From the Editor

I’m teaching a class on the Civil War & Reconstruction this semester, which is a real treat for me because I’m not actually a history professor. That surprises a lot of people, but in fact, I’m a writing professor. I just happen to write about history.

The professor who used to teach the course retired twenty years ago, and the course has lain dormant since. I was honored when the chair of the History Department, Dr. Phil Payne, said he wanted to resurrect it and asked if I’d be interested in team teaching it with him.

The course is peppered with history majors and some of my writing students, but mostly it’s populated by students taking it as a general education course. For anyone worried that “young people aren’t interested in the Civil War anymore,” I have thirty young people who are in the class simply because it sounded interesting.

For our main text, Phil and I chose The America War by Gary Gallagher and Joan Waugh. Gary and Joan have taken their combined decades of teaching experience and masterfully distilled it into a readable intro-level overview that probably answers every question they’ve ever received from a student. We’re taking the book a chapter a week, interspersed with a lot of primary sources and, thanks to the ECW Mafia, a lot of guest speakers who are Zooming in.

As Phil and I talked about our approach to the class, a main objective was to get the students interested in the topic and help them find the things that are of interest to them. That’ll be different for every one of them. We want them to discover why the Civil War can matter to them and why it still matters today.

To that end, we’ve asked students to underline passages in each chapter that catch their attention as they read. Students then have to write a journal post about what jumped out and why.

Of the things that jumped out to me in the chapter was a line that stood out as being as relevant today as it was about Americans leading up to the Civil War. “Perceptions on each side reached a point by the late 1850s where many northerners or southerners showed little inclination to view the other section sympathetically or even realistically,” Gary and Joan wrote. “Each side expected the worst from the other.” Hmmm…sounds familiar.

Lincoln himself understood that divisive tension, which his election seemed to bring to a head. It’s no surprise, therefore, that he spoke to it in his First Inaugural Address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

What do we expect of each other? Don’t we owe it to ourselves our country, and each other to look toward those “better angels” in each other rather than rely on unsympathetic and unrealistic perceptions? Shouldn’t we hope for the best from each other rather than just expect the worst?

I hope Lincoln’s words never stop jumping out at me. I hope they never stop jumping out at you.

— Chris Mackowski, Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief, Emerging Civil War

In January, Emerging Civil War was proud to add Joseph D. Ricci to its ever-growing ranks of authors and contributors.

A native of New Orleans, LA, Joseph D. Ricci, is a Civil War historian, who focuses primarily on the war in the Western Theater. Joseph earned his Master of Arts in History from Southeastern Louisiana University. Joseph’s fascination with history stems from his early years of involvement with, and travel to, various museums and battlefields connected the American Civil War and the Second World War. From 2021 to 2024, he worked as a Historical Interpreter and Historian for The Battle of Franklin Trust.

For the last two years, he has written extensively for the Dispatch Magazine, produced the Dispatch Podcast, and appeared in several BOFT Films productions, in addition to leading tours of the three historic homes and the surrounding battlefields. Joseph is a frequent speaker to Civil War Round Tables and has been a guest on several podcasts. Joseph is the producer and host of Home Brew History Podcast, which is available on all podcast platforms. As a member of Emerging Civil War, he now regularly contributes blog entries and essays for publication.



Joseph’s interests include the Tennessee Campaign of 1864, the war in the Western Theater, battlefield preservation and reclamation, pre-war politics and the crisis of the 1850s, Reconstruction, post-war monumentation and memorialization, historical memory, and the legacy of the Civil War.

In his free time, Joseph enjoys spending time and traveling with his wife, Katharyn, and daughter, Hattie.

Bert Dunkerly has been Revolutionary! He helped organize the annual Arnold's Raid event in Richmond, VA, spoke about Benedict Arnold at the Wilton House Museum in Richmond, and will be speaking about the Yorktown Campaign to the Chesterfield County Historical Society. 

On January 9, Kevin C. Donovan spoke to a well-attended meeting of the Rotary Club of Salem, VA on the topic, “The Court Martial of Fitz John Porter: Fair or Fixed?” That opportunity was the result of a relationship developed with the Chair of the History Department of Roanoke College while publicizing our local Roanoke CWRT, an example of cross-marketing to reach a broader Civil War audience.  

Chris Mackowski has been working on a massive still-under-wraps editing project but has still had time for some odds and ends. He wrote essays on Stonewall Jackson and the irascible D. H. Hill for the newest publication from the Antietam Institute, The Commanders of Antietam. The American Civil War Roundtable of the U.K.’s magazine, Crossfire, published a 6,000-word piece from, “Stories from Spotsy,” that collects some odds and ends that Chris has collected since the fall publication of his book A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864. And earlier this month, he participated in a virtual book talk hosted by the Friends of Grant Cottage, which has a book club that is reading Grant at 200, which Chris co-edited with Frank Scaturro. Chris sat in on the club’s discussion of the chapter he wrote for the book, “Moments of Contingency and the Rise of Grant.”

An enthusiastic audience responded with questions and comments after Brian Swartz spoke at the Phillips-Strickland House in Bangor, Maine on January 21. He presented a Civil War love story titled, "Louisiana's Lost Love: The Saga of Cyrus Hamlin." The well-illustrated PowerPoint program details the romance between Capt. Cyrus Hamlin (a son of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin) and Sarah J. Sanborn, the young woman whom Cyrus wooed and married before shipping off to Louisiana.

