A Political Cartoonist’s Take on Christmas During the Civil War

As the Civil War raged on for four years, four holiday seasons came and went. Famed illustrator Thomas Nast created enduring depictions of Christmas for Harper’s Weekly, giving us a sense of what celebrating Christmas amid the Civil War was like. Keep in mind, Nast was a political cartoonist and somewhat of a propagandist tool, … Read more

Telling the Civil War Through Art

You can learn a lot from paintings depicting events that happened during the Civil War, both on and off the battlefield. Winslow Homer, Frederic Edwin Church, and Eastman Johnson, all famed for their own distinctive styles and motifs, are among the American artists who captured various glimpses into the four-year struggle. Rather than following the … Read more

History Rewind: The Petersburg Campaign, with Wilson Greene

In September 2019, the Blue & Gray Education Society will host an intriguing new tour focused on the Petersburg Campaign, A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg.The host is none other than Wilson Greene, a world traveler and well-known Civil War historian. Greene has written some two-dozen articles on the topic, plus six books, … Read more