Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Small stories that don’t warrant larger posts all their own.

• The Civil War Trust has unveiled a pretty spectacular interactive module on the Battle of Shiloh. (h/t Kevin)
• The sesquicentennial brought a record number of visitors last year to the place where the shootin’ war started. Here’s hoping that trend continues across the country.
• SCV National Commander Michael Givens has a vision of ten thousand Flaggers protesting the VMFA. Given that the big 2012 Heritage Rally in Richmond a few weeks back attracted 300 to 400 participants, they have a ways yet to go.
• Along more practical lines, the local SCV camp in Augusta, Georgia put up a barrier to keep skateboarders off the monument on Broad Street. Seems like a good move.
• A symposium is set to discuss the Salisbury Confederate PoW camp site next Friday through Sunday in North Carolina. There will be presentations by historians and archaeologists, as well as memorial services on Sunday.
• In Pennsylvania, volunteers are more than halfway to their fundraising goal in an effort to restore 133 graves of Union veterans at the Chartiers Cemetery in Carnegie.
• Mark Vogl’s at it again, explaining how awesome the Confederate constitution was because it would have prevented the Wall Street bailout, and that the C.S. government was “concerned with fairness and providing opportunity to anyone willing to take it.” Or something.
• A while back, a city official in Charlottesville made a stupid suggestion about pulling down Confederate monuments. That, apparently, encouraged someone to tell that official’s child to “tell your mother that she’s a F’in whore and to get her F’in hands off our heritage.” Is this someone’s idea of defending Southron honor?
• Last month, I highlighted efforts to identify the remains of two men lost in the sinking of U.S.S. Monitor. Here, via C-SPAN, is a discussion of the project and those efforts.
• In somewhat related news, in Virginia there was a reenactment of the funeral of Midshipman William Christian Hutter, a snotty aboard C.S.S. Raleigh who was killed at the Battle of Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862.
• On May 18-27, the Masquerade Theatre group in Houston will perform the Tony-nominated musical The Civil War, drawn from letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts of the conflict. This will be a bit of a homecoming, as the show debuted in Houston in 1998 before it moved to Broadway.
• Google Earth users can click this link to download an 1864 map of Richmond, Virginia, from the OR Atlas. It doesn’t line up as neatly as I’d like, but I offer a money-back guarantee if not satisfied. Sorry, no refund without a receipt.
• And here’s one for Washington, D.C. in 1861. The alignment is a bit off toward the south, around Alexandria and Bailey’s Crossroads, but still fun to tinker with.
• Finally, I was happy to find the wartime picture (above) of Union tinclad No. 19, U.S.S. St. Clair, which was one of the first steamboats brought to Texas after the war. Her new civilian owners made a big deal of her features and amenities, but managed to avoid mentioning that she’d been a Yankee gunboat during the “late unpleasantness.”

Any more worthwhile stories out there? Put ’em in the comments.

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Image: Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 31991.