Cecily Zander appeared on a program with the Lincoln Presidential Foundation this month. You can also pre-order a new book of essays about the Second Manassas Campaign that she contributed an essay to, which drops in April!

Dig into the trenches of Petersburg with the newest book of the Emerging Civil War Series, A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick, which is available now from Savas Beatie.

Sean Chick’s A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, provides fresh and renewed attention to one of the most important, fascinating, and yet oddly forgotten battles of the Civil War. Inside are original maps, new research, and dozens of images—many published here for the first time. A Grand Opening Squandered is the first in a series on the Petersburg Campaign, which will provide readers with a strong introduction to the war’s longest campaign.

To purchase your copy, click here!

Commanders of Antietam: The Union and Confederate Commanders at the Battle of Antietam edited by Kevin R. Pawlak and Bradley M. Gottfried is a comprehensive look at the biographies of both armies’ high command during the Maryland Campaign of September 1862. This treatment focuses on the lives of Union and Confederate commanders from the brigade level up to the army commanders, Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan.

Each commander’s biography is broken into three sections: Before the Maryland Campaign; During the Maryland Campaign; and after the Maryland Campaign. This is the most complete volume of commanders’ biographies in the Maryland Campaign.

This book has been written by a collaboration of Antietam Battlefield Guides, National Park Service Rangers and volunteers, and Civil War historians. Kevin Pawlak and Brad Gottfried are the editors of this volume. It is the third in a series of books focused on different aspects of the campaign, including Brigades of Antietam (edited by Bradley Gottfried) and Artillery of Antietam (by James A. Rosebrock), both published by the Antietam Institute.

The ECW members/contributors who contributed to this volume are:

• Sarah Kay Bierle
• Daniel T. Davis
• Jon-Erik M. Gilot
• Phillip S. Greenwalt
• Bradley M. Gottfried
• Christopher L. Kolakowski
• Chris Mackowski
• Kevin R. Pawlak
• Evan Portman
• Dan Welch
• Kristopher D. White

There’s still time to purchase Chris Heisey’s incredible 2025 Civil War Calendar. It’s a work of art and a labor of love by ECW’s own all-star photographer. “A spirit in my feet said ‘go,’ and so I went!” Chris says. The calendar features lush, full-color images from battlefields and is chock full of Civil War day-by-day facts. The cost of the calendar is $17.95 and all proceeds made from the purchase are donated to the American Battlefield Trust and Emerging Civil War. 

Available here from Tidemark Press

ECW Multimedia

On the Emerging Civil War Podcast in January, Chris Mackowski was joined by

• Emerging Civil War’s Tonya McQuade to discuss a visit to Missouri to promote her recent book, “A State Divided.”

View this episode now at Emerging Civil War.

• In honor of the 160th Anniversary year, historians Chris Kolakowski, Ryan Quint, and Angela Zombeck share their thoughts on the biggest events of 1865.

View this episode now at Emerging Civil War.

• The Tattooed Historian, John Heckman, discusses “The 1864 Project,” a podcast series he spearheaded for Civil War Monitor magazine looking at the many complicated events of 1864.

View this episode now at Emerging Civil War.

• Audiobook narrator Bob Neufeld, who has recorded a number of books for the Emerging Civil War Series and, most recently, Chris's book A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864.

View this episode now at Emerging Civil War.

You can find video versions of these podcasts and other exclusive interviews and content on our YouTube page, including a series of interviews with speakers from this year's ECW Symposium.

You can listen for free on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or at https://emergingcivilwar.com/the-emerging-civil-war-podcast/.

Emerging Revolutionary War News

By Phill Greenwalt

This January has seen its share of frigid days, especially here in the mid-Atlantic. The other day, my car read "zero degrees" when I got in to drive to Catoctin Mountain Park. The cold is a connection as it conjures up images of George Washington's army trudging to Princeton to fight on January 3, 1777, or later that same year, on December 19 marching into Valley Forge. Did you know that the war's coldest winter was probably the one after Valley Forge, at Morristown? A great exhibit at Morristown National Historical Park covers how much snow that winter unleashed on the Continental soldiers. Historian Eric Olsen of the National Park Service will be a guest appearing on a few blog posts in the coming months, so click on www.emergingrevolutionarywar.org to check out what history tidbits he uncovers. Thank you, Eric, for graciously sharing these articles. Readers, please visit the sites around Morristown, New Jersey.

If you want to read more about Princeton and Valley Forge, check out the Emerging Revolutionary War Series, which has volumes on both those historical happenings are part of the series. 

As you peruse these and the other volumes of the series, we invite you to tune into a virtual lecture by Emerging Revolutionary War historian Eric Sterner, who will discuss George Rogers Clark in a book talk with the U.S. Army Museum. The link to the virtual seminar is here: National Museum of the United States Army



Thank you for your continued readership of Emerging Revolutionary War and we look forward to 2025 and sharing the start of America's 250th with you.

Remember to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and the blog to keep current on the history of the Revolutionary War era!