Civil War Treasures: Three Correspondents On The New York City Draft Riots Of 1863

The infamous New York City draft riots of July 13-16, 1863, remain the worst urban riots in American history. Fomented mostly by working-class Irish immigrants and laborers of Irish descent, the insurgents were incensed over the prospect of being drafted to fight at the behest of upper-class Anglo-...

The Ten Most Basic Things I Can Tell You about Processing Literary Papers

These little gems of knowledge that I gained over a couple of years spent exclusively processing literary archives got me through some pretty rough roads. While the basic archival principles I learned in school still applied, I nonetheless perceived some unique qualities in authors\u27 papers that required the adoption of special methods. So, in the spirit of state archival camaraderie, I\u27d like to share the ten most useful things I learned about processing literary papers for the benefit of those who haven\u27t had to deal with them yet

Civil War Treasures: Louis Kossuth and the Unwinnable Dilemma of Slavery

Hans Rasmussen uses archival material from LSU Library\u27s special collections to examine how and why nineteenth-century-Americans celebrated Louis Kossuth, an anti-Russian-imperialism activist, and how their behavior resembles pro-Volodymyr Zelensky sentiment today

Civil War Treasures: Hire a Vet: Ex-Confederates Look for Work in the New South

Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan can turn to entities from the Federal Government to Hire Heroes USA to Spike TV for help in finding jobs in a tough economy, but the problem of unemployment among veterans and the need for assistance is hardly new. The Bonus Army of unemployed veterans from World Wa...

Civil War Treasures: The Efficacy Of Confederate Relics In The Poetry And Short Fiction Of One Southern Family

In an interview with a Baton Rouge radio station in 1968, John Hazard Wildman, an author and English professor at Louisiana State University, explained his inspiration for The Sword, a short story that soon would appear in LSU\u27s esteemed literary journal, The Southern Review. He recalled h...

The Spoils of the Turf

Feature Essayist Hans Rasmussen uses three manuscript collections housed at LSU to examine the link between slavery and high-stakes horse racing in the nineteenth century

Civil War Treasures: David F. Boyd: Eyewitness To Reconstruction

Faced with the challenge of reviving the struggling, impoverished, and lately shuttered Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy after the Civil War, David French Boyd, a former Confederate colonel and now the school\u27s superintendent, had good reason to appreciate the volatile politic...

Civil War Treasures: Encrypted Criticism In The 18th New York Infantry

Discussion of codes and ciphers in the Civil War naturally focuses on those used by armies and governments, but the LSU Libraries Special Collections holds a personal letter in which a sergeant of the 18th New York Infantry Regiment employed a cipher to criticize the lieutenants in his company for t...

Civil War Treasures: A Homeopathist Surveys the Defenses outside Washington

Washington, D.C., was the most heavily fortified city in North America at the close of the Civil War, but the nation’s capital possessed only the flimsiest of defenses at its start. Major John Gross Barnard, chief engineer of the Military District of Washington, began erecting fortifications on the Arlington hills as early as May 1861, but much remained undone when McClellan assumed command of the Department of the Potomac on August 17 and became responsible for the capital’s defense. In the meantime, a homeopathic physician from Pittsburgh visiting the city with his young nephew created an interesting record of Washington’s emerging defenses during that first frightening summer of the war

Civil War Treasures: The Civil War And Reconstruction In A Shakespearean Idiom

The works and words of William Shakespeare were a common cultural presence in both Great Britain and the United States throughout the nineteenth century, providing a means for both nations to comprehend a variety of national issues. His influence crossed all social classes through theater performan...