Tag: Mexico

Latin America in the Civil War Era: A working bibliography and research memo

This evolving list is the first of many steps of an intellectual process to comprehend the scope of relevant literature in this field. It is a very broad initial attempt to identify important books, essays, articles, memoirs, archival collections and other primary and secondary sources.

 

The U.S. Civil War sent economic, political and social shockwaves around the world.

One of my objectives is to understand how those shockwaves were felt throughout Latin America, specifically throughout the republican and imperial governments, the intelligentsia, the diplomatic circles, the street-level multiracial societies, and the military commands. I am especially interested and focused on Mexico’s civil war between supporters of the republican government of Benito Juarez and the supporters of Maximilian, the French puppet emperor. The civil strife began when France invaded in the early 1860s. I am particularly interested in exploring how these two civil wars churned like two hurricanes, feeding off each other, destroying everything within reach, and setting the stage for new eras of democratic government.

I will also explore how both wars resonated in the Texas-Mexico borderlands communities and how people in that region thrived economically, endured privation and tragedy, and reimagined their relationship to their respective republican states. I also hope to better understand through literature and letters how men and women throughout Latin America – and particularly in Mexico — intellectually and politically perceived their own futures as they watched the U.S. republic break apart over slavery and the French invaders attempt to build a European monarchy from the ruins of Mexican democracy.

This evolving list of sources is the first of many steps of an intellectual process to comprehend the scope of relevant literature in this field. It is a very broad attempt to identify important books, essays, articles, memoirs, archival collections and other primary and secondary sources. Studies of communities throughout the Western Hemisphere and Europe are included to inform the larger transnational and transatlantic context I will prepare.

The second step will be an annotated bibliography. That will then lead to a comprehensive review essay analyzing the evolution of the literature, the conversations, and the debates. The essay will also identify potential avenues of future research and the challenges of traveling down those avenues.

I certainly welcome corrections, comments and suggestions as this process continues. You may reach me at this address: remembrance_@hotmail.com.

MEXICO

Aldis, Owen F. “Louis Napoleon and the Southern Confederacy,” North American Review 129 (October 1879): 342-362.

Auer, Jeffrey J. “Lincoln’s Minister to Mexico,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 57 (1950).

Bacha-Garza, Roseann, Christopher L. Miller and Russell K. Skowronek. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846-1876. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019.

Baguley, David. Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Barker, Nancy N. “France, Austria, and the Mexican Venture, 1861-1864,” French Historical Studies (Autumn 1963): 224-245.

—. “Monarchy in Mexico: Harebrained Scheme or Well-Considered Prospect?” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 1 (March 1976): 51-68.

—. “The Factor of ‘Race’ in the French Experience in Mexico, 1821-1861,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 1 (February 1979): 64-80.

Bernstein, Harry. Matias Romero, 1837-1898. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1973.

Beverton, Alys. “Transborder Capitalism and National Reconciliation: The American Press Reimagines U.S.-Mexico Relations after the Civil War,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2022): 40-61.

Bissell, Jonathan. “The Conflicting National Narratives of the 1846-1848 North American Invasion of Mexico,” Historical Geography 45 (2017): 220-251.

Bock, Carl H. Prelude to Tragedy: The Negotiation and Breakdown of the Tripartite Convention of London, October 31, 1861. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.

Brettle, Adrian Robert. “The Fortunes of War: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions During the American Civil War.” PhD diss. University of Virginia, 2014.

Callahan, James Morton. Evolution of Seward’s Mexican Policy. West Virginia University Studies in American History ser. 1, Diplomatic History, nos. 4, 5, and 6. Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University, 1909.

Dabbs, Jack Autrey. The French Army in Mexico, 1861-1867: A Study in Military Government. The Hague: Mouton, 1963.

Downs, Gregory P. “The Mexicanization of American Politics: The United States’ Transnational Path from Civil War to Stabilization.” American Historical Review 117 (April 2012): 408.

Delaney, Robert W. “Matamoros, Port for Texas during the Civil War,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 4 (April 1955): 473-487.

Flint, Henry M. Mexico Under Maximilian. HardPress Publishing, 2013.

Frazier, Robert W. “Matias Romero and the French Intervention in Mexico.” PhD diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 1941.

—. “Latin American Projects to Aid Mexico during the French Intervention,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 28 (August 1948): 377-388.

Goldwert, Marvin. “Matias Romero and Congressional Opposition to Seward’s Policy toward the French Intervention in Mexico,” The Americas 22, no. 1 (July 1965): 22-40.

Gonzalez-Quiroga, Miguel Angel. “Conflict and Cooperation in the Making of Texas-Mexico Border Society, 1840-1880” in Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, 33-58, edited by Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.

Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. New York: Knopf, 2012.

Hanna, A.J. “The Role of Matthew Fontaine Maury in the Mexican Empire,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 55 (April 1947): 105-125.

Hanna, Kathryn Abbey. “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” The Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 3-21.

—. Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971.

—. “Incidents of the Confederate Blockade,” The Journal of Southern History 11: 222.

Hardy, William E. “South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention.” Civil War History 54, no. 1 (March 2008): 63-86.

Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008.

Horgan, James J. “A Confederate Bull in a Mexican China Shop” in Divided We Fall: Essays on Confederate Nation Building, edited by John M. Belohlavek. Saint Leo, Fla: Saint Leo College Press, 1991.

Hudson, Linda S. Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, 1807-1878. Austin: Texas State Historical Society, 2001.

Ibsen, Kristine. Maximilian, Mexico, and the Invention of Empire. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010.

Irby, James. Backdoor at Bagdad: The Civil War on the Rio Grande. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1977.

Jonas, Raymond. Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024.

Kiser, William S. “We Must Have Chihuahua and Sonora: Civil War Diplomacy in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands,” The Journal of Civil War History 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 196-222.

McAllen, M.M. Maximilian and Carlotta, Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2014.

McCormack, Richard. “James Watson Webb and the French Withdrawal from Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 31 (May 1951): 274-286.

Mahoney, Harry Thayer., and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Mexico and the Confederacy: 1860-1867. San Francisco, California: Austin & Winfield, 1998.

Malloy, George Wallace. “The United States and the French Intervention in Mexico, 1861-1867.” PhD diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1937

Martin, Percy F. Maximilian in Mexico: The Story of the French Intervention (1861-1867). New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1914.

“The Mexico Question,” Harper’s Weekly, September 12, 1863, 578.

Mijangos y Gonzalez, Pablo. “Guerra Civil y Estado-Nacion en Norteamerica (1848-1867),” in El poder y la sangre: Guerra, Estado y nacion en la decada de 1860, edited by Guillermo Palacios and Erika Pani. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 2014: 43-62.

Miller, Robert Ryal. “Californians against the Emperor,” California Historical Society Quarterly 37 (1958): 192-214.

—. “The American Legion of Honor in Mexico,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961): 229-241.

—. “Gaspar Sanchez Ochoa: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States,” The Historian 23 (1961): 316-329.

—. “Placido Vega: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States,” The Americas 19 (1962): 137-148.

—. “Lew Wallace and the French Intervention in Mexico,” Indiana Magazine of History 59 (1963): 31-50.

—. “Matias Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States during the Juarez-Maximilian Era,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 45 (May 1965): 228-245.

—. “Arms across the Border: United States Aid to Juarez during the French Intervention in Mexico,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s, 63, no. 6 (1973): 1-68.

Monaghan, Jay. Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs: A Diplomat in Carpet Slippers. Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 1997.

Mora-Torres, Juan. The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society and Nuevo Leon, 1848-1910. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Pani, Erika. “Dreaming of a Mexican Empire: The Political Projects of the Imperialistas,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 1 (2002): 1-31.

—. “Law, Allegiance, and Sovereignty in Civil War Mexico, 1857-1867,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 570-596.

—. Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848–1867. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2025.

Resendez, Andres. “North American Peonage,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 597 619.

Ridley, Jasper. Maximilian and Juarez. London: Constable, 2001.

Rippy, J. Fred. The United States and Mexico. New York, 1926.

—. “Mexican Projects of the Confederates,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 22: 219-317.

Rister, Carl Coke. “Carlota: A Confederate Colony in Mexico,” The Journal of Southern History 11 (February 1945): 33-50.

Roeder, Ralph. Juarez and His Mexico: A Biographical History. New York: Viking, 1947.

