Note from Moderator: Phebe Crook belonged to the same North Carolina community of Unionist women that I’ve been researching and writing about for 25 years, as did Martha Sheets and Caroline, Sarah, and Clarinda […]
Newt Knight vs. the U.S. Court of Claims revisited: Montgomery Blackwell’s deposition
For thirty years, guerrilla leader Newt Knight of Jasper County, Mississippi, sought compensation as a Unionist from the U.S. government on behalf of himself and 54 men who had belonged to his […]
Remembering Southern Union Soldiers on Memorial Day

I received these photos from Deena Collins Aucoin this Memorial Day morning. The first is of Chalmette National Cemetery in New Orleans. The second is the grave of Riley J. Collins from […]
Searching your ancestors’ Civil War records? You never know what you might find!

Note from moderator: Some time ago, before my move to Missouri temporarily engulfed my life, I had an interesting set of exchanges with Shelby Harriel, who had posted a comment beneath Ed […]
Just Released: “The Long Shadow of the Civil War”

I’m excited to announce that my new book, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies, has been released! Click here to see its table of contents. To purchase a […]
Part 3: Ed Payne on Jones County Widows

Nancy Pitts Walters By Ed Payne When Nancy Pitts Walters died in 1915 at the age of 82, she had the distinction of being the widow of not one but two […]
Moncure Conway, Southern Abolitionist

Figuring out the racial views of white southerners who opposed the Confederacy can be difficult. It is tempting, for example, to interpret white nonslaveholders’ economic resentment of slaveholders as evidence that they opposed slavery itself, but the two […]
Near and Distant Pasts Revisited: My 2001 interview by David Woodbury

Researching Civil War Home Fronts and Beyond by Vikki Bynum Back in fall, 2001, just months after the release of my book, Free State of Jones, David Woodbury (moderator of Battlefields and […]
Confessions of a Small-Town Texas Gadfly

By Victoria Bynum Professor Stauffer is angry at me; I mean really angry. He’s furious that I don’t think more highly of his and Sally Jenkins’s book, State of Jones, but especially that I have […]
Preview of Cover for THE LONG SHADOW OF THE CIVIL WAR

I am delighted with the cover designed by University of North Carolina Press for The Long Shadow of the Civil War, forthcoming February 2010. The cover’s shadowy figures and shrouded landscape not only suggest the enduring importance of place, family, and kinship in the South, […]
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