4 Score 7 yrs Ago @union

January 11, 2011 6:35 PM

Not to be outdone by the New York Time's efforts to cover the American Civil War, the Washington Post is offering a blog (too), before and after photographs of the District of Columbia from 1860 to today, a guide to ongoing Civil War events, and for those with a short attention span and a fondness for 140 characters, Tweeting the Civil War (daily events 150 years after they happened as if they were happening today).
posted by Atreides (11 comments total)

good article in the Automobile Club's Magazine, WESTWAYS on going and visiting civil war battle sites this summer. circulation of over a million readers.
posted by tustinrick at 6:52 PM on January 11, 2011

daily events 150 years after they happened as if they were happening today

As if.
posted by Flunkie at 7:25 PM on January 11, 2011

The Post also started to do a comparison of the value of a DC resident's vote before the Revolutionary War versus after the Revolutionary War, but they didn't have enough content to fill any words besides "unchanged".
posted by inigo2 at 7:29 PM on January 11, 2011

Oooh, thanks. Anyone interested in the topic might also enjoy the Long Recall, a blog project that documents the Civil War in "real time" with links to newspaper articles and primary source documents.
posted by lalex at 7:38 PM on January 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

imagine the civil war fought with today's media, the lack of the media was a major factor in the time-line of the Civil War. I doubt the time-line would be anywhere near the way the war played out, if modern media was there.
posted by tustinrick at 8:49 PM on January 11, 2011

The only downside to this, that I see, is that "newspaper articles and primary source documents" miss the greater story that has emerged 50, 100, and 150 years later. So much is understood only in hindsight and with reflection. "Tweeting the Civil War" is like "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch", in which Agnes's prophesies are like "the future viewed through a toilet paper tube" (quoted from memory). I love history presented in this personal, immediate way; but I miss the corrections that time and subsequent disclosures provide.

That said, I'll be following the Long Recall for the next few years.
posted by SPrintF at 9:16 PM on January 11, 2011

A pity the Post didn't take the time to make sure the Then/Now photos were taken from (remotely) the same perspective. When it's done correctly, the effect is quite striking. (Previously)

It's not possible to do for every shot, thanks to the fact that landscapes themselves often change, but there's really no excuse for photographing the Smithsonian Castle from two completely different angles. The sight-lines haven't been obscured, and the building has remained virtually unmodified since 1860, which is fairly striking in and of itself!
posted by schmod at 10:00 PM on January 11, 2011

Someone please tweet the human genome.
posted by benzenedream at 11:11 PM on January 11, 2011

[i]imagine the civil war fought with today's media, the lack of the media was a major factor in the time-line of the Civil War. I doubt the time-line would be anywhere near the way the war played out, if modern media was there.[/i]

I dunno if much would've changed at the top. Weren't much of the Union's early instances of idiocy frequently due to leadership that pandered more to press opinion than to military necessity?
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 12:54 AM on January 12, 2011

A pity the Post didn't take the time to make sure the Then/Now photos were taken from (remotely) the same perspective.

I came in here to post the same thing.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:11 AM on January 12, 2011

I'm in the middle of a book about Lincoln & Davis at the end of the war, and marked this passage:

[Lincoln] was addicted to this technology [the telegraph]. It was an impatient habit he had formed in Washington. He did not like to wait for important news. To his delight, the War Department telegraph office was a short walk from the Executive Mansion. He became a habitué of the office, befriending the men there, to whom he often made surprise visits at any time of the day or night.

I'm seeing Lincoln hovering over his keyboard, hitting refresh on his email or Twitter feed. :)
posted by epersonae at 12:38 PM on January 12, 2011