Another Good Movie

While searching for some content for a project, I came across this nice video. The 2001 video features Rhea Redd from Waynesburg College (where I'm an adjunct professor) and was filmed on location at the Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Pittsburgh. Corporal Redd mentions that he is a member of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves, a Civil War Reenactment group.

Check out the video, I think you will enjoy it: http://www.nyt.ulib.org/nyt320.mpg

Causes of the Civil War Podcast

The Teaching American History Podcast series has a two-part lecture that I would like to share with you.

The lecture is on the causes of the Civil War and is presented by James McPherson. You can read a description of the lecture HERE:

Here is the link to Part 1

and

Here is the link to Part 2:

Read Books on the Civil War Online

As many of you already know, Google has begun to scan and make books available online, including full versions of books. These books are copyright free and can be downloaded for your reading pleasure.

In addition to these books, there are also some books where the copyright has not expired, however you can read sample pages from the book. Not free to download, but nice to "try before you buy."

So, for example, a quick search for the word "Gettysburg" and you get a list of books of some really interesting looking texts such as:

• Gettysburg: Description of the Painting of the Repulse of Longstreet's Assault by John Badger Bachelder - 1870
  
• Gettysburg Made Plain: A Succinct Account of the Campaign and Battles, by Abner Doubleday - 1888
  
• The Attack and Defense of Little Round Top, Gettysburg, July 2, 1863 by Oliver Willcox Norton - 1913
  
• Did General Meade Desire to Retreat at the Battle of Gettysburg? by George Meade - 1883
• Hospital Scenes After the Battle of Gettysburg, July, 1863 by Patriot Daughters of Lancaster (Pa.) – 1864

There are also numerous autobiographies and biographies of Civil War Generals that are also available for download. Try searching for Civil War or Civil War general and see what you come up with.

Finally, Google Books also has a feature where you can find a library near you that has a copy of a particular book, and for you researchers out there, a "cite this item" link which gives you the proper citation for a book for publishing purposes is given in several different formats .(APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian.

Try it at http://books.google.com especially the “full view books.”

In addition to Google Books, you may also want to try searching the following websites for Civil War books:

http://www.archive.org and http://books.live.com

and

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

Happy Reading.

Two Quick Links

I came across the following two links and thought I would share:

The Historic New York Times website now has copies of the newspapers from 1860-1865 online for your viewing pleasure. They also have a short video on the newspapers for you to watch.

The next one is from the HarpWeek website and has over 400 political cartoons on the Lincoln presidency. Check out the Abraham Lincoln Cartoons and let me know what you think.

Soldiers in Stone: Saving the Monuments at Gettysburg

Hi,

Someone emailed me last night that there was a show on WQED in Pittsburgh about the monuments in the Gettysburg National Military Park.  Now, living in central Pennsylvania, I was not able to watch the show on TV.  But I was able to watch it on the Internet.  How cool is that?

So, for those of you who missed the premiere last night, there will be additional viewings on-line of "Soldiers in Stone: Saving the Monuments at Gettysburg" as follows:

Saturday, March 3  1:00 a.m.
Monday,  March 5 12:30 p.m.
Tuesday   March 20   7:30 p.m. and midnight
Wednesday, March 21 12:30 p.m.

Enjoy!

Civil War Medicine

The unfortunate Civil War soldier, whether he came from the North or South, not only was in the army when the killing power of weapons was being brought to a brand-new peak of efficiency; he enlisted in the closing years of an era when the science of medicine was woefully, incredibly imperfect. Efficient weapons and a very poor quality of medicine, for every wound and natural ailment, destined the soldier to increased suffering. . When he fought, he was likely to be hurt pretty badly; when he stayed in camp, he lived under conditions that were very likely to make him sick; and in either case he had almost no chance to get the kind of medical treatment which a generation or so later would be routine.

Both the Federal and Confederate governments did their best to provide proper medical care for their soldiers, but even the best was not very good. This was nobody's fault. There simply was no such thing as good medical care in that age -- at least as the modern era understands the expression.

The first enemy the soldiers faced was disease. Healthy recruits became victims of illnesses that were easily spread due to the large number of people in the camps, the often unsanitary conditions, and the poor diet of the soldiers. Childhood diseases such as measles could devastate regiments and many men succumbed to diarrhea and dysentery. Of the nearly 620,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, two-thirds died not of bullets and bayonets, but of disease.

