Hannah Metheny

Fall 2009 History 216-01: From the American Revolution through the American Civil War

• General Lee, I Have No Division

  I will confess myself guilty of holding General Lee in high regard. No man has been so loved by his men, or so idolized by his country. For a northerner, and a re-enactor to boot, this is complete heresy-I will probably be swamped with emails and facebook comments from my horrified re-enacting family shortly after I post this-but as someone who portrays southern civilians and is an ardent fan of Killer Angels and the movie Gettysburg I try to see both sides. Sometimes, though, certain facts are inescapable. After being faced with plain and simple facts, numbers and tactical decisions from the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns, I cannot help but wonder how these men adored their general, and how he is still an icon today.

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  • Fri, 23 Oct 2009
  • Invasion!: The Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns

• Our Victories Are Steeped In Blood

  This is the second letter between Gabriel and Anne. However, we are going to assume that at least one other letter has been sent between March and July since the Confederate postal service wasn't so bad as to take all of four months to deliver a letter (at least I hope so).

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  • Fri, 16 Oct 2009
  • Lee Takes Command: The Seven Days Battles

• Richmond Under Siege

  Having been a reenactor for most of my life, the best way I feel to write about the Civil War is from the point of view of the people who actually lived it. So, I decided to write this letter as the first in a series of letters between two fictional young people caught up in the war. Gabriel has joined the 33rd Virginia, part of Stonewall's Brigade, while his fiancée, Anne, is left on the home front to deal with the conflict there, giving both civilian and military views on the war. Gabriel's response to Anne's letter will come following the Seven Days Battle.

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  • Fri, 09 Oct 2009
  • The Peninsula Campaign

• A Double Edged Blade

  Plantations, like Somerset Place in North Carolina, have always represented the power of the elite of the South. To the outsider, and even to the local insider, they displayed the vast wealth, education and political power of the people living there. Looking deeper though, there are signs of weakness throughout plantations and the plantation system as a whole. The planter's position, and thus that of the entire southern economy, so long thought to be stable, was becoming increasingly precarious in the years prior to the Civil War, all because of the thing they depended on most of all: slaves.

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  • Fri, 02 Oct 2009
  • Somerset Place

• All Men Are Created Equal: True or False?

  I visited Monticello six years ago during the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. The thing I remember most about the visit was walking into the front parlor and standing there agog at the huge racks hanging on the walls and the animal skins hanging on the balcony. I also remember that in my haste to get pictures in the gardens I managed to trip on the stairs and destroy my camera. It wasn't exactly one of my finer moments. But I had a book waiting for me in the car and all was right with the world. I didn't hear, or at least didn't register, the name of Sally Hemings. Jefferson had always been this larger than life figure to me.

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  • Fri, 11 Sep 2009
  • Two Gentlemen from William & Mary

• The Price of Gentility

  Gentility and wealthy have always been prized throughout the ages as hallmarks of status and power. So when I imagined the Myers house, owned by Moses Myers, one of the wealthiest merchants in 1790s Norfolk, I of course imagined something grand. Tables set with fine china, walls covered in beautiful portraits, windows hung with the best cloth. The Myers house did not fail to deliver. In fact, it went completely above and beyond my expectations. It went so far that that it seemed to border on obsession. Everything in the house it seemed was there for a purpose and one purpose alone: to prove that the Myers family was genteel.

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  • Fri, 28 Aug 2009
  • The Merchant of Norfolk