The Last Hurrah, Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864 by Kyle S. Sinisi (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015 / paperback 2020) More than 20 years ago, the old Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites hired me to execute a National Park Service grant to conduct a preservation plan for Sterling Price’s … Read more
Sometimes it takes a village. That was the case seven years ago when Fort Clinch, located on a peninsula near the northernmost point of Amelia Island in Florida, got a full-scale operating 10-pounder Parrott Rifle artillery piece. Built in 1847, the fort was part of the “Third System Fortifications” that gained prominence after the War … Read more
As we’ve all come to realize, because of the worldwide pandemic, the summer of 2020 will be remembered for the events and activities that didn’t happen. Included on this list is the BGES tour, “Grant Moves South, A Star Ascends in the West,” which has been rescheduled for July 2022. It was to be Tim … Read more
We don’t know what’s going to happen this year with our tours. We are counting on science and the medical community to get us back in the driver’s seat. We haven’t canceled the 2020 season completely, and we tentatively expect to start again in September. But if it doesn’t work out that way, we have … Read more
Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, running north-south between the Blue Ridge to the east, the Alleghenies to the west, hosted a four-year onslaught of clashes as Union and Confederate soldiers struggled to gain control over the strategic region. Indeed, it was a major transportation route with access to Richmond in the south and Washington, D.C., in the … Read more
Unless you traffic in oxymorons, concise and historian are two words that aren’t often seen in the same sentence, much less paired together. That’s what makes BGES member Michael Beard such a rare breed. In a career that has spanned more than 40 years, he has served as a teacher, researcher, site interpreter, preservationist, and … Read more
The arrival of Coronavirus in the midst of a great 2020 program flared up as we were doing the final registration forms for 2020 and had just agreed with historians and received approval for our 2021 program. With the rolling cancellations on 2020 and leaving the possibility of doing some of the schedule later in … Read more
Few things give Mike Sheriff as much joy as pulling on one of his authentic hand-sewn period military uniforms. The beauty of the carefully stitched details. The feel of the heavy woven fabric draped over his shoulders. The shine of leather straps, and the distinguished look of his hat. “Any day you wear wool is … Read more
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Perhaps Ulysses S. Grant had this thought in mind in the summer of 1864. That’s when the Army’s Commanding General appointed the diminutive—and, as of yet, unproven—Philip Sheridan to lead the Union’s forces in the Shenandoah … Read more
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War by Elizabeth R. Varon (Oxford University Press, 2019) Dr. Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia—certainly a prestigious posting that would suggest cutting-edge scholarship is the norm. So it was with some high expectations that I … Read more
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