Civil War
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
Civil War
During the Civil War western Virginia was crucial to the Union. The region that lay west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River held nearly a quarter of Virginia’s nonslave population when the war began in 1861. Read more
Civil War
The Confederate States of America fought two wars, one against the armed forces of the United States and one against fellow Southerners who joined either the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Read more
Civil War
The CSS Alabama went to her watery grave on June 19, 1864, off the coast of France, but the lingering effects of her wartime successes made naval history: she continued to haunt the American and British governments for years to come, embroiling the two English-speaking nations in a legal test of wills that would last well into the next decade. Read more
Civil War
The Civil War was fought out in the open on battlefields across the United States. But beginning in early 1864, the highest levels of the Confederate government decided that another, more clandestine war would be fought behind the lines in the North. Read more
Civil War
Major General Ulysses S. Grant sat on his horse in late April 1863 next to a narrow bridge over a wide marsh on the west bank of the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. Read more
Civil War
Union General Benjamin Butler was baffled. Every night a picket guard went to an outpost 1½ miles from Fort Monroe, Virginia. Read more
Civil War
“All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,” author Herman Melville wrote. That was certainly true of the American Civil War, when some 70 percent of the troops on either side were 23 or younger, and the median age for a soldier was 18. Read more
Civil War
In the rolling fields on the south side of the Warrenton Turnpike, the men of the 5th New York of Colonel Gouverneur K. Read more
Civil War
On September 7, 1862, Colonel Walter Taylor of General Robert E. Lee’s staff wrote to his sister: “The Yankee papers of the 6th exhibit a gloomy picture for our enemy. Read more
Civil War
The warm spring breeze blew the still-new green of the trees about Falmouth, Virginia, as the last of three rousing cheers echoed into the sky. Read more
Civil War
Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, personal aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, maneuvered his mount past ammunition wagons, ambulances, stragglers, and prisoners jamming the muddy roads leading back to headquarters from Five Forks, Virginia, on the evening of April 1, 1865. Read more
Civil War
Sunday morning, March 23, 1862, was sunny and warm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a devout Christian, did not like to fight on the Lord’s Day. Read more
Civil War
Few Civil War officers, in either army, were as polarizing as Union Maj. Gen. William “Bull” Nelson. Read more
Civil War
For four breathlessly hot days in mid-July 1863, New York City became the northernmost battleground of the Civil War. Read more
Civil War
On the evening of April 14, 1865, noted actor John Wilkes Booth entered Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Read more
Civil War
The White House was a somber place in the summer of 1862. The Civil War was in the midst of its second costly year, and the Union armies had yet to win a significant victory in the eastern theater. Read more
Civil War
By William E. Welsh
Private Augustus Du Bois marched forward at daybreak on June 3, 1864, along with hundreds of other members of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery regiment to a thin belt of timber a mile south of the key road junction of Cold Harbor. Read more
Civil War
Dripping wet Union soldiers stepped out of the North Anna River’s Jericho Ford on May 22, 1864, setting foot in Hanover County, Virginia. Read more
Civil War
After the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more
