700 University of California Press eBooks, and a lot more

The University of California Press e-books collection holds books published by UCP (and a select few printed by other academic presses) between 1982-2004. The general public currently has access to 770 books through this initiative. The collection is dynamic, with new titles being added over time.

Readers looking to see what the collection holds can browse by subject. The curators of the site have kindly provided a second browsing page that shows only the publicly accessible books, omitting any frustrating off-limits titles.

The collection’s strengths are in history (particularly American history and the history of California and the West); religion; literary studies; and international studies (with strong selections of Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, andFrench Studies titles).

A quick browse yields a multitude of interesting possibilities for future reading: Shelley Streeby’s 2002 book about sensational literature and dime novels in the nineteenth-century United States; Luise White’s intriguing-looking Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (2000); and Karen Lystra’s 2004re-examination of Mark Twain’s final years. (The image above comes from another Twain text by Randall Knoper.) Two other noteworthy texts include Roland Barthes’ Incidents and Hugh Kenner’s Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings.

Sadly, you can’t download the books to an e-reader or tablet. Happily, there is a “bookbag” function that you can use to store your titles, if you need to leave the site and come back. [About Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/faq]

Causes of the Civil War (James Epperson)

An internet classic. For nearly 20 years, Jim Epperson's Causes of the Civil War site has been a go-to resource for interested students, and anyone evaluating the still-pervasive influence of the Lost Cause narrative. For those fighting the good fight against the forces of neo-Confederate nonsense, this assemblage of essential primary source material has been indispensable. I've visited this page hundreds, if not thousands of times, and am glad to see it's still being maintained. Thanks Jim.

James Loewen: "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong."

From today's Washington Post.

Gordon Rhea on the Confederacy's legacy. . .

Gordon Rhea is an attorney based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and an author of books on the history of the Civil War. He has lectured on military history at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, at several National Military Parks and at historical societies and Civil War round tables across the country. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) The Confederacy's toxic spirit still casts a long shadow over the American South. . . Read Gordon's full op-ed piece here. 

Drought exposes Civil War veteran's grave

The broken headstone recently secured to a concrete slab marks the burial site of Civil War veteran Corporal John McBride on the dry lake bed of Lake San Antonio in southern Monterey County on May 27, 2015.
(Vern Fisher, Monterey Herald)

Click HERE to read the full story at the San Jose Mercury News site. 

Civil War Faces at the Library of Congress

Online offerings from the Library of Congress continue to expand at a rapid clip. No one has to know that much of the research for your new book was conducted in pajamas, on an iPad, at your kitchen table. Brew a fresh pot and spend some time with the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs.

[Unidentified soldier in Confederate infantry uniform with musket and Bowie knife]

• Digital ID: (digital file from original, tonality adjusted) ppmsca 32684 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.32684
• Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-32684 (digital file from original, tonality adjusted) LC-DIG-ppmsca-32127 (digital file from original item)
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Last Union prisoners leave Texas (150 years ago)

Helena, Arkansas -- you can't get there from here

I passed through Helena, Arkansas last month, and the odds are good that I won't visit there again in this lifetime, or any other. It doesn't seem to be on the way to anywhere I'm likely to ever be going, but I'm glad I've been there once. While in town on a beautiful Monday in April, I took time to pay a visit to one of Helena's most famous residents, the "Stonewall of the West," Patrick Cleburne. Of the seven Confederate generals to come from Helena, three are buried in the Confederate Cemetery section of Maple Hill Cemetery (Cleburne, Thomas C. Hindman, and James C. Tappan).

Patrick Cleburne

Confederate dead at Maple Hill Cemetery

The "Fagan Six," from the Battle of Helena

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, 1951-2015

[from The Washington Post, By Matt Schudel April 16 at 7:53 PM -- family photo]

“She could speak eloquently of complex matters to people in German, French and Spanish,” Barbara J. Stephenson, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama and deputy chief of mission in London, said Wednesday in an interview. “She was so often the most talented person in the room.”

Her first book, Clara Barton: Professional Angel, came out in 1987, while she was with the Foreign Service in South Africa. Twenty years later, she published “Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters,” a revelatory study of the commander of the Confederate army during the Civil War.

Ms. Pryor was the first scholar to gain access to a newly discovered trove of Lee family documents that had been stored in a bank vault for decades.

In 1917, Lee’s daughter, Mary Custis Lee, sent two trunks of letters and other artifacts to the Burke and Herbert Bank in Alexandria, Va. She died the next year, and the trunks were not opened until 2002.

 

Elizabeth Brown Pryor discusses her new book, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. Georgia Center for the Book presents E. Pryor, former diplomat and historian (Clara Barton: Professional Angel) and her new look at Robert E. Lee. In her new book, Pryor draws from previously unpublished correspondence, which reveal more fully than ever Lee's life and beliefs before, during and after the Civil War.

Hannah Reynolds will never be remembered like Jennie Wade, but this is a start

Jennie Wade, of course, is remembered and memorialized for being the only civilian casualty resulting directly from the Battle of Gettysburg. Had she been one of dozens who died in the battle, it's not likely that her name would be as well known as it is. There is something about "the only" designation that excites the imaginations of American textbook writers and tourism directors—unless the only in question a member of one of America's forgotten underclasses. In that case, a few more years may pass before notice is taken.