Rolle, Andrew F. The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.

Romero, Matias. A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. and trans. Thomas D. Schoonover. London: Associated University Presses, 1991.

Salm-Salm, Felix C. My Diary in Mexico in 1867 Including the Last Days of the Emperor Maximilian. London, 1868.

Schoonover, Thomas. “Mexican Affairs and the Impeachment of President Johnson,” East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications 46 (1974): 76-93.

—. Dollars Over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican-United States Relations, 1861-1867. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.

—., ed., Mexican Lobby: Matias Romero in Washington 1861-1867. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986.

—., “Napoleon Is Coming! Maximilian Is Coming? The International History of the Civil War in the Caribbean Basi,” in The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim, edited by Robert E. May. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995. 101-130.

Smith, Gene. Maximilian and Carlota: A Tale of Romance and Tragedy. Morrow, 1973.

St. John, Rachel. “The Unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth Century North America,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 6 no. 1 (March 2016): 56-84.

Thompson, Jerry Don. Mexican Texans in the Union Army. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986.

—. “Mutiny and Desertion on the Rio Grande: The Strange Saga of Captain Adrian J. Vidal,” Military History XII, no. 3.

—. “A Stand Along the Border: Santos Benavides and the Battle of Laredo,” Civil War Illustrated (August 1980).

—, ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier: 1859-1877. El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1994.

—. Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007.

Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Tyler, Ronnie C. Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973.

Tyrner-Tyrnauer, A.R. Lincoln and the Emperors. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.

Wahlstrom, Todd W. The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Waite, Kevin. “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4 (December 2016): 554-557.

Wasserman, Mark. Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Wilson, William Moss. “Lincoln’s Mexican Visitor.” Disunion: The New York Times. January 17, 2011. Accessed on January 25, 2023. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/lincolns-mexican-visitor.

CANADA

Bachand, Marise. “Disunited Daughters of the Confederates: Creoles and Canadians at the Intersection of Nations, States, and Empires.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 541-569.

Buckner, Phillip. “‘British North America and a Continent in Dissolution:’ ” The American Civil War in the Making of the Canadian Confederation,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 512-540.

Dashew, Doris W. “The Story of an Illusion: The Plan to Trade the Alabama Claims for Canada,” Civil War History 15 (December 1969): 332-348.

Jenkins, Danny R. “British North Americans Who Fought in the American Civil War: 1861-1865.” MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 1993.

Morton, W.L. “British North America and a Continent in Dissolution, 1861-71.” History 47 (January 1962): 139-156.

Reid, Richard M. African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War. Vancouver: University of British Colombia Press, 2014.

Winks, Robin. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1960.

CHILE

Burr, Robert N. By Reason or Force: Chile and the Balancing of Power in South America, 1830-1905. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

PERU

Blanchard, Peter. Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1992.

Eichhorn, Niels. “The Many South Carolinas in the Americas,” Muster: The Journal of the Civil War Era. May 2, 2023. Accessed on May 23, 2023. https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/05/the-many-south-carolinas-in-the-americas.

“Emancipation Declared in Peru,” Anti-Slavery Reporter, July 2, 1855, 157.

Love, Thomas F. The Independent Republic of Arequipa: Making Regional Culture in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017.

GENERAL SOUTH AMERICA

Ferris, Nathan L. “The Relations of the United States with South America during the Civil War,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 21 (February 1941): 51-78.

Fitz, Caitlin A. “The Hemispheric Dimensions of Early U.S. Nationalism: The War of 1812, Its Aftermath, and Spanish American Independence,” The Journal of American History 102 (September 2015): 356–379.

—. Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of Revolutions. New York: Norton, 2016.

Gobat, Michel. “The Invention of Latin America: The Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” American Historical Review 118 (December 2013): 1345-1375.

Joseph, Gilbert M., Catherine C. Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds. Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

Kelly, Patrick J. “The Cat’s-Paw: Confederate Ambitions in Latin America” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

—. “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 223-248.

May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

—. Slavery, Race and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglass and the Future of Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

—. “The Irony of Confederate Diplomacy; Visions of Empire, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Quest for Nationhood,” The Journal of Southern History 81 (February 2017): 69-106.

Rothera, Evan C. Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States Mexico and Argentina, 1860-1880. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022.

Sanders, James E. The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth Century Latin America. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014.

Scott, Rebecca, et. al. The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988.

Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

CUBA

Chaffin, Tom. Fatal Glory: Narciso López and the First Clandestine U.S. War Against Cuba. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.

Corwin, Arthur. Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.

Levander, Caroline. “Confederate Cuba,” American Literature 78 (December 2006): 821-845

Scott, Rebecca. Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

—. Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

GENERAL SPANISH CARIBBEAN

González-Quintero, Nicolás. “Empire, Slavery, and Exile in the 19th Century Spanish Caribbean.” PhD diss. University of Texas at Austin, 2020.

May, Robert E. The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

Rugemer, Edward Bartlett. The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1870. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

—. “From Aggression to Crisis: The Spanish Empire in the 1860s” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

HAITI

Clavin, Matthew. “A Second Haitian Revolution: John Brown, Toussaint Louverture and the Making of the American Civil War,” Civil War History 54 no. 2 (June 2008): 117-145.

HONDURAS

Coryell, Janet L. “’The Lincoln Colony:’ Aaron Columbus Burr’s Proposed Colonization of British Honduras,” Civil War History 43, no. 1 (March 1997): 5-16.

NICARAGUA

Gobat, Michel. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.

BRITISH EMPIRE

Barnes, James J., and Patience P. Barnes. The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats. Kent, OH: Kent University Press, 2005.

Blackett, R.J.M. Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Blume, Kenneth J. “Coal and Diplomacy in the British Caribbean during the Civil War,” Civil War History 41 no. 2 (June 1995): 116-141.

Campbell, Duncan Andrew. English Public Opinion and the American Civil War. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society, 2003.

Dubrulle, Hugh. “A Military Legacy of the Civil War: The British Inheritance,” Civil War History 49, no. 2 (June 2003): 153-180.

—. Ambivalent Nation: How Britain Imagined the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.

Elkins, Caroline. Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. New York: Knopf, 2022.

Foner, Philip. British Labor and the American Civil War. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981.

Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010.

Hughes, Michael F. “’The Personal Observations of a Man of Intelligence:’ Sir James Fergusson’s Visit to North America, 1861,” Civil War History 45, no. 3 (September 1999): 238-247.

Jenkins, Brian. Britain and the War for the Union. 2 vols. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974-1960.

Jones, Howard. Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Kinser, Brent E. The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

Logan, Frenise. “India – Britain’s Substitute for American Cotton, 1861-1865,” Journal of Southern History 24 (November 1958): 472-480.

Meyers, Philip. Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British-American Relations. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008.

Mulligan, William. “Mobs and Diplomats: The Alabama Affair and British Diplomacy, 1865-1872” in The Diplomats’ World: A Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815-1914, eds. Markus Mosslang and Torsten Riotte (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 105-132.

Myers, Phillip E. Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British American Relations. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008.

O’Connor, Peter. American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.

Tal, Nimrod., “Putting Out the ‘Embers of This Resentment:’ Anglo-American Relations and the Rewriting of the British Response to the American Civil War, 1914-1925,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 1 (March 2018): 87-110.

FRANCE

Belanger, Damien-Claude. Franco-Americans in the Civil War Era (1861-1865). Montreal: n.p., 2001.

Case, Lynn M., and Warren F. Spencer. The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.

Curtis, Eugene M. “American Opinion of the French Nineteenth Century Revolutions,” American Historical Review 29 (January 1924): 25-60.

Gavronsky, Serge. French Liberals and the American Civil War. New York: The Humanities Press, 1968.

Gray, Walter D. Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Edouard Laboulaye, 1811-1883. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.

Katz, Philip M. From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

GERMANY

McGrane, Reginald C. “The American Position on the Revolution of 1848 in Germany,” Historical Outlook 11 (1920): 333-339.

SPAIN

Bowen, Wayne S. Spain and the American Civil War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011.

ITALY

Adams, Charles Francis. “Lincoln’s Offer to Garibaldi,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 41 (1907-1908): 315-393.

Dal Lago, Enrico. “Lincoln, Cavour, and National Unification: American Republicanism and Italian Liberal Nationalism in Comparative Perspective,” The Journal of Civil War Era 3, no. 1 (March 2013): 85-113.

