Civil War | American History Lives at American Heritage

Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?

“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.

February/March 1979

One reason most Americans find greater immediacy in the Civil War than in the Revolution is that the camera came into being during the eighty-odd years between the two conflicts. However skillful his hand, the engraver could not approach the sense of intimacy the lens provides. In the absence of photographic images, the Continental soldiers tend to recede from us, to become one with the defenders of Blenheim, or of Troy. Read more »

Four Brothers In Blue, Or Sunshine And Shadows Of The War Of The Rebellion

A Story Of The Great Civil War From Bull Run To Appomattox

Barbara Klaw

February/March 1979

by Robert Goldthwaite Carter University of Texas Press 537 pages, $15.00 Read more »

Gunboat War At Vicksburg

A Union seaman’s nightmarish memories of shot, shell, and shoal waters in Grant’s Mississippi River campaign, 1862–63

Daniel F. Kemp

August/September 1978

When in April of 1861 he first learned that the Confederate States of America had forced Federal troops to evacuate Fort Sumter, seventeen-year-old Daniel F. Kemp of Buffalo, New York, immediately wanted to enlist; but not until late summer of the next year, sometime after his eighteenth birthday, did Kemp’s parents consent to his signing up for a one-year hitch in the United States Navy. That service at once sent him west to join the freshwater flotilla which in cooperation with the Army was working its way down the Mississippi River. Read more »

The Day The Civil War Ended

Gettysburg, Fifty Years After

Bruce Catton

June/July 1978

The most dramatic and tragic moment of the American Civil War was the climactic point of Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg on the afternoon of July 3,1863. This doomed assault brought the Southern Confederacy to what looked like the verge of triumph, broke up in dust and fire, and put the armies on the road that led inevitably to the surrender field at Appomattox. Nothing in all the war has been written about so exhaustively. Read more »

From Atlanta To The Sea

A newly discovered Union diary shows that Sherman’s march was about as Ruthless as Southerners have always said it was

James Royal Ladd

December 1978

Read more »

Ethics & Armaments

THE WAY I SEE IT

Bruce Catton

August 1977

For an example of the way an incident of the distant past can put a revealing light on a problem of today, you might care to spend a moment considering the case of the Swamp Angel. Read more »

“the Most Extraordinary And Astounding Adventure Of The Civil War”

The Date: April 12,1862 The Place: Big Shanty, Georgia The Time: 6:45 A M. Thus began …

Stephen W. Sears

December 1977

On the pleasant Sunday evening of April 6, 1862, the men of Company H, 33rd Ohio Infantry, were relaxing around their campfires near Shelbyville, Tennessee, admiring the Southern springtime and trading the latest army rumors. They were joined by the company commander, Lieutenant A. L. Waddle, who announced that he wanted a volunteer for a secret and highly important expedition behind Confederate lines.Read more »

The Siege Of Vicksburg

Garibaldi And Lincoln

Would the great fighter come over for the Union? Italian freedom and lead troops Lincoln hoped so

Herbert Mitgang

October 1975

In the summer of 1861, when the newspaper generals in New York clamored for a clash of arms to put down the Confederate rebellion, the battle and the recriminations came sooner than expected. The people of Washington loaded up picnic baskets in buggies and carriages and drove across the bridges of the Potomac to watch the fun. Under the southern sunlight the sabers of the Union cavalry glistened, and the hope of a quick and punishing victory was in the smoking air.Read more »

The Miracle That Saved The Union

The Union desperately needed an extraordinary warship to counter the ironclad the Confederates were building

Scarritt Adams

December 1975

It was obvious that something very special was needed to confront the ironclad that the Confederacy was furiously building if the Union was to be saved. Yet it took a personal visit of Abraham Lincoln to the somnolent offices of the Navy Department to force the issue, and by then it was so late that the Navy Department had to have a miracle. In short, the contractor would have to build, in a hundred days, a kind of ship that had never been built before, and build it in a desperate race against time. Read more »

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