Hdqtrs, Army in the field
Camp near Donelson, Feby 16, 1862
Gen. S.B. Buckner,
Confed. Army:
Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.
I propose to move immediately upon your works. I am Sir: very respectfully
Your obt. sevt.
U.S. Grant
Brig. Gen.
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| Left, the altered portrait depicting Mrs. Lincoln; right, the restored image, an unknown woman without a Lincoln brooch. Photographs from Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. |
For 32 years, a portrait of a serene Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill., signed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived at the White House for six months in 1864.Read the full New York Times article here.
As the conservator Barry Bauman removed paint added to the portrait advertised as being that of Mary Todd Lincoln, a brooch depicting Abraham Lincoln disappeared.
The story behind the picture was compelling: Mrs. Lincoln had Mr. Carpenter secretly paint her portrait as a surprise for the president, but he was assassinated before she had a chance to present it to him.
Now it turns out that both the portrait and the touching tale accompanying it are false.
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| Click on image for Table of Contents |
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| Hilbert J. Gramelspacher |
The family did not know much about Joseph's military service until Hilbert's 68-year-old son, Wayne, who lives near Vaughn, Miss., began "looking up family history" and contacted Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War."My father never talked about the Civil War," Hilbert said. He was 11 when his dad died in 1931 at the age of 83."He did show me his rifle," Hilbert said. "He gave it to my sister, and her children have it now.".
Full article is here.
Egypt, which previously accounted for only 3 percent of cotton exports to Europe, saw its profits boom from $7 million to $77 million in just four years. With Egyptian cotton flooding the European market, the demand for Southern cotton disappeared, as did European support for the Confederacy that was based, in part, on a need for the South’s cotton.
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| Dinwiddie County native Lucas L. Meredith Jr. poses in 2008 with a portrait of his father, who fought for the South. |
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| Work in the Cameron Art Museum's exhibit “Civil War Drawings from the Becker Collection” depicts scenes from the South during the war. Image courtesy of the Cameron Art Museum |
"At UNC Press, we pride ourselves on publishing campaign studies that take into account the larger contexts in which Civil War battles were fought. But as we developed our program of E-book Shorts, we were pleased to discover within those longer works tightly written narratives of the battles themselves that work very well as standalone books," said UNC Press Civil War editor David Perry, who worked with the authors on the original publication of the full books.
"Today's advances in digital content delivery give us great flexibility in how we deliver our content to readers. The E-book Shorts format, delivering readable and engaging accounts of the key battles and other critical moments in the Civil War, is the perfect way to reach new readers for our books," said Dino Battista, the Press's Senior Director of Marketing.
UNC Press Civil War Shorts and Omnibus E-Books are available from Amazon.com for the Kindle ebook reader, at BarnesandNoble.com for the Nook reader, and at Sony's ebookstore.sony.com.
For more information, visit UNC Press at www.uncpressebookshorts.com.
UNC PRESS CIVIL WAR SHORTS
The Mortal Wounding of Stonewall Jackson: A UNC Press Civil War Short, Excerpted from Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, edited by Gary W. Gallagherby Robert K. KrickISBN: 978-0-8078-37108; 38 pp., 6 illus., 2 maps, $2.99
On Pickett's Charge: A UNC Press Civil War Short, Excerpted from Pickett's Charge in History and Memoryby Carol ReardonISBN: 978-0-8078-3620-0;74 pp., $6.99
The Battle of Fredericksburg: A UNC Press Civil War Short, Excerpted from Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!by George C. RableISBN: 978-0-8078-3622-4; 332 pp., 5 illus., 6 maps, $9.99
The Battle of Vicksburg: A UNC Press Civil War Short, Excerpted from Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippiby Michael B. BallardISBN: 978-0-8078-3621-7; 177 pp., 10 illus., 2 maps, $9.99
OMNIBUS E-BOOKS
The Harry Pfanz Gettysburg TrilogyIncludes Gettysburg: The First Day; Gettysburg: The Second Day; and Gettysburg: Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hillby Harry W. PfanzISBN: 978-0-8078-7281-9; 1648 pp., $75.00
The Earl J. Hess Fortifications TrilogyIncludes Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War; Trench Warfare Under Grant and Lee; and In the Trenches at Petersburgby Earl J. HessISBN: 978-0-8078-7282-6; 1216 pp., $60.00
The Shenandoah Valley CampaignsIncludes The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864Edited by Gary W. GallagherISBN: 978-0-8078-7283-3; 696 pp., $40.00
Booth’s desire – to seek political refuge in Canada – has been shared by generations of Americans, from British Loyalists after the American Revolution to Iraq War resisters. And as the newest parade of laughable candidates for President takes to the nation’s podiums, town halls, and state fairs, America will ring once again with the rallying cry of, “If so and so is elected, I’m moving to Canada.”
