Civil War
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
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
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
Reports of a massive enemy force crossing the James River to assail the paper-thin Confederate lines defending Richmond reached Lt. Read more
Civil War
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
During the early afternoon of July 9, 1864, the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. John M. Read more
Civil War
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
Civil War
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
By early April 1862, the Civil War was already closing in on the South, but the trains still ran on time. Read more
Civil War
Major General John Brown Gordon guided his horse past fields where stalks of waist-high corn glistened in the sun. Read more
Civil War
One of the most hard-fighting divisions in the Army of the Cumberland, the one led by Maj. Read more
Civil War
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
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
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
Civil War
Abraham Lincoln peered out of a west-facing window of the White House, scanning the distant Potomac River with his telescope. Read more
Civil War
After just one month of training, the men of the 27th New York Infantry nervously sensed they would be in the middle of a real fight within minutes. Read more
Civil War
At dawn on August 21, 1863, 450 Confederate Irregulars under William C. Quantrill descended on the town of Lawrence, Kansas. Read more
Civil War
On Saturday, September 26, 1863, six days after the Battle of Chickamauga, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet wrote Confederate Secretary of War James A. Read more
Civil War
The Union officer saw it quite clearly across the Rappahannock River: a hand-painted sign held up by a Rebel soldier that read, “Burnside and his pontoons stuck in the mud. Read more
Civil War
By the end of the winter campaign of 1861-1862, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had shattered the Confederate defenses in northwest Tennessee with a combined land and water attack on Forts Henry and Donelson, forcing General Albert Sidney Johnston to abandon his bastion at Nashville and retreat southward. Read more
