Port Hudson

The Disastrous Red River Campaign

By Michael E. Haskew

Nathaniel Banks was a political creature, and with his country in the throes of civil war, he now held the politically obtained rank of major general in the Union Army. Read more

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Fort Fisher: Last Bastion of the Confederacy

By Pedro Garcia

The prospect of running the Federal blockade at Wilmington was easy in the beginning. North Carolina’s principal seaport was blockaded by a single warship, USS Daylight, and no one took the threat seriously. Read more

Well-led and well-equipped, Union cavalrymen in the western theater of the war were able to match their Confederate opponents in both firepower and audacity. Premier Union cavalry leader Phil Sheridan got his start in Mississippi.

Port Hudson

Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas

By Mike Phifer

Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson stuck his left foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Orders were quickly given, and soon a column of 1,700 blue-jacketed troopers of Grierson’s 1st Brigade, along with a battery of artillery, trampled southeast from La Grange, Tennessee, in the early dawn of April 17, 1863. Read more

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Blood on the Snow: The Battle of Nashville

By John Walker

For the black-skinned, blue-clad soldiers deployed on the extreme left flank of the Union Army outside Nashville, Tennessee, the order to advance announced at dawn on December 15, 1864, was a long time coming. Read more