Exciting Times

There has been a gradual uptick in the number of books and journal articles devoted to the trans-Mississippi. Even the terminology is changing as seen in the December 2016 issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era which is devoted to "The Civil War West." However, these are not articles about the Western Theater. Pekka Hamalainen's article is titled "Reconstructing the Great Plains: The Long Struggle for Sovereignty and Dominance in the Heart of the Continent." Megan Kate Nelson explores "The Civil War from Apache Pass," and Kevin Waite examines "Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West." The issue ends with a review essay by Stacey L. Smith, "Beyond North and South: Putting the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction."

A New Civil War Journal

Yesterday, I received the first issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era, a joint venture of the University of North Carolina Press and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at The Pennsylvania State University. The first issue contains an editor’s note, three articles, a review essay, a book review section, and an article about the job market for historians specializing in the nineteenth-century. Altogether there are 140 pages of text plus several pages of advertisements in this inaugural issue. What caught my attention mostly was the inclusion of an article by LeeAnn Whites titled “Forty Shirts and a Wagonload of Wheat: Women, the Domestic Supply Line, and the Civil War on the Western Border.” Pleasant to see an article about the trans-Mississippi in the first issue!