Philadelphian’s era was an enforced moment of...
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