Civil War
Even more than most people, Union general William Rosecrans was often his own worst enemy. Hot-tempered, emotional, and frequently given to speaking—or shouting—before he thought, the Ohio-born commander of the Army of the Cumberland made enemies easily, even if he usually forgot in an instant what had made him angry in the first place. Read more
Civil War
Along with five other Confederate generals of the Army of Tennessee, Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne lost his life in the futile Confederate frontal assault at the Battle of Franklin fought November 30, 1864, in central Tennessee. Read more
Civil War
Few Mexican War generals fought more battles than Tennessee-born Gideon Pillow—the problem was that many of those battles were with his own superiors. Read more
Civil War
The young captain of engineers who discovered the dangerous bulge in the “Mule Shoe” salient at Spotsylvania, Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, would go on to make a name for himself during the Civil War and the subsequent Indian campaigns out West. Read more
Civil War
When Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first conscription act in American history in March 1863, one of the most unpopular parts of the widely unpopular act was the provision allowing draft-eligible males to hire substitutes to take their place in the army. Read more
Civil War
With the fall of Vicksburg in the first week of July 1863, the strongest remaining Confederate presence in Mississippi was a recently thrown together force of 26,000 soldiers under General Joseph E. Read more
Civil War
The men who wore Confederate gray were notoriously high-strung and quick to anger—none more so than Stonewall Jackson and Ambrose Powell Hill. Read more
Civil War
In 1863 the tide was running against the South—except in Texas. A new Confederate commander, John Magruder, chased the Yankees out of both Galveston and the Rio Grande Valley. Read more
Civil War
Our cause is on the advance—our star in the ascendant. The tide is swelling in our favor: shall we take it at its flood…? Read more
Civil War
Most history books teach that the War between the States began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries ringing Charleston harbor fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender the following day. Read more
Civil War
The city of New York provided more regiments than did many states during the Civil War, and the deeds of several of its regiments, such as the 9th New York “Hawkins’s Zouaves,” 39th New York “Garibaldi Guard,” and 42nd New York “Tammany Regiment” are well known. Read more
Civil War
The citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, awoke one morning in late June 1863 to find the Civil War literally at their doorsteps. Read more
Civil War
Spying is a dangerous game.
Even the best spies sometimes get caught, as Confederate raider John Yates Beall, “the Mosby of the Chesapeake,” learned the hard way in 1865, and the consequences are never pretty to contemplate. Read more
Civil War
When Mark Twain “lit out for the territory” in July 1861 from his erstwhile role as the world’s worst Confederate ranger, he joined a small but distinguished list of future American literary greats who similarly decided, as had Twain, that they were “not rightly equipped for this awful business.” Read more
Civil War
Confederate offensives into two border states, Maryland and Kentucky, formed the key highlights of the second half of 1862 for the Confederacy. Read more
Civil War
Out of the mist on the rolling ground of the Shenandoah Valley the bulk of the Confederate Army bore down on the Union left flank on the morning of October 19, 1864. Read more
Civil War
Tall, handsome, and ramrod-straight Winfield Scott Hancock perfectly embodied his flattering nickname, “Hancock the Superb.” His performance on Civil War battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg underscored that sobriquet. Read more
Civil War
John Pope’s second campaign as an army commander went considerably better than his first. Not that it did his reputation—or Abraham Lincoln’s, for that matter—any particular good. Read more
Civil War
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the great American poet Walt Whitman was a man on the skids, personally and professionally. Read more
Civil War
The short-lived Whig Party had a fair degree of success electing candidates for president, winning two of the five presidential elections in which it fielded a candidate. Read more
