In today’s Muster, associate editor Robert D. Bland speaks with Lindsey R. Peterson about her March 2025 JCWE article “‘Home-Builders': Free Labor Households and Settler Colonialism in Western Union Civil War Commemorations.” This article, which won the 2023 Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award, examines the regional effort to connect the legacy of ...
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Editor's Note: This post is part of the Detailed: A Semi-Occasional series within Muster. Read the introductory post here.  The passage and enforcement of the Reconstruction amendments is one of the most remarkable expansions of political rights in world history. Political scientists studying the expansion and contraction of political rights ...
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We are happy to announce that Jonathan Jones has been awarded the Anne Bailey Prize for 2021 for his dissertation, "Opium Slavery: Veterans and Addiction in the American Civil War Era.” The selection committee was chaired by Jane E. Schultz, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, and included Kathryn Shively, Virginia Commonwealth University, ...
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When the U. S. government lived up to Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural promise to “care for him who shall have borne the battle,” it chose Milwaukee as one of the sites for the three original branches of the National Asylum (later Home) for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS). The first men ...
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When teaching the history of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), students often ask how we can find historical records from these historically marginalized people? Since many of the soldiers were working poor and formerly enslaved, they did not have (for various reasons) the time, resources, or (in some cases) ...
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We are pleased to announce the addition of a new correspondent to our Muster team, Holly Pinheiro, Jr. Holly is an Assistant Professor at Augusta University in the Department of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy. His research focuses on the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in the military from 1850 through the 1930s ...
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If every person who declined to vote in the 2016 Presidential Election wore a “Did Not Vote” sticker, the total would number more than 100 million people, or four out of every ten Americans.[1] As we approach another election in 2020, a moment should be taken to remember the 15th ...
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On the Journal of the Civil War Era national Day of Action. I am planning to join my former colleagues and community members in Elizabeth City, NC. Together, we are shedding light on the silenced diverse Civil War experiences, specifically freedpeople, USCT veterans and Grand Army of the Republic comrades ...
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“When John got out his books that night, Meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband.”[1] Judy Giesberg recently reminded Muster readers how much the Civil War shrouds Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, in print and on screen. The ...
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Studying the experiences of Civil War veterans and their families helps students understand the complex forces that shaped late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America. Their life stories help instructors explain soldiers’ motivations for service, discuss battles and campaigns, describe conscription and dissent, unravel the process of emancipation, and examine the political and ...
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