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CW Talk Radio -S.2-Ep.2- Who Would Not be a Soldier?
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Author:  Blake [ Tue Oct 14, 2025 10:34 pm ]
Post subject:  CW Talk Radio -S.2-Ep.2- Who Would Not be a Soldier?
This is a continuation of the Civil War Talk Radio episode reviews I started. In case anyone is interested you can go back and check out my Season 1 notes in a previous post.

To recap:
The following is just for fun. I am currently listening to the Civil War Talk Radio podcasts https://impedimentsofwar.org/ while out jogging and decided to "start at the beginning" of the series and write up some quick episode reviews here for anyone interested. You can also find these episodes wherever you get your podcasts. I will add a new post to this thread each time I complete a podcast. Feel free to add comments if you have any about the episodes or the points raised in them. I'm also going to break the threads up by seasons so the thread isn't too long.

Season 2 List of Episodes worth listening to... so far...
Author:  Blake [ Tue Oct 14, 2025 10:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: CW Talk Radio - S.2 - Right Makes Might
EPISODE 2.01 -
August 26, 2005

Right Makes Might
Guest: Harold Holzer

Listen to Harold Holzer, author of the award-winning Lincoln At Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President analyze this long neglected but critical oratory.

Blake's Review:
I was looking forward to this conversation based on the fame of Lincoln's Cooper Union speech. Unfortunately, the interview just seemed to never touch all that much on the speech despite spending a good 30 minutes on the topic. Weird, I know. I learned about Lincoln's speechwriting, how he practiced speeches, how he traveled to New York to make the speech, what he did there, and so on and so on. But it felt like a lot of who, what, where, and when stuff but not a lot of "why" he was there.

I guess they did cover that a little. He went there to introduce himself to the eastern Republicans who doubted a westerner could capture the New England states in 1860. Having a westerner like Lincoln running on the Republican ticket was important as he might win the critical Midwest states as well as the stalwart Republican states in the east. Lincoln's success in winning over influential eastern backers became a key ingredient to his eventual success in 1860.

What did he say at Cooper Union? They never really covered that either. I did learn that the speech was written out by Lincoln and that he later gave the speech to a newspaper publisher who replicated it with Lincoln editing it the whole time. As they set the pages for the printing press (amazingly enough the same night as the speech - Lincoln did not sleep apparently) the pages were allowed to fall to the ground where they were likely swept up and thrown away or burned the next day. So while we do have Lincoln's authorized reproduction of his speech, the original is lost.

The conversation did drift, as do all Lincoln chats from 2004 - 2005, to the topic of Lincoln's sexuality. Holzer's opinion? "I don't think it is character assassination, I think it comes out of this sense that people have had for generations that Lincoln belongs to everybody and everybody can identify with Lincoln. In fact, the people who have advanced this theory are gay and are scholars of gay history." Holzer goes on to talk about the authors of the book on Lincoln's homosexuality and how they reportedly found lost love letters between Lincoln and Joshua Speed. "He (one of the authors) later admitted to me in a phone call that he made it up.... He said it was just for 'consciousness raising' and wasn't real. He said he wanted to get people to think that it was possible." Holzer is ready to put this topic to rest (as most people asked by Gerry about this are).

Overall, just an average interview with a few interesting tidbits here and there.
Author:  Blake [ Wed Oct 15, 2025 2:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: CW Talk Radio - S.2 - Who Would Not be a Soldier?
EPISODE 2.02 -
September 02, 2005

Who Would Not be a Soldier?
Guest: Mark Dunkelman

Mark H. Dunkelman has spent a lifetime researching the story of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. It's a fascinating story, stretching from Chancellorsville to Chattanooga to the March to the Sea. In Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment, Dunkelman goes beyond antiquarian detail-mongering to show how the 154th NY became the world in which its members lived, and sometimes died, shedding new light on the importance of the regiment as a community.

Blake's Review:
This interview mainly revolves around the author's personal history as a descendent of a soldier from the 154th New York and how he got interested in writing about and researching the unit. They discuss Dunkelman's views on the unit and the unit's history during the Civil War as a member of the 11th Corps and later of the 20th Corps. Overall, while not a excellent interview, it did keep me listening to the end as Dunkelman does bring up some interesting points about Civil War regiments and how "espirt de corps" is different from unit "morale".

Arguably the most amusing part of the interview was when Dunkelman discusses the origins of the phrase, "Who would not be a soldier?" He found that the members of the 154th New York used this heavily sarcastic phrase (sarcasm not yet becoming a mainstream form of comedy in America in the 19th Century) whenever something bad happened. Therefore, if you wake up covered in snow, "who would not be a soldier?" they would say. Or if they are wounded, lost, tired, hungry, or simply disgruntled, "who would not be a soldier?" Probably a feeling and phrase which can cut across all generations and nationalities.
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