—. Civil War and Agrarian Unrest: The Confederate South and Southern Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Doyle, Don H. Nations Divided: America, Italy and the Southern Question. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002.

Gay, H. Nelson. “Lincoln’s Offer of a Command to Garibaldi: Light on a Disputed Point of History,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 75, no. 1 (November 1907): 63-74.

Gemme, Paola. Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

CIVIL WAR ERA DIPLOMACY / FOREIGN POLICY

Baker, George., ed. The Works of William H. Seward in The Diplomatic History of the War for the Union. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884.

Bonner, Robert E. “Slavery, Confederate Diplomacy, and the Racialist Mission of Henry Hotze,” Civil War History 51, no. 3 (September 2005): 288-316.

Carwardine, Richard, and Jay Sexton, eds. The Global Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Chaffin, Tom. “Abe Lincoln and Filibuster Fever.” Disunion: The New York Times, January 10, 2011. Accessed on January 25, 2023. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/abe-lincoln-and-filibuster-fever.

Crook, David Paul. The North, the South, and the Powers, 1860-1865. New York: Wiley, 1974.

—. Diplomacy during the Civil War. New York: Wiley, 1975.

Ferris, Norman B. Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.

Fry, Joseph A. Henry Sanford: Diplomacy and Business in Nineteenth-Century America. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1982.

Green, Jennifer R., and Patrick M. Kirkwood. “Reframing the Antebellum Democratic Mainstream: Transatlantic Diplomacy and the Career of Pierre Soulé,” Civil War History 61, no. 3 (September 2015): 212-251.

Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998.

—. “James Mason, the ‘Confederate Lobby’ and the Blockade Debate of March 1862,” Civil War History 45, no. 3 (September 1999): 223-237.

Jones, Howard. Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

—. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Karp, Matthew. This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Mattson, Gregory Louis. “Pariah Diplomacy: The Slavery Issue in Confederate Foreign Relations.” PhD diss. University of Southern Mississippi, 1999.

Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Palen, Marc-William. “The Civil War’s Forgotten Transatlantic Tariff Debate and the Confederacy’s Free Trade Diplomacy,” The Journal of the Civil War Era. 3, no. 1 (March 2013): 35-61.

Paolino, Ernest. The Foundations of the American Empire: Willian Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Peraino, Kevin. Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power. New York: Crown, 2013.

Perkins, Dexter. The Monroe Doctrine, 1826-1867. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965.

Quigley, Paul, and James Hawdon, eds. Reconciliation After Civil War. Global Perspectives. Routledge Press, 2018.

Robinson, Michael. “William Henry Seward and the Onset of the Secession Crisis,” Civil War History 59, no. 1 (March 2013): 32-66.

Sexton, Jay. “Towards a Synthesis of Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1848-1877,” American Nineteenth Century History. 5 (Fall 2004): 50-73.

—. The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Hill & Wang, 2012.

—. “William H. Seward in the World,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no. 3 (September 2014): 398-430.

—. “The Civil War and U.S. World Power” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe and the Crisis of the 1860s. Edited by Don H. Doyle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Seward, William H., and Olive Risley Seward. William H. Seward’s Travels around the World. New York: D. Appleton, 1873

Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln Indispensable Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Taylor, John. William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Tyrner-Tyrnauer, A.R. Lincoln and the Emperors. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962.

Warren, Gordon H. Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981.

Whitaker, Arthur P. “The Origins of the Western Hemisphere Idea,” Proceedings of the American Philosophy Society 98 (October 15, 1954): 323.

TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY – ANTEBELLUM, WARTIME, POSTWAR

Ayers, Edward L. “The American Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction on the World Stage,” OAH Magazine of History 20, no. 1 (January 2006): 54-61.

Beckert, Sven. “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” American Historical Review 109 (December 2004): 1405-1438.

Bolton, Herbert E. “The Epic of Greater America,” American Historical Review 38 (April 1933): 448-474.

Bonner, Robert E. “The Salt Water Civil War: Thalassological Approaches, Ocean-Centered Opportunities,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 2 (June 2016): 243-267.

Brettle, Adrian. Colonial Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Brown, Charles H. Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Cummins, Light T. “Getting beyond Bolton: Columbian Consequences and the Spanish Borderland, A Review Essay,” New Mexico Historical Review 70 (April 1995): 201-215.

Curti, Merle. “The Impact of the Revolutions of 1848 on American Thought,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 93 (1949): 209-215.

Davis, William C. “Confederate Exiles.” American History Illustrated 5, no. 3 (June 1970): 30-43.

Doyle, Don H., ed. Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America’s Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

—. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

Egerton, Douglas R. “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography in a Postcolonial Era: The Civil War in a Global Perspective,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 1, no. 1 (March 2011): 79-95.

Eichhorn, Niels. “North Atlantic Trade in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Case for Peace during the American Civil War,” Civil War History 1, no. 2 (June 2015): 138-172.

Fleche, Andre. “The American Civil War in the Age of Revolution,” South Central Review 33 no. 1 (Spring 2016): 5-20.

—. Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Graber, Samuel S. “Twice Divided Nation: The Civil War and National Memory in the Transatlantic World,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2008).

Graybill, Andrew R. “Civil Wars and Their Soldiers in the Southwest Borderlands,” Reviews in American History 46, no. 4 (December 2018): 586-591.

Greenberg, Amy S. Manifest Manhood and Antebellum American Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

—. Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.

Guterl, Matthew Pratt. American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Hahn, Steven. “What Sort of World Did the Civil War Make?” in The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Hammond, John Craig. “Slavery, Sovereignty, and Empires: North American Borderlands and the American Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no 2 (June 2014): 264-298.

Honeck, Mischa. “Men of Principle: Gender and the German American War for the Union,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 38-67.

Johnson, Benjamin H., and Andrew R. Graybill, eds. Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.

Kaye, Anthony E. “The Second Slavery: Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century South and the Atlantic World,” The Journal of Southern History 75 (August 2009): 627-50.

Keehn, David C. Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

Kelly, Patrick J. “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (September 2012): 337-368.

—. “1848 and the Transnational Turn in Civil War History,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no. 3 (September 2014): 431-443.

LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963.

Lewis, Kay Wright. A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Lonn, Ella. Foreigners in the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

McDaniel, W. Caleb, and Bethany L. Johnson. “New Approaches to Internationalizing the History of the Civil War Era: An Introduction,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012): 145-150.

McPherson, James. “‘The Whole Family of Man:’ Lincoln and the Last Best Hope Abroad” in The Union, the Confederacy and the Atlantic Rim. Edited by Robert May. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1995.

Mahin, Dean P. One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the U.S. Civil War. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1999.

May, Robert E., ed. The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995.

Morrison, Michael A. “American Reaction to European Revolutions, 1848-1852: Sectionalism, Memory, and the Revolutionary Heritage,” Civil War History 49, no. 2 (June 2003): 111-132.

Potter, David M. The South and the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968.

—. “Civil War,” in The Comparative Approach to American History. Edited by C. Van Woodward. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

Roberts, Timothy Mason. Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009.

Rood, Daniel B. The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Schoen, Brian. The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

—. “The Fates of Republics and Empires Hang in the Balance: The United States and Europe during the Civil War Era,” OAH Magazine of History 27, no. 2 (April 2013): 45.

Sexton, Jay. “Steam Transport, Sovereignty, and Empire in North America, circa 1850-1885,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 620-647.

Tucker, Ann L. Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Making of the Confederacy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Walther, Karine V. Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Weeks, William Earl. Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from Revolution to the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.

Zimmerman, Andrew. “From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 3-37.

—. “From the Second American Revolution to the First International and Back Again: Marxism, the Popular Front, and the American Civil War” in The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

GENERAL WORKS

Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

Bayly, C.A. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004: 165-166.

Beckert, Sven, “Merchants and Manufacturers in the Antebellum North” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy. Edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

—. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Knopf, 2014.

—. Capitalism: A Global History. New York: Penguin, 2025.

Bender, Thomas, ed. Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

—. A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Bensel, Richard Franklin. Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Blair, William. “Imagining a Hemispheric Greater America,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 507-511.

Bledsoe, Andrew S. “Beyond the Chessboard of War: Contingency, Command and Generalship in Civil War Military History,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 275-301.

