Cultural History

'The Battle of Chosin' tells the Harrowing Story of the Pivotal 1950 Korean War Battle

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American Experience The Battle of Chosin airs November 1 at 9PM on WSKG-TV. Revisit the pivotal 1950 Korean War battle through the eyewitness accounts of participants. It is a harrowing story of bloody combat and heroic survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcq5Ko6uizY

On Thanksgiving Day 1950, American-led United Nations troops were on the march in North Korea, and U.S. Marine and Air Force pilots distributed holiday meals. Soon after that peaceful celebration, American military leaders, including General Douglas MacArthur, were caught off guard by the entrance of the People’s Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, into the five-month-old Korean War.

Cultural History

‘The Battle of Chosin’ tells the Harrowing Story of the Pivotal 1950 Korean War Battle

By |

American Experience The Battle of Chosin airs November 1 at 9PM on WSKG-TV. Revisit the pivotal 1950 Korean War battle through the eyewitness accounts of participants. It is a harrowing story of bloody combat and heroic survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcq5Ko6uizY

On Thanksgiving Day 1950, American-led United Nations troops were on the march in North Korea, and U.S. Marine and Air Force pilots distributed holiday meals. Soon after that peaceful celebration, American military leaders, including General Douglas MacArthur, were caught off guard by the entrance of the People’s Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, into the five-month-old Korean War.

Arts

Test Mobile Post

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Cultural History

The Empty Sleeve: Amputees and the Civil War

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, graduate student Erika M. Grimminger discusses the causes and effects of amputations during the Civil War. Note: this post contains a graphic illustration of gangrene. The Empty Sleeve: Amputees and the Civil War
In Episode 4 of Mercy Street, Ezra Foster , the brother of Union Doctor Jed Foster and a Confederate soldier, comes to Mansion House Hospital with a serious leg wound that requires amputating. Ezra Foster’s story represents the stories of thousands of soldiers who suffered though amputations during the American Civil War and returned home missing body parts. While these Union and Confederate soldiers luckily survived serious trauma, their reintegration into society and with their families after the war was, at best, a hard process of readjustment and, at worst, an almost impossible struggle.

Cultural History

Medical Care at Elmira Prison Camp

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new Civil War medical drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, graduate student Gary Emerson discusses the medical care at the Elmira Prison Camp. Medical Care at Elmira Prison Camp
Although medical care improved over the course of the Civil War, prisoners often received inadequate and sometimes negligent medical care in prison camps. When prisoner exchanges broke down in the summer of 1863, both the Union and Confederate armies began placing large numbers of captured men into prison camps. Both sides were unprepared for this turn of events, and what followed proved disastrous. In the summer of 1864, the Union established a prison camp in Elmira, New York to house captured Confederates.

Cultural History

The Battlefield is Hard on a Boy: Suicide in the Civil War

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, Professor Diane Sommerville discusses the topic of suicide and the Civil War.  

Warning: this post contains spoilers. The Battlefield is Hard on a Boy: Suicide in the Civil War
In Episode 4 of Mercy Street, the daring escape of Confederate private Tom Fairfax ends with his suicide. Tom’s boyhood friend Frank Stringfellow spirits him out of Mansion House Hospital under cover of darkness and escorts him to nearby Confederate lines so that Tom can rejoin his regiment. As Frank prepares his departure, Tom begins muttering, looking pre-occupied and anxious.

Cultural History

Women, Abolitionism, and the Coming of the Civil War

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, adjunct professor Kevin Murphy discusses the important role women played in the Abolition Movement. Women, Abolitionism, and the Coming of the Civil War
While the miniseries Mercy Street largely focuses on the practices of wartime medicine, the creative team behind the show also exposes viewers to the integral role women played in nineteenth-century reform. In the show’s opening scene, Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a transplanted New Englander, is interviewed by Dorothea Dix (Cherry Jones), a leader in the fight to reform care for the mentally ill and the Superintendent of Army Nurses during the Civil War. To the middle-aged Dix, Phinney stands out as an assertive but uncontroversial figure, the perfect young woman to become head nurse at the Mansion House Hotel. Well, almost uncontroversial.

Cultural History

Invisible Wounds: PTSD, the Civil War and Those Who "Remained and Suffered"

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, graduate student Jonathan Jones discusses how historians are just beginning to understand how PTSD may have affected Civil War veterans. Invisible Wounds: PTSD and the Civil War
The Civil War was the greatest health crisis in American history. Some 750,000 soldiers died, and another 500,000 were wounded or maimed. From violent bullet and bayonet wounds, results of poor medical care like gangrene and infection, or debilitating illnesses like dysentery and malaria, the bodies and minds of those who survived the Civil War were scarred in a myriad of ways. For decades after the war’s end, thousands of survivors carried reminders of their wartime experiences with them in the form of amputations.

Cultural History

The Civil War And Challenging the "Cult of True Womanhood"

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, Binghamton alumnus, and WSKG producer, Shane Johnson discusses the 19th century concept of domesticity and how women challenged that notion during the Civil War. The Civil War And Challenging the “Cult of True Womanhood”
When Nurse Mary Phinney arrives at Mansion House in the first episode of Mercy Street, the camera circles around her as she tries to comprehend the overwhelming sights and sounds of a Civil War hospital. She has entered a new world. In many ways, the dramatized story of Nurse Phinney mirrors the stories of thousands of women who left their domestic worlds and enter the public sphere during the Civil War. In the process, these women challenged 19th century gender norms, the “cult of true womanhood,” and their acceptable place in American society at the time.

Cultural History

Dying a “Good Death” in the Civil War

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Editor’s Note: WSKG has asked faculty and graduate students in the History Department at Binghamton University to explore the history behind PBS’s new drama Mercy Street. In today’s blog post, graduate student Melissa Franson discusses the 19th century concept of a “good death” and how the Civil War challenged that notion. Dying a “Good Death” in the Civil War
In the first episode of Mercy Street, we are confronted with the gruesome injuries and carnage that men inflicted upon one another during the Civil War. One of the most poignant moments in the series comes when a young soldier is brought into the hospital literally attached to the Union flag. Blood from the young soldier’s wounds has glued his hands to the flag. Having already lost his father in the war, the un-named soldier was unwilling and unable to relinquish his sole responsibility – making sure the flag did not fall. The young, scared soldier desperately tries to assert his masculinity while being comforted by the Army Chaplain, Harry Hopkins.