It is my pleasure to welcome Zack Biro, a Masters student at Lehigh University, as a writer for this blog. As we close in on our 300th post, it will be interesting to see who will write it, but I look forward to Zack’s postings and hope you will welcome his contributions as well.
I would like to welcome friend and fellow reenactor Den Bolda to the writing staff of this blog. Den brings a lot of great knowledge to the table in the realm of reenacting and material culture related to the war. Look for postings from Den in the near future and give him a hearty welcome.
In light of my recent visit to Ellen Hopkins Elementary School to present on the war, I wanted to take the opportunity to reach out to educators that are likely getting to the Civil War in their history curriculum to ask questions about the war that they would like more information on. Any topic goes.
Teachers, if you are interested in using this site to enhance your Civil War curriculum, please use the comment section of this post to ask your question, or a question from your students. I, or one of my esteemed colleagues, will do our best to answer the question in a separate post. If you are interested in having students do brief writing assignments on the war as guest posts, please let us know and we can make that happen (I will edit the commenting on such posts to ensure safety). We look forward to your questions.
Wow, what a last couple days this site has had. I managed to publish four posts yesterday and the buzz caused us to break the record for the busiest day on this site, which was set on April 12, the 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter. Yesterday, this site recorded 379 hits, which was awesome, even considering that my attempt to live blog was disrupted by stormy weather. To my surprise and delight, we have so far tied yesterday’s mark of 379 and there is still a bit of time to break the mark. I want to extend a deep thank you to all of you who support this site and visit both the site and follow it on Twitter and Facebook. I will do my best to keep you coming back with new content.
Don’t worry folks, I am not closing this site down, and I do want to apologize for the lack of content and posting these last few weeks. Needless to say, this semester has been busier than I imagined, which has left me less time than in the past to post. However, with the sesquicentennial of the war underway (Lincoln’s inauguration on November 6), I believe the posts will pick up.
I will say that teaching has been quite interesting and a learning experience for me. We are just getting to Reconstruction and I have to say that covering the Civil War was my favorite part, as while we had to gloss over it for time, I was able to, I hope, come alive for my students.
I want to take a few moments to consider other bloggers’ decisions to shift focus or close down their blogs (possibly). Bill Caraher, a professor in my department, maintains a blog dealing with archaeology in the Mediterranean world, which focuses around his work in Cyprus. Recently, he posted that he was considering shutting down his blog and posed the interesting question of how long a blog can go before it serves its purpose. Needless to say, this raised a couple of questions for me and the blogs I run. However, I feel obliged to you all, the faithful readers, to keep this site going.
Another blogger, well-known Civil War scholar Brooks Simpson is leaving the friendly confines of Civil Warriors to focus on other projects, including a blog of his own down the road. While I understand his motivations, I will say that I will miss reading his insights there, but know that the rest of the team will continue to produce quality postings.
With that said, I want to let you all know that I am not planning to shutter this site anytime soon, but am giving some thought to starting a new project, which I will keep you appraised of. I hope to start posting more often when home for Christmas, as I have some reading to catch up on.
Civil War History 