History Briefs – Page 7 – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

The Social Network of Civil War Dead

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012-2013, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the January 2013 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

In October 2012 Facebook announced with great fanfare that its social network had exceeded one billion people. That is certainly very impressive, but Civil War nurse Cornelia Hancock was head of a social network that included a functionality that Mark Zuckerberg probably never contemplated when he developed Facebook. Cornelia Hancock’s social network extended into the afterlife, and she described it in a letter to her family from a military hospital near Gettysburg.

Two Lost Causes

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012-2013, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the December 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

In 1995 the U.S. Post Office issued a series of stamps to commemorate the Civil War. Evidently there was some Southern input into the design of this stamp series, because a heading underneath the main heading reads, “The War between the States.” The people selected for depiction on the stamps include those who are expected, such as Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, and Sherman and Jackson. There is, however, one person whose inclusion has to be considered surprising, and that is someone named Stand Watie. When I first saw these stamps, I had no idea who Stand Watie was. Since this stamp series includes a mere 16 stamps that depict individuals from the Civil War, can Stand Watie be considered worthy of inclusion as one of the top 16 people of the Civil War?

A Musical Historical First

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012-2013, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the November 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

What do the following historical figures have in common: Ferdinand Magellan, Roger Bannister, Yuri Gagarin, and Louise Brown? The answer is that each one earned a place in history primarily by being the first person to do something: Magellan for leading the first circumnavigation of the Earth, Bannister for running the first sub-four-minute mile, Gagarin for being the first human to go into outer space, and Brown for being the first person born through in vitro fertilization. Not that these people did nothing else of consequence, but their place in history really came from being the first person to do something.

The Only Man to Beat Robert E. Lee in an Even Fight

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012-2013, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the October 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

There are some who consider Robert E. Lee the greatest military leader of the Civil War. But Ulysses S. Grant beat Robert E. Lee, which calls into question the claim that Lee was the greatest military leader of the Civil War. However, that wasn’t an even fight, and even if detractors of Lee and admirers of Grant refuse to admit that it wasn’t an even fight, it doesn’t change that fact. Nevertheless, there was someone who did beat Robert E. Lee in an even fight, and that person was Charles Mason.

Well-Known Obscure Places

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012-2013, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the September 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

There is a joke about the Civil War which asks the question, “Why were so many Civil War battles fought on National Parks?” Of course it is the other way around. It is National Parks that were established on the sites of Civil War battles. But that joke prompts the thought that we would have never heard of those places had there not been Civil War battles there. In his book Mr. Lincoln’s Army Bruce Catton has a superb passage which captures how the war came to a place that we would have never heard of had the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia not fought there so many years ago.