Soldiers’ Dreams with Jonathan White

By Ashley Whitehead Luskey, 1-18-17 Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2017 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Dr. Jonathan White, Associate Professor of American Studies and the Senior Fellow at the Center for American Studies at Christopher University.  His research interests focus on the U.S. Constitution, the American Civil War, and treason in American history.  He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous books and articles for both scholarly journals and popular magazines.  His most recent works include "Emancipation, the Union Army,...

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The Day Lincoln Died: The Final Premonition

By Christopher Coleman As every school child knows (or should know) Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth President, was assassinated on April 14, 1865, and died in the early morning hours of the following day, April 15.  Less well known is that, that very morning, Lincoln revealed to his cabinet a premonition—a presentiment some would call it—of his very own death. The incident has been a favorite anecdote of Lincoln biographers for generations, although academic historians have tended to dismiss or ignore it.  In researching The Paranormal Presidency, however, I went back to the primary sources, to people who worked with Lincoln or were...

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Dr. Jonathan Letterman’s Report on the Union Army Medical Corps at Gettysburg

By Mark, 7-7-13 Dr. Jonathan Letterman was the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg.  At the time, Letterman had only been in his position for a year but had instituted sweeping changes in the way the Army took care of the wounded.  Letterman established the Army’s ambulance service, established field hospitals, aid stations, and an efficient medical supply system  He also designed the first triage procedures used by the Army to evaluate the wounded.  Medical care and survival rates improved dramatically under his leadership, and many of his procedures and concepts are still...

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Kate Cumming: Confederate Immigrant Nurse and the Shiloh Disaster

By Patrick Young, Esq., 1-14-16 More than 16,000 men were wounded at Shiloh, the bloodiest battle in American history up to that time. Kate Cumming was a child in Scotland when her family immigrated to North America. They did not come to the United States, but to Montreal in Canada. She then moved with her family to Mobile, Alabama. Although her days in her native Edinburgh were short, throughout her time in the United States she identified herself as a Scottish immigrant and sought a sense of identity in the culture of her homeland. Unlike many immigrants in the South during the 1850s, she came to embrace the cause of secession...

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Writing on the Operating Table: Letters of James Langstaff Dunn, Civil War Surgeon

by Sarah Johnson, 2-8-13 Gerald Linderman’s Embattled Courage defines the pursuit of courage as the prime motivator for Civil War soldiers. For men going off to war, idealistic notions of courage and duty caused them to rise above their fears and fight for their cause. However, the last chapter of Embattled Courage, titled “Disillusionment”, argues that eventually Civil War soldiers developed a hardened and stoic indifference to the suffering around them. Linderman argues soldiers stopped feeling like a vital part of an important cause and more like a small, insignificant piece of a vain struggle. The letters of James Langstaff Dunn, volunteer...

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Nutritional Night Blindness during the Crimean War and the U.S. Civil War

By Douglas Lanska, 2-12-13 ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: Determine whether night blindness among soldiers in the Crimean War and the U.S. Civil War was due to vitamin A deficiency (VAD) or to malingering as commonly attributed. BACKGROUND: VAD can result in nutritional night blindness (from impaired phototransduction in retinal rod cells) and corneal epithelial disorders. DESIGN/METHODS: Review of reports of night blindness and corneal epithelial disorders identified through compilations of the U.S. Surgeon General, electronic databases and search engines, bibliographic compilations, diaries, memoirs, medical journals, and monographs. Quantitative...

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Andersonville Prison

By Robert Scott Davis, 1-21-03; Last edited by NGE Staff on 10-18-16 In 1970 Andersonville was named a National Historic Site, and includes the Confederate prison site, the cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum. It is the only park in the National Park System that serves as a memorial to all American prisoners of war. February 1864, during the Civil War (1861-65), a Confederate prison was established in Macon County, in southwest Georgia, to provide relief for the large number of Union prisoners concentrated in and around Richmond, Virginia. The new camp, officially named Camp Sumter, quickly became known as Andersonville, after...

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Achievements and Failures During the Civil War

From: amedd.army.mil The Medical Department had intended that its detailed and copious records concerning the Union's sick and wounded guarantee the emergence of something of value to medical science as well as to the Army from the most frightful conflict that the nation had ever faced. During the struggle and the months immediately following it, more than 12,000 medical officers- regulars, volunteers, and contract- examined over 250,000 wounds and treated more than 7 million cases of disease. In the course of their duties, more than 300 Army surgeons died from wounds, disease, or accidents. In spite of their heavy case loads, many were able...

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