Boritt, Gabor S., Mark E. Neely Jr., and Harold Holzer, “The European Image of Abraham Lincoln,” Winterthur Portfolio 21 (Summer-Autumn 1986): 158-160.

Browning, Judkin, and Timothy Silver. “Nature and Human Nature: Environmental Influences on the Union’s Failed Peninsula Campaign, 1862.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 3 (September 2018): 388-415.

Colby, Robert. “Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 10, no. 4 (December 2020): 439-468.

Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Foster, Gaines M. “What’s Not in a Name.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 3 (September 2018): 416-454.

Geyer, Michael, and Charles Bright. “Global Violence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia and America: The Geo Politics of War in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies in History and Society 38, no. 4, (October 1996): 619-657.

Goldfield, David. America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011.

Grandin, Greg. “The Liberal Tradition in the Americas: Rights, Sovereignty, and the Origins of Multilateralism,” American Historical Review 117 (February 2012): 68-91.

Greene, Jack P., and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Atlantic History: A Critical Reappraisal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Grimsley, Mark, and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. The Collapse of the Confederacy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Guterl, Matthew. American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

—, and Samuel Truett. “On Borderlands,” The Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September 2011): 338-361.

Hunt, Aurora. The Army of the Pacific: Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Plains Region, Mexico, etc. 1860-1866. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1951.

Hunt, Jeffrey William. The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

Johnson, Walter. Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

—. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

Jones, Howard. Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

Kerby, Robert L. Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Lang, Andrew F. “Memory, the Texas Revolution, and Secession: The Birth of Confederate Nationalism in the Lone Star State,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 114, no. 1 (July 2010): 21-36.

Langley, Lester D. The Americans in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Levine, Bruce. The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Lincoln, Abraham. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by Roy P. Basler. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953-1955.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Marvel, William. The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Nelson, Megan Kate. “Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861-1862” in Civil War Tests: Testing the Limits of the United States. Edited by Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.

Prior, David M. et. al. “Teaching the Civil War in Global Context: A Discussion,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (March 2015): 126-153.

Reynolds, Larry J. Righteous Violence: Revolution, Slavery, and the American Renaissance. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.

Richardson, Heather Cox. West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Rothman, Adam, “The Slave Power in the United States, 1783-1865” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy. Edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Rugemer, Edward B. “Slave Rebels and Abolitionists: The Black Atlantic and the Coming of the Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012): 179-202.

San Antonio Ledger. July 28, 1853.

Stokes, Donald. The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Silverman, Jason H. Lincoln and the Immigrant. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.

Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Townsend, Stephen A. The Yankee Invasion of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

Tucker, Phillip Thomas. The Final Fury: Palmito Ranch, The Last Battle of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001.

U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Lady Gaga, the gothic groundbreaker / Time to rethink obituaries / Coffee has a long term effect on health / The ‘new’ Middle East may not exist / Some in MAGA want Trump to go harder / Napping smarter

This week: Lady Gaga, the gothic groundbreaker / Time to rethink obituaries / Coffee has a long term effect on health / The ‘new’ Middle East may not exist / Some in MAGA want Trump to go harder / Napping smarter

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. What you put in your coffee can have an outsize impact on your health
By Trisha Pasricha | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Add no more than 1 teaspoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons of whole milk to each cup. But go ahead and grab another mug; 3½ cups of filtered coffee per day can be good for your health.”

2. A ‘New Middle East’ Is Easier to Declare Than to Achieve
By David Remnick | The New Yorker | October 2025
“As a long-overdue ceasefire takes hold amid the ruins of Gaza, the President’s visit to Jerusalem is more about transactional politics than transformative peace.”

3. A seed bank in England marks 25 years of preserving the world’s plant diversity
By Mustakim Hasnath | Associated Press | October 2025
“The Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew holds more than 2.5 billion wild plant seeds from around 40,000 species. The seeds are stored in sealed glass jars and foil packets, and are preserved in temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius ( minus 4 Fahrenheit) to guard against extinction.”

4. In D.C., the Arc de Trump Goes Up as the Local Workforce Shuts Down
By Michael Schaffer | Politico | October 2025
“Trump really wants a shining capital. Can you do that while battering the city economy?”

5. Obituaries are important, worth rethinking and reviving
By Kristen Hare | Poynter | November 2021
“Here’s what we discovered from 2.5 years of work, a fellowship and a newsletter.”

6. Putins All the Way Down
By Joshua Yaffa | Foreign Affairs | October 2025
“The Kremlin no longer holds to any democratic pretensions. Putin appears destined to rule indefinitely, and even far down the ballot, independent candidates are kept from running.”

7. The Rise of RFK Jr.
Frontline :: PBS | October 2025
“Tracing the dramatic and controversial rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ‘Frontline’ examines how the scion of a storied dynasty endured tragedy and scandal, broke with the Democratic Party and his family, stoked conspiracy theories, and is reshaping government and public health.”

8. Latinx Shakespeares of the 20th century
By Carla Della Gatta | Shakespeare & Beyond :: Folger Shakespeare Library | October 2025
“Latinx peoples and cultures have been a rich part of American Shakespearean performance for more than 85 years.”

9. The Conservatives Who Think Trump Isn’t Going Far Enough
By David Austin Walsh | Boston Review | October 2025
“MAGA’s base is more fractured than it looks.”

10. Lady Gaga Was Always Gothic. Now the World Has Caught Up to Her.
By Wesley Morris | Cannonball :: The New York Times | October 2025
“At a moment when other pop stars are flirting with dark spectacle, Gaga’s ‘Mayhem’ tour shows that she has perfected it.”

11. ‘Shall We Have a King?’
By William E. Leuchtenburg | American Heritage | Fall 2025
“Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.”

12. How a ‘dark fleet’ of tankers helped a Mexican cartel build a fuel-smuggling empire
By Stefanie Eschenbacher, Shariq Khan and Stephen Eisenhammer | Reuters | October 2025
“The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has mastered the use of tankers to smuggle fuel to Mexico. U.S. oil players are helping them. Reuters traces one ship’s brazen journey.”

13. Revenge is never simple — neither is the legacy of ‘Kill Bill’
By Caroline Siede | Paste | October 2025
“Like The Bride herself, Kill Bill remains a messy, contradictory, thoroughly kickass duology.”

14. The secret to waking up from a nap feeling refreshed (and not groggy)
By Andee Tagle | NPR | October 2025
“Ever woken up from a nap and felt more tired? Or so discombobulated you forgot which planet you were on?”

15. Francis Ford Coppola Forced to Sell His Custom $1 Million Watch After ‘Megalopolis’ Debacle
By Laurie Brookins | The Hollywood Reporter | October 2025
“The one-of-a-kind F.P. Journe watch will be on display in New York before its sale in December. The director spent $120 million of his own money on the film, which grossed just $14.4 million.”

16. Social Ties Help You Live Longer. What Does That Mean for Introverts?
By Dana G. Smith | The New York Times | October 2025
“You don’t have to be the life of every party to reap the health benefits.”

17. A new island erupted from the sea – can it show us how nature works without human interference?
By Patrick Greenfield | The Guardian | October 2025
“The volcanic island of Surtsey emerged in the 1960s, and scientists say studying its development offers hope for damaged ecosystems worldwide.”

18. Stonewall Uprising
American Experience :: PBS | June 2023
“When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.”

19. Inside Llewyn Davis: The Sound of Music
By Kent Jones | The Criterion Collection | January 2016
“The world of the Coens is the world of everyday heroes and scoundrels, of you and me and the stranger sitting across from us, the ordinary citizens trying to make sense of life as we live it, who have neither the time nor the wherewithal to develop into the Transformative Figures of Our Age.”

20. The Inca
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2011-2019
Also see: The Taiping Rebellion | Maimonides | Aristotle’s Poetics | The Mexican Revolution

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

This week: The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Gold futures rise above $4,000 per ounce for the first time
By Wyatte Grantham-Philips | Associated Press | October 2025
“Gold sales can rise sharply when anxious investors seek secure investments for their money. Even before the shutdown, the asset — and other metals, like silver — had seen wide gains over the last year, as President Donald Trump ’s barrage of tariffs cause uncertainty around the outlook for the global economy. More recently, the prospect of lower interest rates has also made gold a more attractive investment than interest-bearing investments.”

