The Backchat Blog
About this Blog
Author Robert C. Plumb has created this blog to share information, opinions, and ideas about the subject of the American Civil War. All segments of coverage about the War – academic treatise, “popular history,” and fictional accounts – will be included if they merit coverage and discussion. After reading this blog if you are informed, enlightened, or encouraged to discover more, the author will consider that this blog is accomplishing what he intended.
The Great American Festival of Thanksgiving Forever Secured
“Now the purpose is to entreat President Lincoln to put forth his Proclamation, appointing the last Thursday in November as the National Thanksgiving for all these classes of people who are under the National Government particularly …thus by the noble example and...
The Gettysburg Address: “Never Cease to Remember It”
On a crisp autumn day in mid-November 1863, Abraham Lincoln stepped off a train he had taken from Washington City to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where a turning point battle had been fought just four and a half months earlier. Lincoln came to dedicate a new soldier’s...
Harriet: The Film
The Harriet Tubman movie, directed by Kasi Lemmons and released in November 2019, is a powerful film that does justice to Tubman’s story of compassion for enslaved people and her unrelenting drive to guide them to freedom in the north. There are a few scenes of...
Walking Through History with Edwin Cole Bearss (1923 – 2020)
To be guided by Ed Bearss on a battlefield tour was an experience no participant could ever forget. Walking at a pace that would exhaust a young man or woman, let alone as a septuagenarian tour leader, Ed led us through history with his booming, parade ground voice. ...
The Bloodiest Day
One-hundred and fifty-eight years ago on September 17, a battle that has been called the bloodiest single day in American history was fought on Maryland farmland adjacent to a small creek from which the battle took its name: Antietam. More American soldiers died in...
The Poem, the Anthem, the Hymn
Forty-two-year old Julia Ward Howe, mother of six, asked to accompany her physician husband to Washington, DC in November of 1861 so she could witness the marshalling of troops in the capital city. While Doctor Samuel Gridley Howe was attending to business as a...
The Blue and Gray — With a Touch of Yellow and Red
Ask Civil War enthusiasts about the term “The Blue and the Gray” and most will respond: “Those are the colors of the uniforms men wore during the Civil War; the Union wore blue and the Confederates wore gray.” The answer is more complex. Union and Confederate armies...
Little Round Top at Gettysburg: First the Battle, Then a View of History
George Pressly McClelland was serving as a sergeant in the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry when his unit, a part of the Army of the Potomac, was sent from Fredericksburg, Virginia to intercept the Army of Northern Virginia, thought to be passing through Maryland on their...
Which Uncle Tom ?
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the first American book to sell more than one million copies. It earned its author international fame, admiration in the northern United States, and the scorn of most Southern commentators. The novel enjoyed popular...
Traveling the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman
History enthusiasts who want to better understand the life of Harriet Tubman by visiting her residences or areas where she lived, have two opportunities: Cambridge, Maryland and Auburn, New York. Since the two locations are 400 miles apart, they will need to be...