Research

As of the fall of 2015 I had three projects underway.

As of the summer of 2020 the first two items had long since been completed and the book on Democrats is in its final stages.

  • I have just recently completed an essay on the New York Civil War Diarist Maria Lydig Daly.

(1)  “The Election of 1864: Revisiting that ‘Blind Memo’”

This is a paper  delivered at the Huntington Library in September..

(2) “Enlistment, Conscription and Duty in the Civil War”

This is an essay for the Civil War Monitor.  It revisits some themes from my recent monograph.

(3) A book project on the northern Democrats during the Civil War.

This will be my central focus for the next year or two.  I am interested in using the example of the Civil War Democrats as a way to revisit how we think about, and write about, political history.  One goal is to attempt a new integration of “traditional” political topics (elections etc) with the story of politics in the streets (and in the parlors).  Another goal is to figure out how to tell a compelling story about folks who we (or at least I) think of as being on the “wrong side of history.”