American Civil War

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We Intend to Move on Your Works - The Lost Cause in Games on the American Civil War: A Project

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We Intend to Move on Your Works - The Lost Cause in Games on the American Civil War: A Project

I am a scion of the Great Commonwealth of Virginia, the Old Dominion, and the son of an avowed Civil War buff so you can probably imagine that my childhood featured a lot of information about the American Civil War. In School I didn’t learn any history after 1865 until I was fourteen. The period between Jamestown and the end of the Civil War was the high point of Virginian hegemony and the school system was perfectly happy to dwell within that temporal space for as long as possible. During my childhood I was frequently taken to battlefields to play - I’ve been to Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Gettysburg, and many smaller sites more times than I can count. I even have a favourite obscure American Civil War site (it’s the Confederate Breastworks in West Augusta County, Virginia - although more for its scenic views and lovely hiking trail than its historical importance). Few historical events loomed as large in my life as the American Civil War and this has given me a complicated relationship with it.

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First Impressions: Shenandoah: Jackson's Valley Campaign by Tom Dalgliesh and Gary Selkirk

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First Impressions: Shenandoah: Jackson's Valley Campaign by Tom Dalgliesh and Gary Selkirk

I love block games. Someday I will maybe be able to fully articulate why the simple fog of war and tactile satisfaction of blocks make my brain so happy, but today isn’t that day. Let’s just start from a position that I love them. However, I do not love them all equally and there are even some block games that I don’t like very much. I have previously written about card driven Columbia block games, most of which I really enjoyed and continue to enjoy, but I had never played a game from Columbia that used any other activation system. I must confess that I didn’t even know how such a thing might work. When I set out to make a study of American Civil War games I knew I had to include a block game and I also wanted to play something on Jackson’s Valley Campaign, so Shenandoah seemed like a perfect fit for the project. It also served as an ideal palette cleanser for myself and Pierre after our lengthy game of Manassas - we loved that game, but playing something that could be finished in a couple of hours had a great attraction after that marathon of a game. I didn’t expect a whole lot from Shenandoah, I was just looking for something light and easy to play, but I was really impressed with the experience it offered. I think people have been sleeping on this one, this is a great little block game!

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Review - Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

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Review - Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

The historiography of the American Civil War is challenging, to put it lightly. A major event like a civil war, especially one on this scale, is almost always a recipe for a complex and controversial historical memory as the violent reckoning echoes through subsequent generations. The history of the American Civil War is even more fraught than most and perhaps the single greatest rebuttal to the notion “History is Written by the Victors”. For a century after the war’s conclusion in 1865 the history of the war was primarily written by the losers - ex-Confederates and their sympathisers crafted a narrative known as The Lost Cause that largely shaped the public understanding of the conflict. Flying in the face of basic fact this narrative discarded vast amounts of evidence in favour of a story that made the Confederacy sympathetic, a nation suffering for its freedoms against an oppressive industrialist neighbour. The Lost Cause had counternarratives that pushed back against it but it really took until the mid-20th century for its status to start cracking. Even still, though, it is still hanging on with surprising tenacity. Attending school in central Virginia in the early 2000s I was taught Lost Cause myths as history, although thankfully a better teacher later undid that work.

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Searching for Black Confederates by Kevin M. Levin

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Searching for Black Confederates by Kevin M. Levin

I had heard good things about Kevin Levin’s Searching for Black Confederates from people whose knowledge of the American Civil War and its legacy I hold in high regard, so I was very excited this past December to finally read it. I grew up in central Virginia and the memory of the Civil War was never particularly far away. I remember being taught Lost Cause myths about the Civil War’s origins in school (and then later, thankfully, being un-taught them by a better teacher). I even remember coming across the Black Confederates myth a few times on the Internet in my 20s. That said, while I have strong cultural association with the American Civil War and have picked up a lot of details about it through my childhood and early adulthood, I am not very well read in terms of books on the subject. I read Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant a few years ago and probably read one or two entry level histories in school years ago, but I would not consider myself an expert. In particular, one area I’m hoping to learn more about is the Lost Cause myth and its structure. I know the broad outline, but I’d like to fill in the details and that’s where books like Searching for Black Confederates come in.

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First Impressions: Gettysburg by Mark Herman

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First Impressions: Gettysburg by Mark Herman

I’m not sure how many times I’ve visited Gettysburg. Enough to have the entrance to the town’s Holiday Inn burned into my memory, as well as the layout of several family friendly restaurants. I can close my eyes and picture Little Round Top as if it was in my back yard. Growing up every summer my family would drive for 15 hours from central Virginia to upstate New York to spend a couple of weeks by a lake in the Adirondacks. When I was young, we didn’t drive those 15 hours in one go, instead we would stop over at Gettysburg for a night and then usually spend a second night somewhere far less remarkable near the New York border. My father is a huge American Civil War buff and I think he really enjoyed sharing that with us at Gettysburg – we mostly enjoyed climbing on cannons and on the rocks by Devil’s Den. Still, of all the many, many battlefields he took us to (most of them in Virginia) I always enjoyed Gettysburg the most. Maybe it was because we were on vacation, but I always preferred it over Chancellorsville.