Civil War

Civil War

Forty-rod, Blue Ruin & Oh Be Joyful: Civil War Alcohol Abuse

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

How old were Civil War soldiers?

“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

Longstreet’s Hammer Blow at Manassas

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

Battle of Richmond, Kentucky: Cannae in the Bluegrass State

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

Death in the Wheat Field

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

End Game at Appomattox

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

The Battle of Kernstown: Stonewall’s Victorious Defeat

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

The Murder of Bull Nelson

Few Civil War officers, in either army, were as polarizing as Union Maj. Gen. William “Bull” Nelson. Read more

Civil War

City Under Siege: The New York Draft Riots

For four breathlessly hot days in mid-July 1863, New York City became the northernmost battleground of the Civil War. Read more

Civil War

After the Lincoln Assassination: The World-Wide Manhunt for John Surratt

On the evening of April 14, 1865, noted actor John Wilkes Booth entered Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Read more

Civil War

Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield

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

Not War, But Murder: The Clash at Cold Harbor

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

Sharp Clash at North Anna

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

The Knoxville Campaign: Battle of Fort Sanders

After the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more

Civil War

First Manassas: The Battle of Bull Run

On March 4, 1861, with war clouds threatening the land, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th president of the United States. Read more

Civil War

Chasing Jefferson Davis

When the end came, on April 2, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was sitting in his customary pew at St. Read more

Civil War

Grant’s Ordeal at the Battle of Shiloh

It was raining heavily, a deluge of almost Biblical proportions that hammered down on the exhausted men of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee. Read more

Civil War

The Days of Shoddy: Worst Manufacturers of the Civil War

“For sugar the government often got sand; for coffee, rye; for leather, something no better than brown paper; for sound horses and mules, spavined beasts and dying donkeys; and for serviceable muskets and pistols, the experimental failures of sanguine inventors, or the refuse of shops and foreign armories.” Read more

Civil War

Battle of Gettysburg: No Picnic at Culp’s Hill

As they formed ranks on the Hanover Road one mile east of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the men in the II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia stared anxiously at the giant boulders and towering oak trees dotting the humpbacked prominence known as Culp’s Hill, three quarters of a mile southeast of town. Read more

Civil War

The Civil War’s Most Dedicated Witness

The smoke from the heavy artillery had barely begun to clear over the rocky, shattered landscape of Devil’s Den when the camera shutter snapped. Read more