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| ( Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times ) Olga Tsapina, a history curator who will be cataloging the logs, points to Abraham Lincoln's code name, "Ida," in a log listing code names for members of government |
A long-unknown, 150-year-old trove of handwritten ledgers and calfskin-covered code books that give a potentially revelatory glimpse into both the dawn of electronic battlefield communications and the day-to-day exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and his generals as they fought the Civil War now belongs to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. . . .The full Los Angeles Times article is here.
The Eckert collection's code books show that Lincoln had an assortment of aliases: Ida, India, Irving, Ingress, Ingrate and Ingot. His war secretary, Edwin Stanton, was Indigo or Infant. If a message said "shaker" or "sable," it was talking about an attack. The code words for "infantry" were "rapture" and "ramble."
The terminology seems "completely arbitrary," Tsapina said — which may have been why the Confederates were never able to crack the code.
In her initial sifting through the material during the month before the Huntington decided to buy it, Tsapina said, she found some very human moments along with messages that appear to convey historically important facts.
In February 1862, two months before sharing command with Grant at the Battle of Shiloh, an important and extremely bloody Union victory in Tennessee, Gen. Don Carlos Buell sent a telegram from his headquarters in Louisville, Ky., to unknown recipients code-named Andes and Ocean, complaining of "constant intrigue to displace army officers" under his command, "which I beg you to defeat … until I tell you there is just cause. I learn that Col. Hazin is one of the purposed victims. His removal would be gross injustice and a serious loss."
After the concluding signature, "Alvard" — Buell's code name — appear three additional words: "Good for Alvard," a nod of approval by a telegraph operator putting in his own two cents. Tsapina said she also has found instances in which telegraph operators tacked on insider investment tips to one another, based on how the battlefield news they were transmitting might affect the market price of cotton or gold.
Tsapina said there are "masses of telegrams" concerning supplies and railroad operations, which could help scholars studying Civil War logistics.
The State Ports Authority has long wanted to be rid of the Castle Pinckney; selling the crumbling site to theSons of Confederate Veterans for a bargain price of $10. The SPA has owned the site, off and on, since 1958. Twice, they gave the Castle to historic societies, only to have it given back. However, both parties are optimistic about this transfer."We've been looking for a proper home for Castle Pinckney for many years," says SPA spokesman, Byron Miller.
Castle Pinckney National Monument
Photograph from Corbis
This Confederate island fortress in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was used to house Union POWs, like these men from the Civil War's First Battle of Bull Run. During the war, Castle Pinckney was bombarded twice before falling to the Union with the rest of Charleston in 1865.
After the war, Castle Pinckney fell into general disuse and then into the hands of the National Park Service in 1933. After more than two sleepy decades, the Castle Pinckney National Monument was abolished in 1956—and still little has changed since.
Several aborted development schemes later, Castle Pinckney, now owned by the South Carolina State Ports Authority, sits today in a state of gradual decomposition.
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| Nice try citizen, but the moon only looks small. |
Savannah, Ga December 22, 1864Via Ft. Monroe, Va Dec 25.
His ExcellencyPrest. Lincoln.
I beg to present you as aChristmas gift the City of Savannah
with 150 heavy guns & plenty
of ammunition & also about
25,000 bales of cotton.
W. T. ShermanMajor Gen'l
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