2. After two years, Israel’s Gaza war has reshaped the Middle East
By Ishaan Tharoor | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Israel’s hard power preeminence in the Middle East seems paramount. But the country’s leaders — and the entire region — still face an array of political challenges.”

3. The American Experiment
By Jeffrey Goldberg | The Atlantic | October 2025
“At 250, the Revolution’s goals remain noble and indispensable.”

4. What is Insurrection Act, could it help Trump deploy troops to US cities?
By Sarah Shamim | Al Jazeera | October 2025
“The threat to invoke the Insurrection Act comes amid protests in Portland and legal challenges against his anti-immigration crackdown.”

5. Cold-water immersion may offer health benefits — and also presents risks
By Stephen Wade | Associated Press | October 2025
“Claims about the benefits of cold-water immersion date back centuries. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third American president, wrote toward the end of his life about using a cold foot bath daily for 60 years. He also owned a book published in 1706 on the history of cold-water bathing.”

6. America’s Vigilantes
By Matthieu Aikins | The New York Times Magazine | October 2025
“A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.”
Part 1: A Green Beret’s Confession | Part 2: Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base
Part 3: A Culture of Secrecy | Part 4: Lawlessness Comes Home

7. Doing almost anything is better with friends, research finds
By Richard Sima | The Washington Post | October 2025
“You might be leaving some happiness on the table by doing your everyday activities all by yourself.”

8. Octopuses prefer to use different arms for different tasks, scientists find
By Nicola Davis | The Guardian | September 2025
“Creatures favour front arms for most tasks, study suggests, despite fact all eight arms are capable of all actions.”

9. How Not to Get a Progressive Party off the Ground
By Arash Azizi | The Atlantic | October 2025
“The British left needs a strategy that can win elections instead of throwing them to the right.”

10. Stupidology
By William Davies | n+1 | Fall 2025
“The outsourcing of judgment.”

11. Going Beyond War’s Cliches
By Alisa Sopova | Nieman Lab | September 2025
“A collaborative project records Ukrainians’ day-to-day lives since the Russian invasion.”

12. See Beethoven’s entire ‘9th Symphony’ visualized in colorful animations
Open Culture | October 2025
“In a sense, ‘Ode to Joy’ is a natural choice for a musical representation of Europe, not just for its explicit themes, but also for the obvious ambition of the symphony that includes it to capture an entire civilization in musical form.”

13. JFK Wanted You to Watch This Movie Before He Was Assassinated
By Gordon F. Sander | Politico Magazine | February 2025
“The president had a hand in the making of a Cold War blockbuster.”

14. With ‘drug boat’ strikes, Trump leans into war on terror tactic against cartels
By Ryan Lucas | NPR | September 2025
“The administration has provided few details on the scope of its anti-cartel campaign, but it has adopted — at least in part — the blueprint of military strikes from the global war on terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

15. Robot rabbits the latest tool in Florida battle to control invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades
By Curt Anderson and Cody Jackson | Associated Press | August 2025
“They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat. But these bunnies are robots meant to lure the giant invasive snakes out of their hiding spots.”

16. The Art of the Impersonal Essay
By Zadie Smith | The New Yorker | September 2025
“In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine.”

17. When Mexico’s richest man threw ‘The New York Times’ a lifeline
By Rick Edmonds | The Poynter 50 | April 2025
“Before the bundles, the podcasts and the 10 million digital subscribers, there was a $250 million loan with a sky-high interest rate.”

18. The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America
By Kim Severson | The New York Times | September 2025
“An English translation of Ada Boni’s The Talisman of Happiness, an indispensable guide for Italian home cooks since the 1920s, is finally on its way.”

19. The Fisher King: In the Kingdom of the Imperfect
By Bilge Ebiri | The Criterion Collection | June 2015
“Trauma and kindness. These are the two elements that govern The Fisher King, and they re represented by the two mythical figures that haunt the film.”

20. Augustine’s Confessions
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Justinian’s Legal Code | Four Quartets | Purgatory | The Battle of Salamis

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Nature’s false beauty / Lupita: The Mayan voice / Reading Thucydides in 2021 / When happy hour changed forever / How teeth evolved

This week: Nature’s false beauty / Lupita: The Mayan voice / Reading Thucydides in 2021 / When happy hour changed forever / How teeth evolved

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

1. The Nature You See in Documentaries Is Beautiful and False
By Emma Marris | The Atlantic | April 2021
“Nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched landscapes left. There aren’t.”

2. In Appreciation of Rihanna Smoking Weed, and Looking Hot While Doing It
By Ernesto Macias | Interview | April 2021
“Being a bad girl isn’t easy, and Rihanna knows it”

3. Lupita
By Monica Wise | The Guardian | January 2021
“Twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people and for a new generation of Mayan activists.”

4. America ruined my name for me
By Beth Nguyen | The New Yorker | April 2021
“I cannot detach the name Bich from people laughing at me, calling me a bitch, letting me know that I’m the punch line of my own joke.”

5. A Chinese ‘Auntie’ Went on a Solo Road Trip. Now, She’s a Feminist Icon
By Joy Dong and Vivian Wang | The New York Times | April 2021
“Her main appeal is not the scenic vistas she captures, though those are plentiful. It is the intimate revelations she mixes in with them, about her abusive marriage, dissatisfaction with domestic life and newfound freedom.”

6. What It’s Like to Read Thucydides in 2021
LitHub | April 2021
“How did literature develop? What forms has it taken? And what can we learn from engaging with these works today?”

7. Vesuvius eruption baked some people to death — and turned one brain to glass
By Robin George Andrews | National Geographic | January 2020
“A pair of studies reveals more details about what happened to the victims of the infamous event in A.D. 79.”

8. The 40 Acres During World War I
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: The Bolshevik Revolution at 100 | The History of Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy in the U.S. | Beatlemania and the 55th Anniversary of the First Beatles Tour to the US | The Legacy of World War I in Germany and Russia

9. Fifty Years Ago a Texan Changed Happy Hour Forever
By Patricia Sharpe | Texas Monthly | May 2021
“Here’s to Mariano Martinez, the inventor of the world’s first frozen margarita machine.”

10. The Evolution of Teeth
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2009-2019
Also see: Calculus | Sunni and Shia Islam | The Augustan Age | The Whale

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Hating the monoliths / Maradona’s darker legacy / How to press flowers / The missing in Mexico / Shakespeare’s heroines

This week: Hating the monoliths / Maradona’s darker legacy / How to press flowers / The missing in Mexico / Shakespeare’s heroines

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

1. Tributes to Diego Maradona show how easily violence against women is ignored
By Joan Smith | The Guardian | November 2020
“Too often we’re in denial about the fact that heroes — such as Maradona and Sean Connery — might also be abusers”

2. The Can-Do Power
By Samantha Power | Foreign Affairs | January / February 2021
“The Biden administration should … pursue foreign policy initiatives that can quickly highlight the return of American expertise and competence.”

3. Yo-Yo Ma and the Meaning of Life
By David Marchese | Talk :: The New York Times Magazine | November 2020
“It’s all the connections we make in life. Once you’re connected, you feel responsibility. And ‘connected’ means that it’s a circular loop. I know you, but you have to know me, too. There’s an energy circle that goes back and forth.”

4. How to Press Flowers
By Malia Wollan | Tip :: The New York Times Magazine | August 2020
“Each bit of plant material should be spread out carefully and sandwiched between layers of nonglossy blotting paper and sheets of cardboard.”

5. The search for the disappeared points to Mexico’s darkest secrets
By Mary Beth Sheridan | The Washington Post | December 2020
“More than 79,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, most of them since 2006. It’s the worst crisis of the disappeared in Latin America since the Cold War. … And Mexico’s numbers keep rising. Last year saw a record. Mexicans are uncovering two clandestine graves a day, on average.”

6. Witty women
By Rhodri Lewis | Times Literary Supplement | December 2020
“Shakespeare’s languages and the origin of his comic heroines”

7. The Monoliths Are Stupid and I Hate Them
By Sarah Jones | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | December 2020
“They feel like the last authentic objects in the world. Next to them the monoliths can only be props, a brief and frantic distraction. Escape lies just beyond them, in open land and an unblemished sky.”

