The American Civil War, despite taking place 160 years ago on a distant continent, remains one of history’s most evocative episodes.
The bitter conflict was fought principally over the issue of slavery. Around 700,000 soldiers died as the Union (the North) fought the Confederacy (the South) in a war which tore the United States apart between 1861 and 1865. Now, a new UK-led project will help tell the stories of British and other immigrant sailors - including some from North East England - in the American Civil War in ways never before possible.
The “Civil War Bluejackets” Project - so named because of the distinctive uniform worn by US Civil War sailors - is a collaboration between historians at Northumbria University and computer scientists at the University of Sheffield. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project launches next week on September 6, with a call for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War “muster rolls”, documents that were carried on board US ships and which capture the personal details of the estimated 118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865.
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Among the stories the team hopes to reveal are the thousands of English, Scottish and Welsh men who fought for the Union navy. The project will look to discover more about some of those who returned to home shores—men like George H Bell whose remains rest today in Elswick Cemetery, Newcastle. In November 1864, George was awarded the Medal of Honor—the US equivalent of the Victoria Cross—for his extraordinary courage off the coast of Texas during the American Civil War.
The project team is making use of the online Zooniverse platform to share tens of thousands of these muster rolls, and is asking the public to help in revealing their contents. Principal Investigator, Professor David Gleeson of Northumbria University said: “We are calling on 'people-power' to help us tell the story of common sailors in the Civil War in a way never before possible.
"We estimate that more than 30% of these men were British or Irish immigrants - another 15% were African American. With their help, we aim to create a new freely available database of these men, and use the information generated by citizen scientists to explore the social and military experiences of these ordinary people in a way never before possible.”
As well as using public transcriptions to decipher the muster rolls, the team also hopes to develop new software to allow computers to “read” 19th century hand-writing. Co-Investigator Dr Morgan Harvey of the University of Sheffield said: “By comparing the public’s transcriptions with the original 19th century hand-writing, we hope to train computers to assist in the reading and deciphering of historic documents, thereby creating a major new tool in the armoury of anyone interested in uncovering the past.”
Those interested in finding out more about the project can visit the www.civilwarbluejackets.com website, or go direct to the Zooniverse Civil War Bluejackets page at https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/bluejackets/civil-war-bluejackets .
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