Book Review: On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua...
On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. By Ronald C. White. New York: Random House, 2023. 445 pp. Hardcover, $35.00. Reviewed by Brian Swartz Resurrected from...
View ArticleBook Review: Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War...
Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War and World War I. Edited by David J. Silbey and Kanisorn Wongrichanalai. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 2023. Softcover. 304pp....
View Article“We Helped Them Escape Whenever We Could”: Southern Claims Commission Records...
On July 11, 1866, Petersburg, Virginia’s Philip Sewell Sr. and his son, Philip Sewell Jr., filed a request with the Freedmen’s Bureau for the reimbursement of property taken from them by Pennsylvania...
View Article“We Helped Them Escape Whenever We Could”: Southern Claims Commission Records...
You may read Part I here. It was not uncommon for the Confederate military to impress free men of color to serve as laborers on fortifications, in their hospitals as stewards and nurses, in their camps...
View ArticleBook Review: The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain: The Major Writings
The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain: The Major Writings, Edited by Thomas A. Desjardins. Essex, CT: Down East Books, 2024. Hardcover, 155 pp, $28.95. Reviewed by Brian Swartz Rather than hear his...
View ArticleTales from a Monk in the Union Army: A Solitary Monk
Part of a series. By November 1864, the St. Vincent monks—once united under the banner of the 61st Pennsylvania—now found themselves separated. Brother Bonaventure Gaul was the only one that remained...
View ArticleNow Available from the Emerging Civil War Series: A Grand Opening Squandered:...
We’re kicking this year off with a bang! This time, we are digging into the trenches of Petersburg with Sean Michael Chick as he explores the intense four-day clash that marked a missed Union...
View ArticleStacking Arms: The Cockade City Unravels
In the spring of 1865, U.S. Grant literally stretched the Army of Northern Virginia to its breaking point. His offensive movements in late March forced Robert E. Lee, entrenched around the city of...
View ArticleMay 2025 Maine at War blog posts
In May 2025, Maine at War explained why a hero’s father calls 9-1-1 in 1864, introduces a ship’s captain who “meets” Raphael Semmes, and sorts out which McGlauflin gets shot during the Chancellorsville...
View ArticleECW Podcast: A Grand Opening Squandered (with Sean Michael Chick)
Sean Michael Chick Sean Michael Chick, author of “A Grand Opening Squandered,” talks about the battle of Petersburg. The battle, one of the bloodiest of the war, often gets lumped in with the...
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