8. The history of First Ladies’ hairstyles, untangled
By Matthew Sweet | 1843 :: The Economist | November 2020
“Haircuts in the White House are never just cosmetic. There’s a political message in every strand”

9. 2020 Has Been Miserable. Is Extreme Masculinity to Blame?
By Peter Glick | Politico Magazine | November 2020
“Whether it’s the refusal to wear a mask during a pandemic or the win-at-all-costs approach to elections, 2020 has been a banner year for a particularly toxic masculinity”

10. Can mosquitoes spread the coronavirus?
Viral Questions :: Associated Press | August 2020
“No. While mosquitoes can spread some diseases, most notably malaria, experts say COVID-19 is not among them.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Fidel Castro’s love affair / Celebrating the brilliance of “Scarface” / The secret power of ISIS / Molly Ringwald looks back / The British Empire’s shadow on today’s world

This week: Fidel Castro’s love affair / Celebrating the brilliance of Scarface / The secret power of ISIS / Molly Ringwald looks back / The British Empire’s shadow on today’s world

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. ‘My Dearest Fidel’: An ABC Journalist’s Secret Liaison With Fidel Castro
By By Peter Kornbluh | Politico Magazine | April 2018
“The untold story of how Lisa Howard’s intimate diplomacy with Cuba’s revolutionary leader changed the course of the Cold War.”

2. Revisiting the Controversy Surrounding Scarface
By Jason Bailey | Vulture | April 2018
“It landed on VHS and Betamax the following summer, at what may have been the perfect moment, as home video reached a penetration point and videotape rentals were becoming part of the average moviegoer’s diet.”

3. End of the American dream? The dark history of ‘America first’
By Sarah Churchwell | The Guardian | April 2018
“When he promised to put America first in his inaugural speech, Donald Trump drew on a slogan with a long and sinister history — a sign of what was to follow in his presidency”

4. How Trump Moved the Mexican Border North
By Emily Gogolak | Politico Magazine | April 2018
“It started in Texas. And the rest of the country is next.”

5. The ISIS Files
By Rukmini Callimachi | The New York Times | April 2018
“We unearthed thousands of internal documents that help explain how the Islamic State stayed in power so long.”

6. ‘The Clock Is Ticking’: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
By William Langewiesche | Vanity Fair | April 2018
“A recording salvaged from three miles deep tells the story of the doomed ‘El Faro,’ a cargo ship engulfed by a hurricane.”

7. What About ‘The Breakfast Club’?
By Molly Ringwald | The New Yorker | April 2018
“Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.”

8. 5 Reasons Why a Writer Should Move to Tampa
By Arielle Silver | LitHub | April 2018
“Welcome to the lightning capital of North America.”

9. My Caribbean trip opened my eyes to the legacy of the British empire
By Lenny Henry | The Guardian | March 2018
“After Brexit, the Commonwealth could play a crucial trading role. But the historic associations with slavery still resonate.”

10. Essential Writing Advice from Virginia Woolf
By Emily Temple | LitHub | March 2018
“Woolf was a once-in-a-generation mind, and as both a writer and publisher, she had strong opinions about what made a piece of literature great (or, more often, mediocre). Luckily for us, she wrote many of her ideas down, in some of the many essays and letters she penned over the course of her life.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The Democrats’ future / James Webb Telescope / The Internet Archive / Lincoln’s legacy in Mexico / 10 Arab philosophers we need

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This week: The Democrats’ future / James Webb Telescope / The Internet Archive / Lincoln’s legacy in Mexico / 10 Arab philosophers we need

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Liberal activists, new DNC chief face a Trump-era reckoning
By Bill Barrow | Associated Press | Feb. 26
“Perez has embraced the idea of a more aggressive, populist identity for the party, even if he hasn’t convinced activists he can deliver on it. He said throughout the three-day DNC meeting ahead of the vote that he would work to align party resources with the energy of groups from Black Lives Matter and Swing Left to Indivisible, Resist Trump Tuesdays, Knock Every Door, Rise Stronger and Sister District.”

2. How the baby boomers destroyed everything
By Bruce Cannon Gibney | The Boston Globe | Feb. 26
“In 1971, Alan Shepard was playing golf on the moon. Today, America can’t put a man into orbit (or, allegedly, the Oval Office) without Russian assistance. Something changed, and that something was the boomers and the sociopathic agenda they emplaced.”

3. What will the James Webb Space Telescope reveal about the newly discovered exoplanets?
By Nick Lavars | New Atlas | Feb. 23
“Poised to take the reins from Hubble as NASA’s premier orbiting telescope in 2018, it will boast seven times the light-collecting capacity of its predecessor and will be sensitive enough to spot a single firefly one million kilometers away.”

4. Where to find what’s disappeared online, and a whole lot more: the Internet Archive
By Mary Kay Magistad | Who’s Century Is It? :: PRI | Feb. 23
” Since the Internet Archive started in 1996, its staff — now, about 140 people — have digitized almost 3 million books, and are aiming for 10 million.”

5. When A Woman Deletes A Man’s Comment Online
By Ijeoma Oluo | The Establishment | Feb. 22
“I’m not debating those who show up wedded to bigotry”

6. Could Pluto Regain Its Planethood?
By Mike Wall | Space.com :: Scientific American | Feb. 23
“A proposed new definition for what constitutes a ‘planet’ could reinstate the demoted icy world”

7. Why Abraham Lincoln Was Revered in Mexico
By Jamie Katz | Smithsonian Magazine | Feb. 23
“As a young Congressman and later as the nation’s leader, the first Republican president proved to be a true friend to America’s neighbor to the south”

8. 10 Arabic Philosophers, and Why You Should Know Them
By Scotty Hendricks | Big Think | November 2016
“Of the stars that have proper names in common usage, most of them have the names given to them by Arabic astronomers. We use the numeral system they devised, including the zero. They set the standard for the scientific method for hundreds of years. It is impossible to fully understand western thought without understanding the ideas of these thinkers.”

9. What a Kansas professor learned after interviewing a ‘lost generation’ of journalists
By Deron Lee | Columbia Journalism Review | September 2016
“When Scott Reinardy began studying the state of morale in newspaper newsrooms more than 10 years ago … [he] didn’t know the industry was about to enter a traumatic period of upheaval that would deplete the ranks of journalists around the country and force newspapers to reassess their mission.”

10. The Gang That Always Liked Ike
By Michael Beschloss | HistorySource :: The New York Times | November 2014
“The Gang played bridge, golfed and shot skeet together, ate steaks barbecued by the president, offered advice on politics and the economy and chuckled at his private aphorisms. (He maintained, for example, that the ‘two professions in which amateurs excel’ are ‘prostitution and the military.’)”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: George Michael dies / 2016’s best science stories / Texas and Planned Parenthood / What men should know by 22 / Plantations and public history

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This week: George Michael dies / 2016’s best science stories / Texas and Planned Parenthood / What men should know by 22 / Plantations and public history

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Ex-Wham singer George Michael dies
BBC News | Dec. 25
“The star … is said to have ‘passed away peacefully at home.’ … Police say there were no suspicious circumstances.”

2. Ordered Deported, Berlin Suspect Slipped Through Germany’s Fingers
By Alison Smale, Carlotta Gall, and Gaia Pianigiani | The New York Times | Dec. 22
“Amri’s life and odyssey underscore a vexing problem, common in Europe: how to handle hundreds of thousands of virtually stateless wanderers who are either unwilling or unable to return home.”

3. ‘Life disappeared before my eyes’: photographer describes killing of Russian ambassador
By Burhan Ozbilici | The Guardian | Dec. 19
“Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici went to view an exhibition in Ankara but instead witnessed the assassination of Andrei Karlov”
Also, from the Associated Press: A look at the most significant attacks in Turkey in 2016

4. The Most Popular Science Stories of 2016
By Andrea Gawrylewski | Scientific American | Dec. 19
“The presidential election took center stage, but our readers were also fascinated by everything from particle physics and rage disorder to autism in girls and the polar vortex”

5. The Best TV Performances of 2016
By Tim Goodman and Daniel Fienberg | The Hollywood Reporter | Dec. 20
Sadness, fear, strength, vulnerability — 2016 had an incredible array of acting achievements.

