Civil War
Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s fighting blood was up. It was mid-morning on June 10, 1864, and the Tennessean cavalry commander had just hurried Colonel Hylan Lyon’s brigade of Kentuckians from along the muddy Baldwyn road toward Brice’s Crossroads in northern Mississippi. Read more
Civil War
As Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, rode together on horseback along the dust-choked Quaker Road from Glendale to Malvern Hill on the morning of July 1, 1862, they stopped to confer with Maj. Read more
Civil War
Smoke swirled amid the thunderous noise that roared from powerful Dahlgren guns and Brooke rifles. Thousands of spectators along the shore watched the two most dangerous warships in the world at each other at point-blank range. Read more
Civil War
One evening around Christmas of 1861 Union Maj. Gen. Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, commanding the Department of Missouri, dined with his chief of staff, Brig. Read more
Civil War
March 8, 1862, dawned sunny and mild at Hampton Roads, Virginia. To the men of the Union blockading squadron, the day seemed like any other. Read more
Civil War
During the Civil War, the strategic importance of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was readily apparent to both the Union and the Confederacy. Read more
Civil War
Before the fighting even began, before the first impassioned chorus of “On to Richmond!” was raised by the men in blue, the soldiers comprising the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War had to create their own precarious living quarters in the forested wilderness of the Eastern Seaboard. Read more
Civil War
One of the primary reasons given for the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run was the lack of adequate cavalry. Read more
Civil War
Following his greatest victory, at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Read more
Civil War
For much of its history, artillery has been a weapon of mass destruction and attrition, a force designed to cause casualties, destroy fortifications, and wear an enemy down with its noise, explosions, and shrapnel. Read more
Civil War
Shortly after dawn on June 27, 1864, Union artillery crews sprang into action on 200 guns facing miles of the Confederate defenses along the Kennesaw Line near Marietta, Georgia. Read more
Civil War
Seemingly from birth, William Haines Lytle was bound for glory. As the last surviving male offspring of one of Cincinnati’s leading pioneer families, Lytle was the prototypical golden boy. Read more
Civil War
All day on July 4, 1863, the Union and Confederate armies stared at each other across the battlefield of Gettysburg. Three days of massive attacks had bled the Confederates until they lacked the manpower to attack again. Read more
Civil War
Landsman Robert Fleming was on watch aboard the U.S.S. Housatonic, a Union steam sloop patrolling the waters just off Charleston, South Carolina, in the winter of 1864. Read more
Civil War
The two men facing each other across the debate stage at Ottawa, Illinois, on the afternoon of August 21, 1858, were no strangers to one another. Read more
Civil War
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
As dawn broke on April 12, 1864, the Union garrison manning Fort Pillow, a small redoubt on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River in West Tennessee, found itself surrounded by 1,500 Confederate cavalrymen led by Maj. Read more
Civil War
Horace Porter was born April 15, 1837 in Huntingdon, Pa. He traced his ancestry and family motto, “Vigilantia et virtute,” to William De La Grange, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. Read more
Civil War
Colonel Benjamin F. Terry, a sugar planter from Fort Bend County on the coastal plains of Texas, raised the 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment. Read more
Civil War
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