Case in point. . .

In 1865, Reynolds was a slave in the household of Samuel Coleman in the Virginia village of Appomattox Court House. And as Union and Confederate troops fought the Battle of Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, a cannonball tore through the Coleman house (All Things Considered).

Read the full story here, and listen to the All Things Considered podcast (3 minutes, 30 seconds).

(Library of Congress)

Meanwhile, 150 years ago in a place other than Virginia. . .

Visit the Fort Blakely page at the Civil War Trust for maps, articles, and other resources on the fighting at Blakely and Spanish Fort. 

Richard McMurry, in the area of the 15th Massachusetts Battery, Fort Blakely, discussing the
April 9, 1865 Federal assault. [19th CompuServe Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference]

150 years ago -- The Battle of Bentonville, March 19-21, 1865

Visit the Civil War Trust's Bentonville page for maps, articles, photo galleries, and interviews about  North Carolina's largest and most important battlefield. 

Mark Bradley, right, author of Last Stand in the Carolinas, conducted a two-day battlefield tour for The CompuServe Civil War Forum in April of 2012.

Remembering the senseless slaughter of the War Between the Butterflies

Lincoln comments on his 2nd inaugural speech

from Lincoln Day by Day, Lincoln writing to Thurlow Weed:

Lincoln taking the oath, March 4, 1865, Harper's Weekly

"Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral [sic] Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as -- perhaps better than -- any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."  

More on the 2nd inaugural at the Library of Congress. 

The Racing Presidents visit the National Archives

Abraham Lincoln contemplates a facsimile copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

You can see the full gallery of photos of the Racing Presidents -- a popular feature at Washington Nationals games -- visiting the National Archives by clicking here. 

Battle of Monroe's Crossroads -- 150 years ago

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads, which intrepid members of the CompuServe Civil War Forum visited three years ago. The battlefield remains well preserved, due to the fact that it is situated deep inside the grounds of Fort Bragg, and in a restricted area subject to overshot from live fire ranges. Visitors must be escorted, and photos may not be published without permission.

I posted this brief blog entry with photos of our visit back in 2012. 
Here's a good summary of the battle from the North Carolina History Project. 
More text, and maps. 

BONUS LINKS: I just noticed that Eric Wittenberg has posted a three-part essay on events,  culminating at Monroe's Crossroads, for the Emerging Civil War blog:
Part One,   Part Two,   Part Three.

Author and historian Mark Bradley. 

Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address -- March 4, 1865

One of three photos of the event by Alexander Gardner

"In a print made about 1920 from an original photograph by Alexander Gardner, President Lincoln is seen reading his inaugural address before the crowd on the east portico of the Capitol. This is one of three photographs taken March 4, 1865, by Alexander Gardner. Above Lincoln, to the right and behind an iron railing, stands John Wilkes Booth, though he cannot be seen clearly in this photograph. In only one of the photographs, that in the Meserve Collection in the National Portrait Gallery, is Booth visible. He has a mustache and is wearing a top hat. Five of the other conspirators in Lincoln's assassination stand just below the president. Looking at a detail of the figures behind the railing in the photograph presented here reveals a man with a mustache holding a top hat in his hand who could well be John Wilkes Booth.

For a discussion of the three photographs and the identity of Booth and the conspirators, see Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days (San Bernardino, California: Borgo Press, 1985), pp. [30]-37."

SOURCE

1.) Harold Holzer, Lincoln in the Times pp. 221-2. [this passage thanks to Vermont Humanities, Civil War Book of Days. 

Brooks Simpson at Crossroads collected together some Library of Congress images of the speech itself, to commemorate a masterpiece of presidential oratory.

The Cause of All Nations: an International History of the American Civil War

Every now and then, certain Civil War devotees need a stinging slap across the face to pull us out of the narrow-focus trance of battle studies and biographies, and raise our awareness of the larger, global ramifications of the War of Southern Aggression. 

This new title (released December 2014 by Basic Books) is being well received, and looks like just the ticket. I'm intrigued enough by this one to bump it up to somewhere near the top of the stack. 

Don Doyle, a Californian who got his doctorate at Northwestern, is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. You can get a good sense of what this work is about through book reviews (Chicago Tribune, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal), an interview (Civil War Monitor), read an excerpt at Salon.com, or find other links to more reviews and articles on Facebook. 

San Francisco National Cemetery

The San Francisco National Cemetery in the old Presidio, the first West Coast burial ground in the national cemetery system, is a stunningly beautiful final resting place. It is a quiet, tranquil spot sheltered from the bustling city by the long-time army post turned national park. It's one of my favorite places in my favorite metropolis. In the coming weeks I will post a series of short vignettes about some of the people buried there, particularly those with Civil War or Indian Wars connections. 

I took the photo at top last Sunday. In all the times I've visited over the past 30 years, it was the first time I'd looked over at the Pacific Garrison Memorial from this particular angle, and saw the Trans-America Pyramid through the trees in the distance. The monument was erected on Memorial Day in 1897, and dedicated to the Union Regular Army and Navy (it would be another 75 years before the completed skyscraper become part of the picture). 

Abraham Lincoln, online and searchable

Thanks to the Abraham Lincoln Association