A Glorious Cause

The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

The first biography of Shaw in a quarter century, A Glorious Fate traces his transformation from a rebellious son into one of the Civil War’s most celebrated heroes. Acclaimed historian Kevin M. Levin also reveals the sacrifice and service of the African American men who fought and died for their freedom afresh through Shaw’s eyes. Though Shaw never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices, the Civil War changed the young colonel as it did the nation.

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Searching for Black Confederates

The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved Africans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself.

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Remembering the Battle of the Crater

War as Murder

Unlike traditional battle narratives, this book reveals how Americans have remembered, commemorated, mythologized and at times forgotten one of the Civil War’s most devastating engagements, including the large-scale slaughter of hundreds of United States Colored Troops at the hands of Confederates, who viewed these men as slaves in rebellion.

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Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites

Eight essays that explore sites across the United States

This book surveys how museums and historic sites approached the challenges of interpreting the Civil War era during the Civil War sequicentennial (2011-2015). It offers museum and historian professionals strategies to help shape conversations  and build relations with local communities, develop exhibits, and train interpreters.

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