Confederate Veteran Magazine Online [Reference Shelf]

I was watching an episode of History Detectives on PBS the other night, and one of the episodes concerned some photographs taken during the Civil War. In the course of the investigation, the researcher consulted a volume of Confederate Veteran, which was a new resource for me.

Published 1893 to 1932, the magazine served as a roundup of news from Confederate Veterans organizations around the country. Sections of the magazine recounted stories from the war, and also offered information on the deaths of veterans as they occurred.

I decided to check online to see what was available, and found the following resources online. Here they are, as an addition to your online reference shelf!

* Confederate Veteran, full view, on Google Books. Only three years are available at this time, (1916, 1920, and 1922), although there is an 1895 edition under the full name of "The Confederate Veteran Magazine".

* Transcriptions of the 1909 editions of Confederate Veteran Magazine, hosted at GenNet. Each issue is presented in a separate PDF file.

* State and regiment index, presented by the St. Louis Public Library. Offers volume and issue references for articles re: different regiments.

* Library of Virginia Confederate Veteran index. Full names-index to all years of the publication.

Flickr Civil War Pools [Tidbits]

For today's tidbit, I present some Flickr groups of interest to those with ancestors who fought in the Civil War. I covered how to subscribe to the RSS feeds for Flickr groups in a previous post. If you haven't yet given Flickr an eyeball with your ancestry in mind, give it a shot. Some groups serve as virtual visits to battlefields and towns. Some document cemeteries, headstones and monuments. Some include uploaded photographs of individuals. All are bound to interest the genealogist-turned-Civil War buff.

• Veterans of the American Civil War: "This group is dedicated to photos and other images of authentic veterans of the American Civil War; 1861-1865. Photos may have been taken before, during, and after the Civil War, in or out of uniform."
  
  
• Graves of Veterans of the American Civil War: "This group is dedicated to photos of the tombstones, headstones, and graves of authentic veterans of the American Civil War; 1861-1865."
  
  
• American Civil War Battlefields: "We hope that this group will be a place where you can showcase your best photos of Civil War battlefields throughout the United States."
  
  
• Photographs of the Civil War: "Many photos were taken and are now archived. Many are still in the pocession of family members and collectors. Please share your images with this group, be they yours or from other sources. Include those sources if possible. If you have any history of the photographs you post please include that as well."
  
  
• War Between the States: "This group is dedicated to those who died or sacrificed in other ways for the cause they believed in regardless of the side they fought for. This group is for the memory of those souls."
  
  
• Civil War Sites and Memorials: "pictures of the sites and memorials today"
  
  Confederate Specific
  
  
• Confederate History Sites: "Photos of sites, monuments, etc. connected to the history of the Confederate States of America."
  
  
• Confederate Monuments: "Confederate monuments, like the type that are found on most courthouse squares across the South, are the focus of the group."
  
  Union Specific
  
  
• Southern Unionists: "Like their Confederate brethren, they fought to defend their homes, neighborhoods, and families, and stood up bravely for principles they held to be true and right. This group is to document the lives and careers of these Southern Unionists."
  
  Site Specific
  
  
• Gettysburg: "This group is for people who love the historic town that hosted one of the most famous battles of the U.S. Civil War. Battlefield, surrounding area and town photos welcome."
  
  
• Journey Through Hallowed Ground: Gettysburg to Charlottesville: "This stretch of land, less than 200 miles long, has witnessed a disproportionate amount of US history: the greatest concentration of Civil War battlefields in the country, the homes of four US Presidents (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Eisenhower), African American sites, scenic rivers and countryside, etc. Virtually the entire length of the corridor is threatened, by explosive growth in the towns at the two ends of the corridor, exurban sprawl from Washington, DC, etc."
  

How Did That Civil War Soldier Really Die?

Part of the ongoing Old School theme, taking it back to the paperbound resource! Here's a tidbit of interest from Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union, by Bell Irvin Wiley... something to contemplate when considering how your Civil War-fighting ancestor actually died:

"It is a sad fact of Civil War history that more men died of looseness of the bowels than fell on the field of combat. The best available figures show 57,265 deaths from diarrhea and dysentary as against 44,238 killed in battle." (Page 124)

Old School: The Life of Confederate Soldiers

Although I spend a majority of time doing my research online, I am also a bibliophile at heart (BA and MA in English Literature!) so I have decided to include within the auspices of this blog occasional items of interest from genealogy or history books that I am reading.

This time around, I want to share with you The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy by Bell Irvin Wiley. This book would be incredibly interesting to anyone who has family that served for the Confederacy during the Civil War, as it discusses the details of what day-to-day life was like for the men who served. Clothing, food, transport, discipline, disease, ammunitions... all the details that have been glossed over in other works as somehow mundane are the focus of Wiley's study. His extensive use of letters, diaries, newspapers and narratives as source material make for some very compelling chapters on the real life of the Johnny Rebs. (Wiley also wrote a companion book to this item, Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union, which covers the same topics from the viewpoint of the Union; I'll be writing more about that one once I finish reading Johnny Reb!)

At any rate, I thought I would share this interesting paragraph from the book, which details the general age-ranges of individuals who served for the South; such information could be helpful when figuring out what (if any) role a particular ancestor served during the war:

"[T]he ratio of men above 45 [years of age] and of boys below 18 was probably higher in 1861 and early 1862 than at any other time. The tidal wave of enthusiasm that swept hundreds of old and young into the ranks at the war's beginning lost its force with the passing of time, and many of extreme ages, beset with debility and with camp-weariness, returned to their homes after a year of service. The conscription law of February 1864 comprehended 17-year-olds and men from 46-50, but these were to be employed only as reserve force. The great majority of additions to the army after 1862 came from the 18-45 group, through upward extension of the conscription age and revocation of exemptions, substitutions, and details. There is apparently little foundation for the charge made by Grant late in the war that the Confederacy was robbing the cradle and the grave to sustain its forces. The overwhelming bulk of the Southern Army from beginning to end appears to have been made up of persons ranging in age from 18 to 35."