The Backchat Blog

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Bookshelves groan under the weight of the accumulated Civil War canon.  One area, however, receives scant attention in comparison to the battles and leaders of the War – Reconstruction and the entire post-war saga.  A. J. Langguth’s After Lincoln: How the North Won...

“To the friends of missing persons: Miss Clara Barton has kindly offered to search for missing prisoners of war.  Please address her at Annapolis, Maryland giving name, regiment, and company of any missing prisoner.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1865 As the Civil War was...

For those of us who write historical non-fiction, logs, diaries, journals and letters are the essential ingredients of our research.  First-hand accounts are the sine qua non of our work. My first book, Your Brother in Arms, was based on 41 letters written by a Civil...