S Folinsky

Having grown up in California, it always seemed that the semester break for the first half of US History got up the 1849 Gold Rush and the Compromise of 1850. The second semester started with the assassination of Lincoln and reconstruction! Funny thing is that the name of Southern California real estate developer by the name of "Rosecrans" is all over the place. And while in the US Army, I spent time at the former Fort Ord. Also served at Fort Lee which is outside of Petersburg VA and visited the battlefield there.

If you have not read them already, I recommend reading "The Killer Angels" and "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" beforehand. You might be able to read them on that "forever flight" to the US.

Is it a fair assumption that you have seen Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War." However, it is twelve hours long.

I remember visiting Camden, Maine ten years back -- in the town square was the monument to the soldiers of Maine in "The Great Rebellion." I think I felt the ghosts of Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th of Maine out and about.

By the way, this is advice -- about a reading list.

Enjoy your trip.

livonia

I would LOVE to have more time to look at more history and more battlefields....there is just so much. Every day I add to the itinerary, and my husband makes wry comments about "mission creep" . There is a U-boat (U-505) in the Museum of Science & Industry in Chigago, I'd really like to see too, but we can't fit it in. This is my first trip to a country with lots of interesting history....I know I will probably get flak for this but ours is so boring in comparison!

I have indeed read Killer Angels, seen the Ken Burns documentary and read lots more besides. I have not read Grant's memoirs yet though its definitely on my list.

I have this apprehension that the ghosts at Gettysburg may have been drowned out by the rush for the tourist dollar, where busloads of people are decanted into gift shops and hustled out to have their photos taken in front of a monument or two before being pushed on to the next thing.

I had a look at the town on Google maps the other day and got a bit of a shock. I have only ever seen the 19thC military maps of the area and it looks like they have let urban sprawl grow up across where the battle was on the first day, so you won't be able to walk uninterrupted from where Buford's cavalry and the Iron Brigade was on that first day, to the fields of battle on the second and third days. I really would like to walk the battlefield geographically to follow the way the battle itself unfolded over time. Hopefully, there will be peaceful places to just sit and look and think and reflect.

livonia

They have eviscerated the history curriculum in school in this country. It used to be there was not much Australian history taught in schools, it was pro-colonial British in perspective. So there was an uproar about this in the mid 1970s, (rightly) but they over-reacted and introduced a curriculum that was very focussed on indigenous injustice issues but now has very little world history in it. They removed it all. My kids are 14 and in their third year of high school and over all of that time they have done only Australian history in school. For the first time this year they have something different and started doing WW1. But it was all about Gallipoli and the ANZACS (and trivial things at that) there was no international perspective at all (we did that at home!).

The NSW school history curriculum doesn't address anything to do with the history of ideas, history of religion or history of political thought. Both my girls love English history, particularly the Elizabethan era, and they when they asked when they were going to get to this in school, the answer was 'never'! When I asked at their history teacher recently about what history they would be doing next year, she said WWII and I said something like, "great so they will be studying Hitler and the rise of Naziism, do you do anything on Stalinism and communism and the differences in political systems and ideologies". Her answer was no, there is no international perspective on WW2, it is all focussed on domestic politics and the Prime Ministership of John Curtin. It doesn't even look as if they cover the rise of militarism in Japan or Pearl Harbour. Probably Year 10 kids leaving school in this country think the ANZACS beat the Japanese back entirely on their own!

It's not even called 'history' or 'geography' any more, these were replaced by an abominable acronym called "HSIE" which stands for something like "Human Society and its Environment" but really means just a massive dumbing down and total loss of international perspective.

Sorry this has turned into a bit of an off topic diatribe. and thanks so much for the advice on my initial questions.

S Folinsky

I know very well this is OT.

Perhaps one of the Mods will see fit to cut this out of this thread and move it to the "Trailer Park" under "History 101" or such.

Do read Grant. Unfortunately, much of American history about "The War Between The States" was revised in the early 20th Century by writers sympathetic to the Confederacy, so Grant is now perceived as a bloodthirsty, incompetent drunk. Read his memoirs and one goes "huh?" If nothing else, Grant showed tremendous clarity of exposition when he put pen to paper.

I often joke with friends that I can figure out where they grew up in the United States by saying just three words. When asked "what are they?" the answer is "William Tecumseh Sherman."

BTW, I visited the home Jeff Davis retired to in Biloxi Mississippi in 2003. There was an extensive museum dedicated to the man -- not one mention of the "peculiar institution."

BTW, I really liked the historical irony of Barry O taking the oath of office on the bible that belonged to Roger Taney.

ian-mstm

Ah... that would be "The War of Northern Aggression".

Ian

S Folinsky

An interesting link. We have the 1958 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia -- the article in that set for "War Between The States."

S Folinsky

Forgot to mention -- the house was destroyed by Katrina.

CitySimon

One book which I have is a combination of periodicals from the Frank Leslie Newspaper. The Civil War is called the "War of 1861" as they expected it to be over before the end of the year.

chartreuse

One book that's definitely worth a read is Lee The Soldier, which combines historical analysis with writings by his contemporaries. Also, although it's fiction, Gingrich's Gettysburg trilogy gives an excellent flavour of the people and the times.

S Folinsky

I'm slowly working through a "Pocket Lincoln" collection.

Inspired by this thread, popped in a DVD from my "The Civil War" set. My wife had never seen it in HD [the remastering is fantastic]. The particular disk included the Battle of Mobile Bay with purported "Damn The Torpedos!" phrase. But the painting with the "Ken Burns Effect" showed Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island and my wife goes "We've been there."

Note: we visited in 2003 before Katrina.

When I lived in San Francisco, I had visited Fort Point. Straus designed a trestle in the SF end of the Golden Gate Bridge to save that Fort. I noted that it was noted that it was the same plan as Fort Sumter. Many years later, when I visited Fort Sumter, it was obvious that the tremendous fort did not take kindly to artillery bompbardment.