Civil War

Civil War

Stonewall Jackson and John Gibbon at Brawner’s Farm

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 CSS Alabama’s Place in Naval History

The CSS Alabama went to her watery grave on June 19, 1864, off the coast of France, but the lingering effects of her wartime successes made naval history: she continued to haunt the American and British governments for years to come, embroiling the two English-speaking nations in a legal test of wills that would last well into the next decade. Read more

Civil War

Brandy Station: The Largest American Civil War Cavalry Battle

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

Last of the Gray Phantoms: The Confederate Blockade Runners

Despite the increasing effectiveness of the Union naval blockade, more and more steamers plied the waters between the few remaining Confederate ports and Nassau, St. Read more

Civil War

Military Intelligence: The Civil War Provost Guard

With the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War began in earnest. The first recruits, on both sides, were completely uninitiated in the ways of military life. Read more

Civil War

War So Terrible: The Battle of Fredericksburg

Word spread like wildfire through the camps of the Army of the Potomac during the second week of November 1862: “Little Mac” was out, “Old Burn” was in. Read more

Civil War

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

Civil War

Firing on Fort Sumter: the Start of Civil War

Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, four men in a rowboat made their way across the pitch-black harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, toward an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more

Civil War

Civil War Fieldworks

Ever since Julius Caesar’s legions conquered Gaul, opposing armies have built temporary fortifications, or fieldworks, during campaigns in the open countryside. Read more

Civil War

A Second Sumter: The Struggle for Pensacola

By Eric Niderost

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 caused a national crisis of unprecedented scope. For years, Southern firebrands had defended slavery and exalted the principle of states’ rights. Read more

Civil War

Long Shadows at Ball’s Bluff

For all his great political skills, Abraham Lincoln was a man who made few close personal friends. He was both too private and too ambitious to court a large number of intimate acquaintances. Read more

Civil War

Rose O’Neal Greenhow: The Spy Who Won Bull Run

“But for you, there would have been no Battle of Bull Run.” When Confederate President Jefferson Davis made that blanket statement in the summer of 1862, he was not addressing Pierre G.T. Read more

Civil War

Pickett’s Charge: “We Gained Nothing But Glory”

By Eric Niderost

July 3, 1863, dawned clear and bright, the warm sun promising even greater heat to come. By noon, temperatures were already in the low 90s, a typically hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. Read more

Civil War

Jefferson Davis in Mexico

On September 20, 1846, Colonel Jefferson Davis and a regiment of untested Mississippi volunteers stood before the fortress of La Teneria at Monterrey in northern Mexico. Read more

Civil War

The Telegraph

Early in the American Civil War, during the first months of 1862, Union General Henry Halleck, commanding from his headquarters in St. Read more

Civil War

Lee’s October ’63 Move on Meade

In early October 1863, three months after the setback at Gettysburg, three months after Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart was rebuked by his esteemed superior Robert E. Read more

Civil War

The Memoirs of Herbert Carlton

Editor’s note: Noted military writer Bud Feuer especially enjoys discovering first-person accounts and diaries. He found the following in “a junk shop” written in pencil on brown wrapping paper. Read more

Civil War

Big Black River

Big battles make the history books. But for the soldiers, it was often the smaller, fiercer fights they remembered most keenly later in their lives. Read more

Civil War

Stonewall Jackson’s Hard Defeat At The Second Battle of Manassas

As the bright red sun was slowly setting over their shoulders on the balmy evening of August 28, 1862, Union troops marching east along the Warrenton Turnpike knew nothing of what awaited them. Read more

Civil War

Battle of Belmont: Ulysses S. Grant’s First Battle

When the Civil War started in 1861, there were only two officers in the Union Army who had commanded a force in battle larger than a brigade. Read more