As we write this editors' note in summer 2021, we are hopeful that many in-person activities will soon resume, including the conferences, seminars, workshops, and writing groups that are so important to our collective work. Our issue features three research essays about men's lives that touch on politics, ideology, and ...
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We are happy to announce that Jonathan Jones has been awarded the Anne Bailey Prize for 2021 for his dissertation, "Opium Slavery: Veterans and Addiction in the American Civil War Era.” The selection committee was chaired by Jane E. Schultz, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, and included Kathryn Shively, Virginia Commonwealth University, ...
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Themes of movement and mobility unite the essays in this issue. We begin with Amy Murrell Taylor’s 2019 Watson Brown Award acceptance speech for her book Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps. The speech encapsulates a central contention of Taylor’s book—that movement was critical to the ...
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“When John got out his books that night, Meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband.”[1] Judy Giesberg recently reminded Muster readers how much the Civil War shrouds Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, in print and on screen. The ...
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A groundbreaking ceremony for the National Native American Veterans Memorial was held on September 21, 2019—the fifteen-year anniversary of the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The memorial will be located on the grounds of the NMAI on the National Mall. The ceremony included the presentation ...
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Our special issue in March 2019 on Civil War veterans includes an article by Caroline Janney, titled “Free to Go Where We Liked: The Army of Northern Virginia After Appomattox.” Janney is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Burying the Dead but Not ...
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Studying the experiences of Civil War veterans and their families helps students understand the complex forces that shaped late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America. Their life stories help instructors explain soldiers’ motivations for service, discuss battles and campaigns, describe conscription and dissent, unravel the process of emancipation, and examine the political and ...
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This is our final field dispatch from correspondent James Marten. We have greatly enjoyed his contributions to Muster and it has been such a pleasure having him on our team. We will be announcing his replacement in 2019, so stay tuned! For decades before and after the Civil War, thousands ...
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Today we share the first in our series of panel reports on the recent Southern Historical Association annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. There were a number of timely Civil War era panels that we are excited to share with readers. Follow along the rest of this week! As Diane ...
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When the motion picture film The Birth of a Nation was released in 1915, most veterans of the American Civil War were in their seventies and eighties. Membership in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the largest fraternal organization of Union veterans in the country—had declined by that time to ...
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Today James Marten, professor of history at Marquette University, shares his first Field Dispatch. The author or editor of fifteen books, Marten was the 2010 winner of MU’s Lawrence G. Haggerty Award for Excellence in Research. Among his recent publications are America’s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (Georgia, 2014) and Sing ...
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Today we share an interview with Dale Kretz, who published an article in our September 2017 issue, titled “Pensions and Protest: Former Slaves and the Reconstructed American State.” The article is available for journal subscribers and also on Project Muse. Dale is an assistant professor of history at Texas Tech ...
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Ambiguity shaped the lives of Civil War veterans. Publicly honored and respected, many never managed to fit back into their old lives, or to build new ones. This is a familiar story to modern Americans, of course. Although the stereotypical troubled veteran in popular culture has tended to be a victim ...
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In recent history, the state of veteran healthcare has received negative media coverage. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs suffered immense scrutiny for the deaths of at least forty United States veterans who died awaiting assistance. The deaths of these veterans prompted investigations and the eventual dismissal of Secretary ...
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