Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans

A Slower, Less Traveled Road to Reunion More than three quarters of a century ago historian Paul Buck traced The Road to Reunion (1938) that Americans traveled after the Civil War. Buck’s Pulitzer Prize winning book rested on the premise that sectional reconciliation was a national...

No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics

Assorted abolitionists Foot soldiers of the antislavery movement Frederick Blue\u27s No Taint of Compromise traces the lives of eleven antebellum opponents of slavery. In concise, crisp, and compelling biographical sketches, Blue underscores the diversity within the antislave...

Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915

Jubilee Commemorating the abolition of slavery Mitch Kachun has written an important book on African American traditions of historical commemoration, a topic that has escaped the attention of historians for too long:. Perhaps in our present age, when pundits complain that public...

Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War

Desperate Measures The Southern Plans of Emancipation Sparked by a proposal by Major General Patrick Cleburne in late 1863, Confederates spent the final year and half of the Civil War debating and eventually implementing plans to offer slaves freedom in return for military servi...

Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921

Shannon Bontrager has written an intricate, impressive book about mourning, memory, and national identity. Some facets of his story are familiar, but he extends the sweep of his analysis in fresh and provocative directions, enlarging it, as the title suggests, to the edges of the American empire. At the core of the book is the evolution of the commemoration of the fallen citizen soldier from the advent of mass casualties during the American Civil War through the carnage of World War One. Keen to honor dead soldiers who had been deprived of the comforts of death within the bosom of their families, the Civil War generation expended impressive energy and resources to consecrate their graves through a system of national cemeteries..

The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest

Simple man, complex symbol Authors contend Forrest represents the unreconstructed South Nathan Bedford Forrest poses a major challenge to any student of his life. Although his exploits include ample controversy and numerous life-and-death confrontations (on the battlefield and el...

Arctic sea-ice decline archived by multicentury annual-resolution record from crustose coralline algal proxy

Northern Hemisphere sea ice has been declining sharply over the past decades and 2012 exhibited the lowest Arctic summer sea-ice cover in historic times. Whereas ongoing changes are closely monitored through satellite observations, we have only limited data of past Arctic sea-ice cover derived from short historical records, indirect terrestrial proxies, and low-resolution marine sediment cores. A multicentury time series from extremely long-lived annual increment-forming crustose coralline algal buildups now provides the first high-resolution in situ marine proxy for sea-ice cover. Growth and Mg/Ca ratios of these Arctic-wide occurring calcified algae are sensitive to changes in both temperature and solar radiation. Growth sharply declines with increasing sea-ice blockage of light from the benthic algal habitat. The 646-y multisite record from the Canadian Arctic indicates that during the Little Ice Age, sea ice was extensive but highly variable on subdecadal time scales and coincided with an expansion of ice-dependent Thule/Labrador Inuit sea mammal hunters in the region. The past 150 y instead have been characterized by sea ice exhibiting multidecadal variability with a long-term decline distinctly steeper than at any time since the 14th century