6. Texas officially kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid
By Alexa Ura | The Texas Tribune | Dec. 20
“Planned Parenthood had previously received $3.1 million in Medicaid funding, but those dollars will be nixed in 30 days …”

7. 22 Things Men Should Know By Age 22
By Todd Brison | Medium | Dec. 15
“Most of the people in your life now will not be there in 5 years. Tell them how much they matter to you today.”

8. The Plantation Tour Disaster: Teaching Slavery, Memory, and Public History
By Niels Eichhorn | Muster :: Journal of the Civil War Era | Dec. 5
“Regardless whether a plantation does or does not cover slavery, they provide an interesting mechanism to teach about the institutions of the Old South, collective memory, and public history.”

9. Mexico: The Cauldron of Modernism
By J. Hoberman | NYR Daily :: The New York Review of Books | Dec. 12
“To a degree, ‘Paint the Revolution’ is the story of the three star muralists, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, who along with the posthumously canonized Frida Kahlo, defined the new Mexican art.”

10. From White Knight to Thief
By Michael Beschloss | HistorySource :: The New York Times | September 2014
“At the start of the terrifying market plunge of October 1929, he had bravely helped shore up the market by parading around the exchange floor, placing bids for shares of U.S. Steel, as well as other blue-chip holdings.”

Loreta’s Civil War: Deeply, darkly, beautifully blue

Velazquez returns to Havana, Cuba, with secret messages for Confederate naval forces, before resuming her espionage in New Orleans.

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Throughout 2016 and 2017, Stillness of Heart will share edited excerpts from the extraordinary memoir of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who chronicled her adventures throughout the Civil War — either as herself, as a Confederate spy, or in disguise as Confederate Lt. Harry T. Buford. She fought and led men in terrible battles, fell in love, bore and lost children, and traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, ultimately fulfilling her childhood dream of a rich and adventurous life.

You can read the entire 1876 memoir online here. Learn more about Velazquez (and the incredible documentary film Maria Agui Carter made about her) here.

Part 23: Velazquez returns to Havana, Cuba, with secret messages for Confederate naval forces, before resuming her espionage in New Orleans.

******

I had a stroke of good luck in the very beginning. An English lady, with whom I had become slightly acquainted, was on the point of returning to her own country, having come to the conclusion that Old England was a quieter, and on the whole more agreeable place of residence, just at that time, than America. … trouble. As matters stood, however, she was anxious to get away as soon as possible, the capture of the city by the Federals, with its attendant horrors, combined with a prospect that the Confederates would before long probably make a desperate attempt to regain it, not having the most soothing effect upon her nerves. Hearing that she was about to leave, I went to her, and expressed a desire to purchase her passport and other foreign papers, confident that, armed with such documents as these, I would be able to make a fair start against the Federal authorities, and gain some immediate ad- vantages that would probably be otherwise out of the question. The lady readily consented to part with the papers for a fair price, being glad to get the money I offered for them. …

I set about preparing for a career of some activity in the way of running through the lines and communicating with the Confederate authorities. … I engaged quite extensively in the drug business, while performing the duties of a special messenger and bearer of Confederate dispatches. Drugs of all kinds were very scarce within the Confederate lines, and consequently brought enormous prices, so that any one who could manage to smuggle them past the Federal outposts was certain of reaping a handsome profit. I succeeded in obtaining a good quantity of this kind of merchandise from the different hospitals, and, as I could carry many dollars’ worth about my person without attracting particular attention, I much more than made my expenses on the several trips I undertook to Mandeville and beyond. Confederate money was also cheap, as well as plenty, in New Orleans, as everybody had some of it. … It therefore offered fine opportunities for speculation to any one who could carry it to where it was of more value than it was in New Orleans just at that time. I therefore invested quite heavily in Confederate promises to pay, and, as with the drugs, contrived to make the speculation pay handsomely.

Having made several trips with success and with much profit, I began to think that I was, perhaps, making out with my enterprises entirely too well ; and, apprehensive of getting into some difficulty which I might not be able to get out of as easily as I could wish, — for I saw a number of indications of trouble ahead, — I resolved, while on one of my expeditions, after a consultation with my Confederate friends, to return to New Orleans, for the purpose of buying up a quantity of the proscribed money, and then to leave for good, getting out of [Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin] Butler’s power while I had a fair chance of doing so. This arrangement fell through, however; for I was persuaded to make a trip to Havana for the purpose of carrying a dispatch to the Confederate cruiser … Alabama … and [to conduct] some other business of a secret character for advancing the interests of the Confederacy. This commission I accepted with eagerness and returned to New Orleans with what haste I could, with the dispatch secreted on my person, for the purpose of taking the first vessel for Havana.

The idea of making a trip to Havana was very agreeable to me for a number of reasons. My health was not so robust as it had been, and my wounded arm, although it had healed up, was still very sore and hurt me severely at times. … I needed more than anything else, for restoration to perfect health, such a rest as a sea voyage alone could give. There was, it is true, some risks in visiting Havana at this season, but I was acclimated and did not worry myself much with fears of yellow fever or other diseases. … The most important reason for my wishing to take a run over there was a desire to make the acquaintance of the Confederate agents and to learn something of their methods of transacting business in the way of sending communications through the lines. …

[T]hings were in a bad way in many respects in the beleaguered Confederacy. The coast blockade was now fully established, and the enemy’s lines were drawn so close along the principal avenues of communication with the outside world and the interior that our commerce was completely killed, and our people were already suffering for many of the necessities of life, while the requirements of warfare with a powerful enemy, amply provided with resources, were impoverishing them more and more every day. Whole districts had been devastated by the maneuverings of the different armies, and the suffering among the poorer classes throughout the entire South was very great, while many persons, who were possessed of ample wealth before the war, were now feeling the pinchings of poverty and were learning what it was not to know where the next meal was coming from. …

I started off for Havana … in anticipation of a particularly pleasant cruise which would not only be beneficial to my health, but which would afford me an agreeable change of scene. … Leaving the turbulent current and the muddy banks of the Mississippi behind me, the vessel upon which I embarked was soon ploughing her way through the beautiful blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, pointed towards my native city — a city that I had not visited since I left it years ago, when a child, to go to New Orleans for the purpose of completing my education. It was upon these waters, and in their vicinity, that my adventure-loving ancestors had achieved renown and wealth in making explorations and conquests of the New World discovered by Columbus. Not far from the track of the ship in which I was now speeding towards Havana had sailed the expedition fitted out by old Governor Don Diego Velazquez, which discovered Mexico and prepared the way for the brilliant exploits of [Hernando] Cortez and his followers, while the whole Gulf and its surrounding shores were alive with memories of the valiant deeds of the valiant people of my father’s race.

Nothing more delightful than a cruise on the Gulf of Mexico during the summer season can be imagined. The water is deeply, darkly, beautifully blue — a blue totally unlike that of the Atlantic Ocean, and one of the loveliest of colors — and to sail upon the broad bosom of this sea of sapphire, for three or four days in fine weather, with just breeze enough to make the spray fly from the tops of the waves, is one of the rarest enjoyments that life affords. I certainly enjoyed it, and every warm sea breeze that fanned my cheeks brought health, strength, and exhilaration of spirits with it. This was just what I wanted to revive me after the trials and sufferings — physical and mental — of the past twelve months, and to prepare me for the trying duties yet to be performed.