There is a vast amount of information on the Internet about medicine and medical practices of the period. The U.S. Sanitary Commission website contains information on how they raised money and supplies to help care for the sick and wounded soldiers. There is an excellent series of lessons entitled, “Challenges of Health Care During the Civil War”, which provides students with statistical data on the different types of injuries and diseases. This data could then entered into a spreadsheet and used to produce results such as percentages and averages. Additionally, the U.S. Civil War Center at Louisiana State University has, among other topics, an extensive list of sites specific to Civil War ear medicine.

Finally, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine has some excellent information on Civil War era medicine.

UPDATED 3/1/07: More Good Links

Caring for the Men, the History of Civil War Medicine
http://www.civilwarhome.com/medicinehistory.htm

Civil War Medicine
http://www.library.vcu.edu/tml/bibs/cwmed.html

Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet: Medical and Medicine
http://www.cyndislist.com/medical.htm

eHistory.com – Medicine: More Civil War Medical Terms
http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/medicalterms.cfm

Galen Press: Civil War Medicine Challenges and Triumphs
http://www.galenpress.com/021.html

eHistory.com - Statistics on the Civil War and Medicine
http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics.cfm

Favorite Websites

I'm often asked about my favorite websites so I am providing the following list for your enjoyment.

PENNSYLVANIA IN THE CIVIL WAR ONLINE RESOURCES

Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/civilwar/page1.asp?secid=31

Camp Curtin Historical Society
http://www.campcurtin.org/

Gettysburg National Military Park
http://www.nps.gov/gett

Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania
http://www.libertynet.org/gspa/

Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society
http://www.rootsweb.com/~panepgs/

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
http://www.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/Historical_Museum/DAM/psa.htm

Pennsylvania State Archives
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/overview.htm

Vital Records
http://webserver.health.state.pa.us/health/cwp/view.asp?a=168&Q=229939

Pennsylvania Links to Civil War Rosters
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/3680/cw/cw-pa.html

Pennsylvania Civil War Soldiers
http://www.pacivilwar.com

ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES

American Battlefields: The Civil War
Contains information on Civil War parks and battlefields from the National Park Service.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/abpp/civil.htm

American Civil War Collections at the Electronic Text Center
This website at the University of Virginia, contains "primary source materials on the American Civil War, including letters, diaries, texts and newspapers."
http://etext.virginia.edu/civilwar/

Antietam on the Web
This site contains a broad overview of the conflict, battle maps, a number of well-written articles on various aspects of that fateful day, and a full listing of the participants. Also included are 278 official reports filed by military officers from both the Union and Confederate sides.
http://aotw.org/

Civil War Maps
From the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, this website "collection contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/cwmhtml/

Civil War Preservation Trust
http://www.civilwar.org

Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.
A searchable database, provided by the National Park Service, of all soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War.
http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/

Civil War Treasures from the New York Historical Society
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/nhihtml/cwnyhshome.html

Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet
From the Special Collections Library at Duke University.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/women/cwdocs.html

Digital History and the American Civil War
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/spring98.html

The Crisis of the Union
"Contains material related to 'the causes, conduct, and consequences of the US Civil War.' The collection is comprised of books, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, and other printed ephemera from 1830 to 1880."
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/abolitionism/

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (1894 - 1922)
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/ofre.html

Selected Civil War Photographs
From the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/

The United States Civil War Center
This Website at Louisiana State University seeks "to locate, index and make available all appropriate private and public data on the Internet regarding the Civil War."
http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/

The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880 - 1901) The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.- an essential source for the war and one that also provides social and political material. Consequently, it’s an often overlooked source by social historians. It was printed by the government from 1880 to 1901 and the original run contained 128 volumes. It has been put on line by Cornell
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html

American Civil War Home Page
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
http://databases.library.yale.edu:8331/V/?func=find-db-1-locate&mode=locate&restricted=all&F-IDN=YUL03274

Civil War Resources on the Internet: Abolitionism to Reconstruction (Rutgers)
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/history/civwar.shtml

Documenting the American South (DocSouth)
A source for links documenting the American South run out of the Wilson Library at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html

Images of Battle: Selected Civil War Letters from the Southern Historical Collection (UNC)
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/civilwar/

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
http://209.10.16.21/TEMPLATE/FrontEnd/index.cfm

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Archive of experiences of Northerners and Southerners in two neighboring communities
http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

Primary source materials for the classroom with a number of standard documents
http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/cw/