Lieutenant Nathan Huntley Edgerton, Sgt. Maj. Thomas R. Hawkins, and Sergeant Alexander Kelly of the 6th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops carry forward the regiment's colors as it presses its attack at Chaffin's Farm in a painting titled "Three Medals of Honor" by artist Don Troiani.

Civil War

Warfare History Network is your best source for military history online. This is where we bring you our coverage on all aspects of the American Civil War—from the first shots fired at Fort Sumter to Antietam to the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. In addition to substantial military coverage, we also examine the political climate of the 1860s and how the war influenced civilian life in the North and South. A trove of Civil War photos, maps, and color illustrations complement our written contributions from a team of established writers, including William Welsh, Pedro Garcia, and acclaimed author-historian Roy Morris Jr.

Civil War

Fire Over Texas: Galveston in the Civil War

By R. Thomas Campbell

When Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, it did not take long for the new Confederate government to realize that the state’s 385-mile coastline was extremely vulnerable to enemy assaults. Read more

Civil War

Civil War Fieldworks

By Kevin O’Beirne

Ever since Julius Caesar’s legions conquered Gaul, opposing armies have built temporary fortifications, or fieldworks, during campaigns in the open countryside. Read more

Civil War

When the Earth Moved

Photo Essay by Kevin M. Hymel

The crater that punched a hole in the Confederate lines and threw a 200-foot umbrella of dirt, men, and guns into the air on July 30, 1864, could today be mistaken for a gentle dip in the rolling, slight hills of the Petersburg countryside. Read more

Rallying around their tattered flag, the 12th Virginia Infantry crashes into the Federal vanguard of Brigadier General Edward Ferrero at the edge of the Crater. Painting by John Adams Elder.

Civil War

Bloody Fiasco at the Crater

By Arnold Blumberg

In the summer of 1864, after six weeks of virtually constant combat in the Wilderness area of northern Virginia, the Union and Confederate armies of Ulysses S. Read more

Civil War

Day One of the Battle of Stones River

By Mike Phifer

For weeks, Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans had been hearing increased grumblings from Washington about how he should move his army out of Nashville and strike General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate forces 30 miles away in Murfreesboro. Read more

Confederate General Richard Taylor’s Louisiana “Tiger” Brigade attacks the guns of of Battery E, 4th U.S. Artillery in the Coaling during the Battle of Port Republic in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on June 9, 1862.

Civil War

Rebel Fury at Port Republic

By Robert L. Durham

Confederate infantry on the northeastern outskirts of Port Republic in the Shenandoah Valley charged up the slopes of a ravine on June 9, 1862, against Union artillery that had been ravaging their ranks all morning. Read more

The Gettysburg cyclorama shows a badly wounded Alonzo Cushing commanding one of his guns in The Angle.

Civil War

Union Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing

By William E. Welsh

One of the smoothbore cannons in Captain Merritt B. Miller’s Third Company of the Washington Artillery deployed west of Emmitsburg Road just south of the town of Gettysburg fired a single round at 1:07 p.m. Read more

Union troops assail the Confederate center at Champion’s Hill midway between the state capitol of Jackson, Mississippi, and the stronghold of Vicksburg. The action at Champion’s Hill proved to be the decisive action of the Vicksburg campaign.

Civil War

Savage Encounter at Champion’s Hill

By Robert L. Durham

The barren summit of Champion’s Hill presented an ideal site for Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s Confederate army to deploy artillery batteries on the morning of May 16, 1863. Read more

The 9th Massachusetts Battery fights a desperate rear-guard action near the Trostle Farm at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. Painting by Don Troiani.

Civil War

The Model 1857 12-pounder

By Gustav Person

Among the historic inventory of the United States Army’s artillery weapons, few pieces have enjoyed a more predominant role or reputation than the Model 1857 12-pounder gun-howitzer, which became a mainstay of the Federal artillery during the Civil War. Read more

Civil War

The Creation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission

By Lawrence Weber

In the spring of 1861, a group of influential northern men and women, led by Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows and social reformer Dorothea Dix, met in New York City to discuss the formation of a sanitary commission, modeled after the British Sanitary Commission established during the Crimean War, to provide relief to sick and wounded soldiers in the Union Army. Read more