Historical News and Views from the Empire State
The latest episode of the Capital District Civil War Round Table Podcast features SUNY Albany professor David Hochfelder discussing his book The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920.
The telegraph was a revolutionary technology that had far-reaching effects on American life. Hochfelder talked about Samuel Morse, the use of the telegraph in the Civil War, the rise of Western Union, and the mode of communitcaion’s decline. [Read more…] about David Hochfelder on the Telegraph in America
The next North Country Civil War Round Table is set for Sunday, February 17th, 2 pm at the St. Lawrence County Historical Association. Dr. Thomas Baker, Zacharey Blackmer, and Emma Woolley and will look at the life of John Raymond, a civilian during the Civil War.
John Raymond of Potsdam was not a soldier: he sold lumber and farmed, and was a little too old for enlisting when the Civil War broke out. However, his position as a prosperous merchant allowed and required him to travel, making his surviving correspondence an illuminating source of a civilian’s view of the events unfurling around the country. [Read more…] about Civilian View of War: Civil War Round Table in Canton
Eben Muir Rice may not be familiar to anyone except descendants of Luther Rice and Ebenezer Muir, but he was familiar with Martinsburg, New York. He lived there in 1860, when James Buchanan was in his final days as President and Southern states were threatening to leave the Union.
Eben was twenty years old, working hard at a new job, writing to his “darling girl” Mary Ann, visiting his relatives, attending church. And he was keeping a diary of his ambitions, passions, tribulations-soul-searching accounts of things he thought no one would ever see. But the value of Eben’s diary extends beyond his own life, for he wrote of the people of Lewis County. [Read more…] about Lewis County: What Happened to Eben Rice in Martinsburg
The next North Country Civil War Round Table will feature Jan Wojcik, and has been set for Sunday, January 27th, at 2 pm at the St. Lawrence County Historical Association.
Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, and American abolitionists, biologists, and Northern politicians immediately found it to provide the first scientific rationale for what had previously been a moral and religious argument: that all human beings had the same ancestry, and that differences in appearance resulted only from different environments. Within a short time, Southern editorials and reviews condemned Darwin for denying their fundamental belief that black slaves were an inferior species to whites. [Read more…] about Charles Darwin and the Civil War Talk Set for Canton
A new book by independent researcher and author Marjory Allen Perez, Freedom, A Shared Sacrifice! tells the stories of Western New York’s African American Civil War soldiers and their families.
Freedom, A Shared Sacrifice! focuses on soldiers from Western New York who joined black regiments between 1863 and 1865. Beginning with the men who traveled from New York in the spring of 1863 to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts, subjects of the movie Glory, the author documents the history of black regiments raised in the North, as well the soldiers who took part in the epic battle to save the Union and end slavery. [Read more…] about New Book Highlights African American Civil War Service
The latest episode of the Capital District Civil War Round Table Podcast features Appomattox National Historical Park historian Patrick Schroeder. Patrick talked about the 5th New York, the Appomattox campaign, and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. [Read more…] about Latest Capital District Civil War Round Table Podcast
The latest episode of the Capital District Civil War Round Table Podcast features Harold Holzer discussing his book Monument Man: The Life & Art of Daniel Chester French.
French was “one of America’s most prolific sculptors of public monuments,” who created The Minute Man in Concord, Harvard University’s John Harvard, and the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial. [Read more…] about Albany’s Sheridan Statue Sculptor Daniel Chester French
Was the early United States a “Christian nation?” Did most of its citizenry accept God and the Bible as the moral authority that bound them together as one nation?
Scholars have taken a binary stance on these questions. Some argue that early America was a thoroughly religious place and that even those who didn’t attend church were on the same basic page as those who did. While others argue early America boasted an increasingly secularized society.
The next North Country Civil War Round Table, presented by Carol Opdyke and Stan Maine has been set for Sunday, November 18th, at 2 pm, at the St. Lawrence County Historical Association, 3 E. Main Street, Canton, and will focus on John Mills and the letters he wrote to his family during the Civil War.
John R. Mills was born in Canada in 1826 and moved to Gouverneur as a young man, where he married and became a blacksmith. During the Civil War, he served in the 60th NYSV Infantry, based out of Ogdensburg, as a corporal and then a second lieutenant, and despite being wounded and falling ill, he returned home to his family in 1865. [Read more…] about Civil War Letters Subject of Canton Round Table
Two new episodes of the Capital District Civil War Round Table Podcast are now available.
In the October episode, Gerrit Smith biographer Norman K. Dann discussed his book Practical Dreamer: Gerrit Smith and the Crusade for Social Reform. Recorded from Smith’s Land Office in Peterboro, New York, Dann talked about Smith’s activism, philanthropy, involvement in politics, and his relationship with John Brown. [Read more…] about Civil War Podcasts Feature Gerrit Smith, Wartime Romance