Civil War

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

Soldiers: Edward O.C. Ord

By Frank Jastrzembki

Five busts of his greatest lieutenants during the Civil War watch over the sarcophagus of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Read more

Civil War

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

After an almost uninterrupted, four-month-long string of Union successes beginning in early 1862, followed by the advance of a 100,000-man enemy army to the eastern outskirts of its capital at Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly found itself in a life-or-death struggle for its very survival. Read more

Civil War

Civil War Diary

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, when Colonel Ira Coray Abbott ordered his regiment to halt on a low rise called “Stony Hill,” near Gettysburg, a small town in southern Pennsylvania. Read more

Civil War

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more

Civil War

The Battle of Hagerstown

Late in the evening of July 3, 1863, Major General James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart was summoned to the headquarters of Robert E. Read more

Civil War

The Death of General Robert McCook

When the Civil War erupted, so many of Lisbon, Ohio-born Robert McCook’s large extended family joined the Union Army that the clan became known as the “Fighting McCooks.” Read more

Civil War

Battle of the Hemp Bales

Brigadier General James S. Rains’s Confederate cavalry rode confidently toward the prosperous little town of Lexington, Missouri. Dressed in Missouri homespun, Rains’s men hardly looked the part of a flying military column, but most of the hard-riding horsemen had known only victory during their short service. Read more

Civil War

J.E.B. Stuart and Kilpatrick Butt Heads at Buckland Mills

For the Federal government at Washington, D.C., the news from Tennessee was grim in late September 1863. The Union Army of the Cumberland, under Maj. Read more

Civil War

Bloody Assault on Knoxville

At midnight on November 13, 1863, two companies of the Palmetto (South Carolina) Sharpshooters Regiment led by Captain Alfred Foster slipped down to the south bank of the Tennessee River at Huff’s Ferry. Read more