Poetry flourished as one of the arts during the 19th century, particularly during the sentimental Victorian era. Newspapers and magazines dedicated hundreds of inches of space - sometimes in one issue - to poetry. While some of these poems were written by authors who are still well known today, such as Henry Wadsworth [...]

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis would seem to have little in common; one a self-made man if there ever was one, the other a son of privilege, one a staunch supporter of slavery, the other a vocal opponent of slavery.
Yet Lincoln and Davis had similarities and commonalities, some insignificant, some notable, and some ultimately [...]

It was a thinly veiled deception during the winter of secession in 1861 that the Southern states who were leaving the Union were leaving to protect states’ rights. The truth, which everyone knew, was that slavery was the reason - the South was determined to protect the institution at all costs.
While the election of [...]

Civil war makes for interesting bedfellows. With warring factions often former friends, colleagues neighbors, or both, the potential for spying is increased dramatically.
During the Civil War era in the U.S., spying was rampant, and it was no wonder; important cities like Washington D.C., not to mention border states like Kentucky, Missouri, and [...]

There was no penicillin. No oxygen tanks. No sterile surgical field. No intravenous lines. Little or no sanitation.
The hospital and other medical care of the Civil War era offered none of these medical treatments and procedures that we now take for granted as necessities. Is it any wonder, then, that [...]

People are often astounded by the numbers of men who died as casualties of the Civil War. The bloodiest war to ever take place on American soil, over 600,000 men perished during the Civil War.
What many people do not realize is that nearly 60,000 of these casualties did not happen in battle – they happened [...]

Veterans of the Civil War returned to lives either very similar or completely different from the world they left behind to fight for their cause. For veterans of the U.S. Army, life went on, as victors, much as it had before the war. They returned as celebrated, often decorated heroes who’d brought a [...]

When it became obvious that Civil War was imminent in the United States in 1861, regiments of soldiers began organizing both in the Union and in the individual states as they seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.
Henry Steele Commager has written that:
The Union and Confederate armies were haphazardly raised, badly organized, poorly trained, [...]

While the political history of a country during wartime is often told in textbooks, the cultural climate of a country at war is often recorded in the art of the time; the poetry that told the story of World War I, the novels and nonfiction that were inspired by the Spanish Civil War, these give [...]

During the Victorian Era, which coincided with the Civil War era, it was understood that a woman’s place was in the home. A well-bred, educated woman, a “lady” as it were, was supposed to confine her efforts to making her family comfortable and her home hospitable. To do otherwise, to work outside the [...]