Kate Shields’ story
Kate Shields was the widow of veteran Anderson Shields. In 1910, she testified that she was 68 years old and was born and lived in Claiborne County, Mississippi all her life. “I was born Kate Street,” she said, and both more »
Category Archives: Civilians
Book Review: Defining Moments by Clark
Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 explores the efforts and insistence of African Americans to place emancipation and the end of slavery at the center of Civil War commemorative activities over the course of more »
Sarah Wadley
Sarah Wadley was a young woman in Monroe, Louisiana. Her father was an official with the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad, and her position in Monroe society, and its distance from the battlefields, insulated her from the war for a more »
Book Review: Tainted Breeze
Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862 by Richard B. McCaslin remains one of the most thorough treatments of this violent effort to bring in and subdue draft dodgers and perceived Unionists in an area of Texas that more »
Lone Freedom Fighter
It wasn’t until I was reviewing a document featured in my “Chaos of Emancipation” post at the National Archives blog, “Rediscovering Black History” that I rediscovered the story of a lone freedom fighter in northeast Louisiana early in 1863. In more »