Outside the Beltway

Blogging The Civil War

Doug Mataconis · Saturday, December 18, 2010 · 4 comments

Over the next five years, America will be marking in different ways the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War and, in honor of that, The American Interest has created The Long Recall.

Which they describe as follows:

At The American Interest, we have decided to use the opportunity of the Civil War Sesquicentennial to reflect on the war and its consequences. Over the next few years both our online and print editions will feature articles about this defining conflict. To kick off this venture we are publishing The Long Recall: An Aggregator of the Civil War. We are not sure yet how our commemoration will evolve; for now we will present a daily digest of the news and commentary that an intelligent American might have had accessible 150 years ago.

We will use a modern form to present the daily news: our Civil War aggregator that combines a short daily summary of the news along with links to articles that a well-informed Civil War-era reader would have wanted to read. Our goal is to allow readers today to get a feel for what it was like to experience the conflict in real time, to hear the many voices trying to make sense of the conflict, and to sift through sometimes confused and misleading news accounts to try to discern what was actually taking place.

Yesterday’s entry, for example, deals with the South Carolina Secession Convention which was going on during this week in 1860, and which would lead on December 20th, with the secession of South Carolina from the Union.

This should be a very interesting project to follow.

H/T: Andrew Sullivan