Top Ten Posts of 2020: 1-5

Counting down the top ten posts of 2020!

#5: Editorial: West Virginia Must Confront Its Confederate Monuments

“In the autumn of 1910, a crowd of thousands gathered on the capitol grounds in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. The women and men, many of whom were Confederate veterans adorned once again in gray, had come from all over West Virginia to witness the dedication of a monument to Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy a year before, and sculpted by a former VMI cadet who knew Jackson, the monument was intended to acknowledge Jackson’s link to West Virginia. The Confederate general had been born in Clarksburg, (West) Virginia. As the Calhoun Chronicle opined approvingly of the statue, “The world knows that a masterful genius named Stonewall Jackson passed this way, and West Virginia can not prevent, if she would, the linking of her name with that of her greatest son.” Speeches were made, applause reverberated, and the handsome monument unveiled in beautiful weather.” Read more…

#4: The Transformation of Gettysburg as a Commemorative Space, 1863-2020

“Gettysburg is a field of monuments. Visitors to the battlefield today see hundreds of monuments marking the field, dedicated to units, individuals, and states. The creation of this commemorative landscape was a process over time, with the first monument placed in 1867 and the most recent in 2013.

There are a few distinct phases in commemoration at the Gettysburg battlefield. The majority of Union monuments were placed before 1900, with veterans heavily involved in the process and the dedications. Between 1895 and 1921 the War Department and the Gettysburg National Park Commission placed official markers for brigades, divisions, corps, headquarters, hospitals, etc. These were placed for both Union and Confederate units, and make up the majority of the Confederate markers on the battlefield. There are very few Confederate monuments placed before 1900. The majority of the Confederate monuments (those not placed by the War Department and GNPC) were erected after 1913, with sixteen placed from 1960 to 2000.

The first timelapse shows all of the Gettysburg monuments from 1863 to 2020, marked by five color categories noted below. There are also timelapses for specifically Union and Confederate monuments.” Read More….

#3: The Newest Evolution of the Civil War Video Game

“For players of traditional Civil War wargames, the hexagonal battle map where they can move carefully researched units to gain tactical objectives will be very familiar. Now, however, a new game allows you to be in the center of the action. A Civil War first person shooter, online multiplayer game is now on the gaming scene.” Read more…

#2: Why I’m glad to see Lee go, and why I hope you will be too

“A person would be hard pressed not to recognize how historic the last week and a half have been in the United States. This is a moment historians will look back on for many important reasons. Here in Virginia, news broke last Wednesday in the midst of massive Black Lives Matter protests that the Confederate statues on Monument Ave in Richmond would come down. While these announcements came from the mouths of the governor of Virginia and mayor of Richmond (Lee is owned by the state and the other monuments by the city), there is no mistaking that citizens’ collective action made this happen.” Read more…

#1: Private Uriah ‘Duck’ Alley: The Story of West Virginia’s Last Civil War Veteran

“In May 1944, four men stood together for a photograph in the small town of Cameron, West Virginia. On the far left stood Donald Solomon Redd, a veteran of World War II. On his right stood Charles Everett Anderson, a WWI veteran, and Robert Calvin Yoho, who had fought in the Spanish American War. And on the far right side of the remarkable photograph stood 95-year-old Uriah Talmage Alley, affectionately known to many as “Uncle Duck.” Uriah Alley was West Virginia’s last Civil War veteran. The photograph ran in the May 22, 1944 issue of Life magazine, and as the four generational photograph of American veterans suggests, Uriah Alley’s life proved quite a story.” Read more…