Tour Talk: “Custer’s Trail” with Neil Mangum

The life of a career National Park Service professional, seasonal or full-time, is a transient one, nomadic in nature. The novelist Nevada Barr, herself a former Park Service ranger, has made an alternative career of fictionally documenting the rootless odysseys of rangers, historians, and superintendents. Neil Mangum is one such Park Service denizen, who has … Read more

Tour Talk: Three Decades on the Overland Campaign, with Gordon Rhea

The Overland Campaign, waged May through June 1864, encompassed an impressive swath of Virginia real estate. The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and then the siege of Petersburg, all defined the battleground contested by two military titans, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Historian Gordon Rhea has spent 26 years, since 1994, … Read more

As True as Steel: The Story of Elusive George Thomas

Historians might describe Gen. George Thomas as something of a cipher. He is the man in the plain blue uniform who comes to a party and yet no one remembers his arrival or departure. Thomas was in the thick of numerous battles: Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Stones River and Mill Springs, Peachtree … Read more

Historian Talk: Scott Hartwig and the Allure of Gettysburg

Scott Hartwig is a popular historian for BGES, and while he has spent his career at Gettysburg working for the National Park Service, his interest and scholarship is at Antietam. He has been working on the definitive campaign study in two volumes for the 1862 Maryland Campaign. Volume One was published by Johns Hopkins Press … Read more

Shattering the Revisionist Myths of Shiloh, with Hank Koopman

Hank Koopman wants to correct decades of inaccuracies and revisionism in the various accounts of the two-day battle at Shiloh in April 1862. He has spent 20 years pursuing in-depth research, and he doesn’t mince words. Perhaps his great-great-grandfather’s suffering as a prisoner—he was captured with General Prentiss in the Hornets’ Nest at Shiloh—explains his … Read more

A Forgotten Sketchbook Rediscovered

The art of bringing news of the battle, words and pictures intertwined, began with the very first war correspondents and special artists during the mid-19th century. Acclaimed war illustrators such as Alfred Waud and painter Winslow Homer captured the public’s ravenous attention for news of the war, as did the early photojournalists Timothy O’Sullivan and Andrew … Read more