An Interview with Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White, authors of Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862

Simply Murder not only recounts Fredericksburg’s tragic story of slaughter, but includes invaluable information about the battlefield itself and the insights they’ve learned from years of walking the ground. Mackowski ( Read more... )

Most people don’t realize that George Washington, “Father of Our Country,” was a devoté of architecture and interior design. We tend to think of him crossing the Delaware, not dressing windows. “How extremely important this was to him, the extent of his esthetic sense, few people ever realized,” historian David McCullough has noted. “Only a year ( Read more... )

“There are periods in every man’s life when all the concentrated sorrow and bitterness of years seemed gathered into one short day or night of agony."

-- Brig. Gen. James Lane, on the wounding of Stonewall Jackson

I feel like I've had me one of those days....

One of the things I’ve found most remarkable about the Civil War is the physical change that overcame President Lincoln during his time in office. The distinguished, thoughtful lawyer from Illinois who first arrived in Washington wasted away over four years; by 1865, he was virtually a smiling skeleton with a mop of bedhead hair ( Read more... )

“[H]istory and historical fiction,” says historian Paul Ashdown, “are alternate ways of telling stories about the past.”[1] In that context, Ulysses S. Grant spoke more truth than he realized when he said “Wars produce many stories of fiction.” Aside from yarn-spun anecdotes about apple-tree surrenders and lemon-sucking generals, war also produces ( Read more... )

"The truth of history is the objective always. But the truth isn’t just the facts. You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth..."

-- David McCullough

“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs.Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered. The formal surrender took place in the home of ( Read more... )

The ability to evoke emotion easily stands out as The Civil War’s greatest strength: From its opening shot of a canon silhouetted against a fire-orange sky and the use of the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote and the haunting Appalachian violin of Jay Unger’s “Ashoken Farewell,” Burns strives first and foremost to set an emotional tone ( Read more... )

I’d never been to Valley Forge before, so I stopped yesterday on a whim. I was driving to Wilmington, Delaware, for a roundtable talk on the Last Days of Stonewall Jackson, and I was getting to the area with plenty of time to kill. Even taking into account Philly-area traffic in the late afternoon, I correctly figured I had time for a stop ( Read more... )

“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war,” Oliver Wendell Holmes says at the beginning of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War. Burns could not have picked a more appropriate quote to start his film with, not just because it set a particular tone for the entire eleven-hour documentary but because it would describe the viewing experience ( Read more... )