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.
Reinventing a Moribund Army Medical Corps
Were the actual facts not so ghastly and heart wrenching, LeRoy Pope Walker’s comments just prior to the start of the Civil War would be laughable: “All the blood spilled as a result of the secession could be wiped up with a handkerchief.” Walker, an Alabama state...
The Civil War: Opening the Door to Women’s Suffrage
“When the Civil War ended, woman was at least fifty years in advance of the normal position which confirmed peace would have assigned her.” Clara Barton The seed for women’s suffrage was planted in the small upstate New York town of Seneca Falls thirteen years prior...
Washington City Under Threat
Washington City, as the District of Columbia was commonly referred to in the mid-nineteenth century, was frequently under threat during the Civil War. The two Battles of Bull Run (Manassas) in July 1861 and August of the following year caused citizens and Union...
Union Veteran Organizations of the American Civil War
Despite the devastating impact the Civil War had on those who participated in it, when the war was over veterans were eager to find a vehicle for retaining the camaraderie created during the conflict. In April 1866 all Union veterans who served in the Union Army,...
A Daily Ration of “Sheet Iron” and “Worm Castles”
In addition to the exhausting forced marches that Civil War soldiers undertook as they pursued or were pursued by their enemies, the soldiers’ diets during these marches were equally onerous. More often than not, soldiers in both armies subsisted on hardtack while in...
Christmas Letters From a Union Soldier
George P. McClelland served with the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry, Union Army of the Potomac, from August 1862 to June 1865. He spent three Christmases in the field with his unit and wrote home to his sister Lizzie to report on his condition and to wish her the best...
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. ...