While researching for my introduction to an edited edition of David P. Conyngham’s Soldiers of the Cross, I found evidence that “Major Conyngham” briefly considered a career in the regular U.S. Army following the Civil War. Transcribed and annotated below, the letter was sent to the adjutant general of the army, Lorenzo Thomas, along with endorsements from Union generals Joseph… Read more →
David Powers Conyngham (1825-1883) was an Irish Catholic immigrant, journalist, writer, and Civil War soldier who served in both the Irish Brigade and in Sherman’s army during the Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea. Shortly after the war ended, he wrote important works about the brigade and Sherman’s campaigns before turning his attention to religious and Irish history. He… Read more →
At the Nau Center for Civil War History, I spend most of my time working on our three digital projects: a study of African American soldiers from Albemarle County, Virginia, called Black Virginians in Blue; a geographical and statistical analysis of Civil War prisons; and an effort to create the first definitive list of University of Virginia students who served… Read more →
In the spring of 1865, as prospects for Union victory became brighter with each passing week, Major General William Starke Rosecrans found himself and his once promising military career in utter ruin. Despite winning a number of battles between the fall of 1861 and the summer of 1863, “Old Rosy” had been spectacularly defeated at Chickamauga on September 20, 1863,… Read more →
Informally known as “the Irishman’s Bible,” The Boston Pilot was the leading Catholic journal in the United States during the 19th century. Although not the official organ of the Diocese of Boston during much of this period, the paper was read widely across Catholic and Irish communities throughout the U.S. Eventually it reached a circulation of over 100,000 in the… Read more →
In December of last year, Founders Online finally added the Thomas Jefferson Memorandum Books (hereafter TJMB) to its collection of over 175,000 primary sources related to the founding era of the United States. While some digitized versions of the original handwritten books are available through the Library of Congress or the Massachusetts Historical Society, the two-volume annotated and edited edition… Read more →
2017 promises to be a busy but exciting year for us at the Nau Center for Civil War History. Historians William C. Davis, Catherine Clinton, Douglas Egerton, Edward Ayers, Caroline Janney, and others will be joining us to give lectures, appear at the Virginia Festival of the Book, or present at our upcoming signature conference on the American Civil War… Read more →
At a recent Nau Center event, J. Matthew Gallman asked a room of UVA graduate students who they thought was the most important 19th century American without a recent biography. As one might expect, the names that came forward were a combination of political, abolitionist, and other liberal figures popular with modern academic scholars. If I had been bold enough… Read more →
I am pleased to announce that a year after work began the new Patrick Henry Digital Library is now linked to Patrick Henry Red Hill’s website and can be viewed directly at http://www.patrickhenrylibrary.org/. Generously funded by a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and made possible by a collaboration between Documents Compass, Red Hill, and Infoset, this project seeks… Read more →
The fall 2016 semester has been a very busy one for all us at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Our website was recently updated to accommodate a new blog that we hope to update regularly each month with contributions from UVA graduate students, Nau Center board members, and affiliated faculty. Our first blog post, written… Read more →