Civil War

Civil War

A Confederate Intelligence Coup Won the Siege of Charleston Harbor

By Stephen C. Ruder

The Union bid to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1863 was set in motion seven months earlier, in the autumn of 1862. Read more

Civil War

The Grand Review of 1865

By William Stroock

Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, presaging the subsequent surrender of other Confederate forces in the West and the capture of Southern President Jefferson Davis a few weeks later, marked the triumphant end of the nation’s great sundering. Read more

Civil War

Black Thursday at Sayler’s Creek

By David A. Norris

Four hundred Confederate sailors and marines, their small arms loaded and ready, awaited their orders. Some men had their cutlasses within easy reach. Read more

Civil War

End Game at Appomattox

By Mike Phifer

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 Trent Affair: When the Union and Great Britain Nearly Went to War

By Mark Simmons

In November 1861, word swept through London that an American warship, James Adger, in port at Southampton, was planning to put to sea and intercept a British ship bringing Confederate emissaries to Europe. Read more

Civil War

The Disastrous Red River Campaign

By Michael E. Haskew

Nathaniel Banks was a political creature, and with his country in the throes of civil war, he now held the politically obtained rank of major general in the Union Army. Read more

Civil War

Melee on St. Patrick’s Day: The Battle of Kelly’s Ford

By Arnold Blumberg

“Fighting Joe” Hooker was fighting mad when he summoned his chief of cavalry, Brig. Gen. George Stoneman, to his headquarters at Falmouth, Virginia, on February 26, 1863. Read more

Civil War

Fort Fisher: Last Bastion of the Confederacy

By Pedro Garcia

The prospect of running the Federal blockade at Wilmington was easy in the beginning. North Carolina’s principal seaport was blockaded by a single warship, USS Daylight, and no one took the threat seriously. Read more

Civil War

Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas

By Mike Phifer

Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson stuck his left foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Orders were quickly given, and soon a column of 1,700 blue-jacketed troopers of Grierson’s 1st Brigade, along with a battery of artillery, trampled southeast from La Grange, Tennessee, in the early dawn of April 17, 1863. Read more

Civil War

Grant Takes D.C.

By Arnold Blumberg

On March 8, 1864, a rainy Tuesday, President and Mrs. Lincoln held a reception at the White House in Washington. Read more

Civil War

The Battle of Stones River: Into the Cauldron

By Joshua Shepherd

For the weary troops of the Army of the Cumberland, there was precious little sleep to be had in the farm fields and cedar thickets northwest of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Read more

Civil War

Misbegotten Attack at Bristoe Station

By Arnold Blumberg

In late July 1863, after the conclusion of the Gettysburg campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Read more

Civil War

Southerner vs. Southerner: Union Supporters Below the Mason-Dixon Line

By Carole E. Scott

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

Swirling Cavalry Fight at Trevilian Station

By Arnold Blumberg

Despite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more

Civil War

The 1st and 2nd Cavalry Regiments: Jefferson Davis’s Pet Project

By Cowan Brew

Under a bright, high sun in a pale blue Midwestern sky, six companies of the United States Cavalry’s 1st Regiment rode into a grassy valley bordering the south fork of the Solomon River in northwestern Kansas on the afternoon of July 29, 1857. Read more

Civil War

Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield

By Michael E. Haskew

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

Morgan’s Ohio Raid

By Joshua Shepherd

“It was a sad, sorrowful day,” recalled Confederate Major James McCreary, “and more tears of grief rolled over my weather beaten cheeks on this mournful occasion than have before for years.” Read more

Civil War

Brawl at Brawner’s Farm: Jackson’s Bloody Stalemate at Second Manassas

By John Walker

The ground around Manassas, Virginia, was not auspicious for Union Army forces in the first two years of the Civil War. Read more

Civil War

The Murder of Bull Nelson

By Stuart W. Sanders

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

Civil War

Battle of the Hemp Bales

By Steve Lilley

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