Muster

The Society of Civil War Historians’ Graduate Student Connection Committee, together with Muster, the blog of The Journal of the Civil War Era, is calling for submissions from graduate students. Muster’s goal is to foster connections between The Journal of the Civil War Era and its readers, building relationships and ...
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Benjamin Franklin Randolph was part of a generation that changed the nation’s political history. Born free and raised in Ohio, he attended Oberlin College and after graduating he served as a principal of a Black public school in Buffalo New York. Like many Black northerners of his generation, he saw ...
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In his inaugural speech on March 4, 1881, newly elected President James Garfield emphasized the importance of ongoing Reconstruction, asserting that the “elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution ...
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Hundreds of miles from the cacophony of hissing Minié balls, rumbling artillery fire, and thumping drums that defined the acoustic environment of battlefields in established theaters of war, Major General John Adams Dix commanded the U.S. Army’s Department of the East from its headquarters located at forty-four Bleecker Street in ...
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With this issue of the journal, we complete six years as coeditors and feel inspired by the work of so many of our professional colleagues who keep scholarly journals functioning and humbled by Bill Blair's much longer tenure in this role. Our term has been shaped by COVID-19's disruptions of ...
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Historians have long marked President Abraham Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation as the harbinger of immediate, uncompensated emancipation in both the Confederacy and the Border States. However, as my new book, Counting the Cost of Freedom (UNC Press, 2025) argues, that outcome was far from certain in 1863. In ...
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In today's Muster, J Matt Ward, Assistant Professor of History at Quincy University, chats with JCWE Book Review Editor Megan Bever about his book, Garden of Ruins (LSU Press, 2024) ...
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Both sides agreed on the facts. Both sides, the Whigs and the Democrats,  agreed that on August 6, 1838, Jeremiah Kyle went to the window of a polling booth in Galena, Illinois. Both sides agreed that when Kyle arrived at the window of the polling booth, he submitted his vote ...
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“What if the South Won the Civil War?” Answers to this question reflect shifts in collective memory as authors use artistic license to reframe the real-world past.[1] Mackinlay Kantor’s answer in 1960 signaled the impending shift in the Lost Cause ideology within an emerging cultural landscape that was being reshaped ...
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In today's Muster, we are excited to introduce four new contributors to our site. We are excited to welcome Cassy Werking, Will Horne, Elliott Martin, and Kris Plunkett to our team. They will contribute regular posts reflecting their respective interests and scholarly expertise in the Civil War era. Short bios ...
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The Journal of the Civil War Era is pleased to announce that Dr. J. Jacob Calhoun has been selected as the recipient of the Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award for 2025. His winning essay is titled, “‘Nothing was known of the dead’: Coroners and the Massacres of 1866.” The prize committee, ...
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In today's Muster, JCWE Associate Editor Robert Bland has a conversation with Caleb Gayle, Associate Professor of Journalism and Africana Studies at Northeastern University. Gayle is the author of Black Moses: A Sage of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State (Penguin, 2025).  Gayle is an award-winning journalist whose ...
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Guy Emerson Mount has won the $1,000 George and Ann Richards Prize for the best article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era in 2024. The article, “Shall I Go? Black Colonization in the Pacific, 1840-1914” appeared in the December 2024 special issue, Black Internationalism in the Era of Emancipation, guest edited by ...
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This issue exemplifies the wide sweep of the Civil War Era as scholars understand it, and the success of the journal’s now fifteen-year-long effort to promote broadminded interrogation of the many forces that shaped the middle of the nineteenth century and reveal their impacts. The issue opens with Yael A ...
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Muster is looking for contributors! We are looking for scholars from a wide range of perspectives to add new voices to our roster. Please read the announcement below and reach out to rbland4@utk.edu if you have any questions. The deadline for applications is October 1, 2025 ...
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In today's Muster, JCWE Book Review Editor Megan Bever has a conversation with Shae Smith Cox, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University about her book, The Fabric of Civil War Society: Uniforms, Badges, and Flags, 1859-1939 (LSU Press, 2024) ...
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