At length, far in the distance, the lofty Cuban highlands were seen, resting like a faint blue cloud on the horizon, but taking shape as we approached, until, from the misty outlines, the mountain forms began to disclose themselves, and finally cities, villages, and even single houses and trees were revealed. It seemed like going into another world, for anything more unlike the low, flat, and unpicturesque country which I had just left could scarcely be imagined, and I not only felt proud of my beautiful native island, but I wondered not that Spain should cling with such tenacity to this the fairest, and now the only really important portion of the great dominion which her valorous sons had centuries before conquered for her in the New World. At the same time, I begrudged that this fair island should be the dependency of a foreign power, for I was, despite my Spanish ancestry, an American, heart and soul, and if there was anything that could have induced me to abandon the cause of the Southern Confederacy, it would have been an attempt on the part of the Cubans to have liberated themselves from the Spanish yoke. …

After a voyage which had been to me one of uninterrupted pleasure, our ship dropped anchor before the city of Havana. No city on the globe has been more fitly named, for this harbor is unsurpassed and nestles beneath the shadow of the vine-clad hills — a broad, land-locked basin in which the navies of the world might float. … [I] landed at the earliest possible moment, and … I succeeded in finding the Confederate agent, into whose trusty hands I had been directed to place my dispatches for the Alabama. … I confidently expected to visit Havana again, and, perhaps, many times before the end of the war, and therefore was anxious to make the most of the present opportunity for gaining all the information I was able that would in any way aid me in the successful prosecution of such exploits as I might hereafter think it expedient to undertake. …

I found that the friends of the Confederacy were completely in the ascendant in Havana, and that more than one of its capitalists were deeply interested in the profitable but hazardous business of blockade-running, although, through a variety of circumstances, this city was not the headquarters of the extensive trade which the misfortunes of the South were building up, and which promised to yield almost fabulous profits should the war continue for any length of time, as these good money-loving people evidently desired that it should. …

The return trip was as agreeable as the one out, and it greatly refreshed and benefited me, so that when I again set foot on the levee at New Orleans, I felt in better condition than I had been in for a long time and was prepared for any amount of hard work, and of hard work there was likely to be plenty to do, for Butler was tightening his grasp on the people. … I did manage to do several tolerably good strokes of work before New Orleans became too unpleasant a place for me to abide in, and I was forced to the conclusion that it was best for me to take up my quarters elsewhere, outside of Butler’s jurisdiction. …

Unlike many others, I settled myself down resolutely to the business of running the lines and was not satisfied with making a trip or two and then either ceasing operations altogether or else waiting until suspicion should die away before making another attempt. I considered myself as much in the Confederate service as I was when I wore the uniform of an officer, and I felt it my duty to be, like a soldier, always vigilant, and always ready to do the enemy all the damage I possibly could. I therefore went about the prosecution of my plans systematically, taking all proper precautions, of course, to avoid detection, but trusting a good deal to luck and to my ready wit to get me out of any difficulty into which I might happen to fall. …

I do not know whether or not Butler and his satellites ever suspected me up to the time they caught me. When I was finally detected and arraigned before the general, he tried his best to play the bully and to frighten me into making some admissions, and he intimated that I had been under surveillance for a long time. This, however, was probably all brag, or at least I chose to understand it as such, and as I did not frighten at all to his satisfaction, he did not succeed in making a great deal out of me.

Not a great while after my return from Havana, I undertook to go to Robertson’s Plantation, for the purpose of sending some dispatches as well as some verbal information to the Confederate forces stationed at Franklin. It was necessary for me to make the trip after nightfall and to walk the entire distance of seventeen miles, and that such a tramp could scarcely be a particularly pleasant exercise, those who are acquainted with the country around New Orleans need not be reminded. … I had not much difficulty in getting past the outposts, and once sure that I was out of sight and sound of the Federal pickets, I started off at a steady pace, bent upon getting over as much ground as I could before daylight came and rendered it necessary for me to be more cautious in my movements. I made pretty good time, but did not get along as fast as I would have done had I been in male attire, and long before I reached my destination I heartily wished that it had been possible for me to have donned a masculine habit in safety, for a woman’s skirts are not adapted for fast traveling on a Louisiana highway on a sultry summer’s night, with only the stars and the fireflies to lighten the pathway.

It was a terribly lonesome walk. After getting past the pickets, I did not meet with a single human being throughout the whole of my long and weary journey. The only sounds to be heard were the barking of the alligators or the splashing of one of these monsters as he plunged into the stream at my approach. I was frequently startled by the sounds made by these horrid animals close at hand after a considerable interval of silence, but pushed on resolutely despite them, and despite the swarms of mosquitoes, which seemed to increase in number as I proceeded, and which occasioned me infinite annoyance. Whenever I sat down to rest, which I was compelled to do a number of times before my journey was completed, these venomous insects attacked me with the greatest fury, and my face and hands were terribly bitten before I was able to escape from them. These were some of the delights of my long night walk for the purpose of fulfilling my mission as a bearer of dispatches, and it was an immense relief to me when, just about daybreak, I reached my destination, foot-sore and completely tired out, but satisfied with having accomplished my errand without having been interrupted.

Loreta’s Civil War: The woman in battle

Throughout 2016, “Stillness of Heart” will share edited excerpts from the extraordinary memoir of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who chronicled her adventures throughout the U.S. Civil War — either as herself, as a Confederate spy, or in disguise as Confederate Lt. Harry T. Buford.

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Throughout 2016, Stillness of Heart will share edited excerpts from the extraordinary memoir of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who chronicled her adventures throughout the U.S. Civil War — either as herself, as a Confederate spy, or in disguise as Confederate Lt. Harry T. Buford. She fought and led men in terrible battles, fell in love, bore and lost children, and traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, ultimately fulfilling her childhood dream of an adventurous life.

You can read the entire 1876 memoir online here. Learn more about Velazquez (and the incredible documentary film Maria Agui Carter made about her) here.

Part 1: Velazquez introduces us to her life, her heroes, and her aspirations. She is ambitious, confident, romantic, and determined to live life on her terms.

******

The woman in battle is an infrequent figure on the pages of history, and yet, what would not history lose were the glorious records of the heroines — the great-souled women, who have stood in the front rank where the battle was hottest and the fray most deadly — to be obliterated? When women have rushed to the battlefield they have invariably distinguished themselves; and their courage, their enthusiasm, and their devotion to the cause espoused, have excited the brave among the men around them to do and to dare to the utmost, and have shamed the cowards into believing that it was worthwhile to peril life itself in a noble cause, and that honor to a soldier ought to be more valuable than even life.

The records of the women who have taken up arms in the cause of home and country; who have braved the scandals of the camp; who have hazarded reputation — reputation dearer than life — and who have stood in the imminent deadly breach, defying the enemy … are glorious nevertheless; and if steadfast courage, true-hearted loyalty, and fiery enthusiasm go for anything, women have nothing to blush for in the martial deeds of those of their sex who have stood upon the battlefield. …

Catalina de Eranso, the Monja Alferez, or the nun-lieutenant, who was born in the city of Sebastian, Spain, in 1585, was one of the most remarkable of the heroines who have distinguished themselves by playing the masculine role, and venturing into positions of deadly peril. This woman, becoming disgusted with the monotony of convent life, made her escape, and in male garb joined one of the numerous expeditions then fitting out for the New World. Her intelligence and undaunted valor soon attracted the notice of her superior officers, and she was rapidly promoted. Participating in a number of hard-fought battles, she won the reputation of being an unusually skillful and daring soldier, and would have achieved both fame and fortune, were it not that her fiery temper embroiled her in frequent quarrels with her associates. …

After traversing a large portion of the New World, and encountering innumerable perils, she returned to Europe, where she found that the trumpet of fame was already heralding her name, and that there was the greatest curiosity to see her. Traveling through Spain and Italy, she had numerous exceedingly romantic adventures, and while in the last named country she managed to obtain an interview with Pope Urban VIII., who was so pleased with her appearance and her conversation that he granted her permission to wear male attire during the balance of her life. …

From my early childhood Joan of Arc was my favorite heroine; and many a time has my soul burned with an overwhelming desire to emulate her deeds of valor, and to make for myself a name which, like hers, would be enrolled in letters of gold among the women who had the courage to fight like men — ay, better than most men — for a great cause, for friends, and for fatherland.

At length an opportunity offered, in the breaking out of the conflict between the North and the South in 1861, for me to carry out my long-cherished ideas; and it was embraced with impetuous eagerness, combined with a calm determination to see the thing through, and to shrink from nothing that such a step would involve. …

So many persons have assured me that my story is full of romance, and that it cannot fail to interest readers both South and North. … they will find in these pages an unaffected and unpretending but truthful and I hope interesting narrative of what befell me while attached to the army of the Confederate States of America, and while performing services other than those of a strictly military character under the pseudonym of Lieutenant Harry T. Buford. …

[I]t is probable that a vast number of my late associates will now for the first time learn that the handsome young officer — I was accounted an uncommonly good-looking fellow, when dressed in my best uniform, in those days — was a woman, and a woman who was mentally making some very uncomplimentary notes with regard to much of their very naughty conversation. My experience is that the language used by the very best men in masculine society is too often not such as pure-minded women would like to listen to, while that of the worst is so utterly revolting, that it is a pity some men cannot always have decent women at their elbows to keep their tongues from being fouled with blasphemy and obscenity. …