Civil War History – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

An Historic Telegram Addressed to General Sherman
(The Nation, 1912)

The Nation reported in 1912 that a telegram of great historical importance had been put up for auction (N.B.: the Twenty-First Century equivalent of a telegram is a text message). The telegram was addressed to General William Techumseh Sherman and signed by General U.S. Grant and it clearly gives Sherman free reign to ravage the countryside as he marched.

Click here to read the chronologies of the American Civil War.

To read the story behind Lincoln’s beard, click here.

General Sherman Recalls His War Record
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1911)

The 1866 comments of General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 – 1891) to Colonel Samuel M. Bowman, concerning the book Bowman was assembling, entitled Sherman and His Campaigns. General Sherman recalled his thoughts on such matters as the causes of the Civil War, the assassination of President Lincoln, the struggle for Kentucky, the use of the railways in war, the Great March and the political talents of President George Washington.

Richmond Selected as the Capital of the Confederacy
(National Park Service, 1961)

Second only to New Orleans, Richmond was the largest city in the Confederacy, having a population of about 38,000. It was also the center of iron manufacturing in the South. The Tredegar Iron Works, main source of cannon supply for the Southern armies, influenced the choice of Richmond as the Confederate Capital and demanded defense.

Click here to read about the heavy influence religion had in the Rebel states during the American Civil War.

The Emancipation Proclamation
(Famous Events, 1913)

There is much that can be said about President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, however this one page down-load will give the reader a clear understanding of what the legislation did and did not do.

It was argued that slavery in the United States did not end in 1865…

The Sinking of the C.S.S. Alabama
(Famous Events Magazine, 1913)

This short article from The Famous Events of the World was written at a time when the Civil War was still fresh in the American memory; and although their lines were thinning, the veterans of that war were still walking the streets. One of the important events of the American Civil War during the year 1864 was the sinking of the Confederate pirate ship, C.S.S. Alabama, commanded by Raphael Semmes(1809-1877):

After a long course of capturing and destroying Northern merchant ships, the Aabama was caught in a French harbor by the United States frigate Kearsarge. The Kearsarge defied the ALABAMA to battle; and the Confederate ship, accepting the challenge, steamed confidently forth amid salvos of applause from the French and English spectators. The Kearsarge completely outfought her, and sank her.

Click here to read an article about the captain of the ALABAMA, Raphael Semmes.

When Grant Captured Richmond
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

A moving account of the fall of Richmond, pieced together from various eyewitness accounts:

The whole Rebel Government was on the move, and all Richmond desired to be. No thoughts of taking Washington now, or of the flag of the Confederacy flaunting in the breeze over the old capitol! Hundreds of officials were at the depot, to get away from the doomed city. Public documents, the archives of the Confederacy, were hastily gathered up, tumbled into boxes and barrels, and taken to the trains, or carried into the streets and set on fire.

General Grant’s March on Richmond
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

The Atlantic Monthly who witnessed Grant’s maneuvering outside the city of Richmond filed this article:

General Grant’s entire force could not have been less than a hundred and thirty thousand, including Sheridan’s cavalry, the force at City Point, and the provisional brigade at Fort Powhatan. Lee’s whole force was not far from seventy thousand, – or seventy-five thousand, including the militia of Richmond and Petersburg…

Click here to learn why Richmond was chosen as the capitol of the Confederacy

General Lee’s Unique Bond with his Army
(Atlantic Monthly, 1911)

Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870) is the topic of this psycho-graphic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the celebrated biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932).

…Lee won the hearts of his soldiers by living as they did. He managed the business of his position with as little fuss and parade as possible. Foreign officers were struck with the absolute simplicity of his arrangements. There were no guards or sentries around his headquarters, no idle aids-de-camp loitering about…

John Brown Examined
(The North American Review, 1910)

A 1910 book review of Oswald Garrison Villard’s biography of John Brown (1800 – 1859). Believed to be one of the more honest biographies on Brown, Villard’s effort is said to have five chapters dealing only with Brown’s activities in Bloody Kansas, including the slaughter at Pottawatomie.

Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes
(Atlantic Monthly, 1913)

Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.

Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.

‘The Sunset of the Confederacy”
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

This book review is a wonderful read, punctuated with interesting descriptions of the Civil War’s most prominent players. The book in question is The Sunset Of The Confederacy by former Confederate General Morris Schaff (1840-1929), author of The Battle of the Wilderness (1910).

The Struggle for California
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the The Dial Magazine book review of Elijah R. Kennedy’s The Contest for California in 1861. Kennedy maintained that a large party in California and Oregon sought to deliver that region to the Southerners and might have succeeded were it not for the efforts of one Colonel E.D. Baker.

Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

A Union Snoop
(A Spy of the Rebelion, 1883)

When the Civil War broke out, Alan Pinkerton (1819 – 1884) was given charge of the Union Intelligence Service, having previously gained tremendous credibility as a detective in Chicago. It was at this post, early in the war, that he was assigned a task by General George McClellan (1826 – 1885) to proceed south of the Ohio River in order to gain a more thorough understand as to the loyalties of those people. Pinkerton first wrote about this mission in his Civil War memoir, A Spy of the Rebellion.

Click here to read another account of Civil War spying.

Confederate General Johnson Hagood
(The Dial Magazine, 1911)

A book review from 1911 covering the Civil War memoirs of the Confederate Brigadier General Johnson Hagood (1829 – 1898) who fought many battles during that conflict, most notably Cold Harbor and the battles of Weldon Road and Bentonville. At war’s end he surrendered to General Sherman.

Lincoln and Lee in 1918
(The Nation, 1918)

On the first anniversary marking the American intervention into the First World War Charles Payne of Grenell College, Iowa, wrote to the editors at The Nation and cautioned his fellow-Americans to remember the conduct and humility of Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Click here to read about the heavy influence religion had in the Rebel states during the American Civil War.

Union General James Harrison Wilson
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the review from a respected literary journal concerning the autobiography of Brigadier General James Harrison Wilson (1837 – 1925). Under the Old Flag Wilson is today best remembered as the U.S. Army cavalry officer who captured the Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his flight from Richmond. Following the Civil War, where he rose rapidly in the army hierarchy and finished as brigadier general, Wilson continued to play important rolls in the U.S. military; serving during the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion

The Depression and Humor of President Lincoln
(National Park Service, 1956)

This 1956 article addressed the issue of Lincoln’s depression:

Lincoln’s story telling proclivities were well known in his own time. On the old eighth circuit in Illinois his humor and fund of anecdotes were proverbial. What was not so well known was that the tall, homely man needed a blanket of humor to suppress the fires of depression, gloom, and sense of tragedy that almost consumed him.

Click here to read about Lincoln, the joke teller.

An Eyewitness Account of Lincoln’s Visit to Richmond
(Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

Abraham Lincoln was walking their streets: and worst of all, that plain, honest-hearted man was recognizing the [slaves] as human beings by returning their salutations!

-so wrote the Atlanta Weekly journalist, C.C. Coffin, in this report to his readers concerning the 1865 tour Abraham Lincoln made to a very humiliated Richmond, Virginia.