Civil War Archives

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

Civil War

Union General John Pope: Cracking Island No. 10

By Robert Collins-Suhr

With its whistle blaring, the Confederate gunboat Grampus steamed into Madrid Bend, where Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas come together on the Mississippi River. Read more

Civil War

The Battle of Pea Ridge: Showdown in the Ozarks

By Joshua Van Dereck

For three weeks in February 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis led his Army of the Southwest on a 200-mile advance southward across the Ozark plateau in Missouri and into northern Arkansas. Read more

Baker’s men fought valiantly, but their counterattacks failed to reverse the tide of battle.

Civil War

Death on a High Bluff

By Mike Phifer

It was almost dark when Captain Chase Philbrick led a reconnaissance party of 20 volunteers from Company H of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry across to Harrison’s Island situated in the middle of the Potomac River. Read more

Civil War

Roar of the Lightning Brigade

By Joshua Shepherd

Convinced that a major fight was in the offing, 33-year-old Colonel John T. Wilder clambered up the branches of a nearby tree as the sun dipped below the horizon. Read more

A drawing of the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry by John Hillen, a soldier in the unit before he was wounded and discharged.

Civil War

The Unforeseen Precipice

By Roy Morris Jr.

Every war will astonish you,” American General Dwight D. Eisenhower said after World War II. As the leader of the Allied forces that successfully landed on D-Day and marched into Berlin 11 months later, Eisenhower obviously knew what he was talking about. Read more

Civil War

Brandy Station: The Largest American Civil War Cavalry Battle

By David A. Norris

Major Henry B. McClellan should have had a quiet afternoon. At dawn on June 9, 1863, Union cavalry had launched a surprise attack on Maj. Read more

Civil War

CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: The Greatest High Seas Duel of the Civil War

By Don Hollway

On August 24, 1862, newly promoted Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate States Navy called his largely English crew to the quarterdeck of his new command, the 220-foot battle cruiser Alabama, lying off the coast of Terceira in the Azores. Read more

Civil War

Battle of New Market Heights

By David Norris

Reports of a massive enemy force crossing the James River to assail the paper-thin Confederate lines defending Richmond reached Lt. Read more

Captain David Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, is attacked by a Confederate fire raft as the Union fleet makes its run past Forts Jackson and St. Philip on April 24, 1862. The Hartford caught fire, but prompt action by the ship’s crew saved her from destruction.

Civil War

Conquering the Queen City

By Pedro Garcia

The victory at Manassas on July 21, 1861, had made the Rebels overconfident bordering on lethargic. As one observer noted, “It created a paralysis of enterprise that was more damaging than disaster was for the North.” Read more

Civil War

Stand-up Fight at Peachtree Creek

By Arnold Blumberg

During the early afternoon of July 9, 1864, the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. John M. Read more

Civil War

Edwin Stanton: From Secretary to First in Command

By Paul A. Thomsen

In the late hours of April 14, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sat at a small table in the Petersen House across the street from Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Read more

Confederate Brigadier General Wade Hampton, momentarily alone, desperately fends off enemy saber blows in a swirling melee in the farmland south of the York Turnpike at Gettysburg in Don Troiani’s painting, Hampton’s Duel.

Civil War

“Keep to your Sabers, Men”: J.E.B. Stuart’s Charge at Gettysburg

By Cowan Brew

An angry gloom hung like dust over the 6,000 Confederate cavalrymen trooping up the York Turnpike in the early dawn of July 3, 1863. Read more

Civil War

James Andrews vs. William Fuller in the Great Locomotive Chase

By Don Hollway

By early April 1862, the Civil War was already closing in on the South, but the trains still ran on time. Read more

Veteran Union troops take up a strong position in a ditch as Confederates stream down a hillside on the Thomas Farm in an effort to uncover river crossings for the rest of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederate army at the Battle of Monocacy.

Civil War

A Murderous Fire of Musketry

By William E. Welsh

Major General John Brown Gordon guided his horse past fields where stalks of waist-high corn glistened in the sun. Read more

Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans at far left directs reinforcements to strengthen the Federal line in the face of a strong Confederate assault on the morning of December 31, 1862.

Civil War

Winter Storm on Stones River

By Robert L. Durham

One of the most hard-fighting divisions in the Army of the Cumberland, the one led by Maj. Read more

Determined to win back eastern Tennessee from the advancing Federals, Confederates hurled themselves at the Northerners in the forested and broken fields near Chickamauga Creek in northwestern Georgia.

Civil War

On They Came Like an Angry Flood: The Battle of Chickamauga

By Arnold Blumberg

It had been a little over six months since Major General William S. Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland had checked the Confederates at the Battle of Stones River (December 31,1862–January 2,1863). Read more

Civil War

The Crime At Pickett’s Mill

By Roy Morris, Jr.

Peering through the thick underbrush west of Little Pumpkin Vine Creek, 30 miles northwest of Atlanta, on the afternoon of May 27, 1864, Ambrose Bierce had a bad feeling. Read more

Civil War

Alfred Duffie: A ‘Napoleon’ in the Civil War

By Arnold Blumberg

Napoleon Alexandre Duffie was born on May 1, 1833, in Paris, France. His father, Jean August Duffie, was a prosperous sugar refiner and mayor of the village of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre. Read more