Civil War

Civil War

Bloody Fiasco at the Crater

In the summer of 1864, after six weeks of virtually constant combat in the Wilderness area of northern Virginia, the Union and Confederate armies of Ulysses S. Read more

Civil War

Rebel Blunder at Fredericksburg

By David A. Norris

Brig. Gen. George Gordon Meade’s division spent three hours bombarded by Confederate guns on December 13, 1862. Read more

Civil War

“Like A Picture Of Hell”

The two Union generals faced each other on the afternoon of May 1, 1863, at the large house by the Orange Turnpike that had been chosen as the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. Read more

Civil War

Union Army Engineers

The Union Army’s ambitious Overland Campaign began on May 4, 1864. It was the fourth year of the Civil War, and Lt. Read more

Civil War

Glory Enough for One Day: Phil Sheridan’s Victory at Cedar Creek

Phil Sheridan had a bad feeling. The bantam-sized Union general always trusted his instincts, and now, in mid-October 1864, those instincts were telling him that trouble was brewing back at the front, where his Army of the Shenandoah was encamped near Cedar Creek, Virginia, resting and relaxing after a busy few weeks burning civilian farms and slaughtering thousands of head of livestock from Staunton north to Woodstock. Read more

Civil War

The Death of a Legend: The Battle of Yellow Tavern

“We have been badly used up,” a sergeant in the 5th New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment complained in a letter to his wife on May 8, 1864, four days before J.E.B. Read more

Civil War

“Many Gallant Men Were Lost”

Rifle flashes erupted at intervals on the base of the slope. The flashes gave away the location of the confederate troops advancing in large numbers in the darkness of the night of July 2, 1863, on the eastern side of Culp’s Hill southeast of the town of Gettysburg. Read more

Civil War

Petersburg’s Broadway Landing: Union Supply Depot

In 1864, the Civil War was raging across the United States. At the epicenter of the seemingly stalemated conflict was the vital Confederate stronghold at Petersburg, Va. Read more

Civil War

Yelling Like Demons

Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart was in all his glory. It was June 8, 1863, and the Confederate cavalry commander was putting on a grand review of his horse soldiers on a plain west of the Rappahannock River near Brandy Station, Virginia, for none other than General Robert E. Read more

Civil War

Blood on the Fallow Fields

Everyone in Washington, D.C., knew the reason Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant was in town. He had a hard time moving around without people applauding him everywhere he went. Read more

Civil War

“God Has Been Our Shield”

The regiment of Yankees, which was largely composed of German immigrants, advanced through a field of clover in the Shenandoah Valley in search of the Rebel line to its front on June 8, 1862. Read more

Civil War

Bold Gamble at Vicksburg

The citizens of Vicksburg would scarcely remember a more beautiful evening. The sky on April 16, 1863, was cloudless, and as the ruddy glow of twilight faded, the vast expanse was speckled with stars. Read more

Civil War

Disaster at Fort Donelson

A signal rocket set off by Confederate pickets streaked skyward in the damp early morning of February 4, 1862. Read more

Civil War

Siege of Port Hudson: Last Bastion on the Mississippi

Not long after Union Flag Officer David Farragut of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron received the surrender of New Orleans on April 29, 1862, he began pondering his next move. Read more

Civil War

Forrest’s Finest Hour

Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s fighting blood was up. It was mid-morning on June 10, 1864, and the Tennessean cavalry commander had just hurried Colonel Hylan Lyon’s brigade of Kentuckians from along the muddy Baldwyn road toward Brice’s Crossroads in northern Mississippi. Read more

Civil War

Mowed Down by the Fifties

As Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, rode together on horseback along the dust-choked Quaker Road from Glendale to Malvern Hill on the morning of July 1, 1862,  they stopped to confer with Maj. Read more

Civil War

Clash of the Civil War Ironclads

Smoke swirled amid the thunderous noise that roared from powerful Dahlgren guns and Brooke rifles. Thousands of spectators along the shore watched the two most dangerous warships in the world at each other at point-blank range. Read more

Civil War

Prizes of the Line

One evening around Christmas of 1861 Union Maj. Gen. Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, commanding the Department of Missouri, dined with his chief of staff, Brig. Read more

Civil War

Thomas O. Selfridge: A Naval Hero of the Civil War

March 8, 1862, dawned sunny and mild at Hampton Roads, Virginia. To the men of the Union blockading squadron, the day seemed like any other. Read more

Civil War

Sealing Vicksburg’s Fate

During the Civil War, the strategic importance of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was readily apparent to both the Union and the Confederacy. Read more