Lieutenant Nathan Huntley Edgerton, Sgt. Maj. Thomas R. Hawkins, and Sergeant Alexander Kelly of the 6th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops carry forward the regiment's colors as it presses its attack at Chaffin's Farm in a painting titled "Three Medals of Honor" by artist Don Troiani.

Civil War

Civil War

Mowed Down by the Fifties

By William E. Welsh

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

Forrest’s Finest Hour

By Mike Phifer

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

Yelling Like Demons

By Mike Phifer

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

Baker’s men fought valiantly, but their counterattacks failed to reverse the tide of battle.

Civil War

Death on a High Bluff

By Mike Phifer

It was almost dark when Captain Chase Philbrick led a reconnaissance party of 20 volunteers from Company H of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry across to Harrison’s Island situated in the middle of the Potomac River. Read more

Captain David Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, is attacked by a Confederate fire raft as the Union fleet makes its run past Forts Jackson and St. Philip on April 24, 1862. The Hartford caught fire, but prompt action by the ship’s crew saved her from destruction.

Civil War

Conquering the Queen City

By Pedro Garcia

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

A 19th-century print of the Battle of Fort Pillow conveys the Union sentiment that the Confederate capture of the small redoubt was a massacre. The affair remains one of the most contentious incidents in America’s history.

Civil War

A Deplorable Affair

By John Walker

As dawn broke on April 12, 1864, the Union garrison manning Fort Pillow, a small redoubt on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River in West Tennessee, found itself surrounded by 1,500 Confederate cavalrymen led by Maj. Read more

Hard-fighting veterans of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s II Corps rush through the thick forest west of the Chancellorsville crossroads in the late afternoon of May 2, 1863, to fall on Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s unsuspecting XI Corps in Don Troiani’s painting.

Civil War

“Like A Picture Of Hell”

By Chuck Lyons

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

Union soldiers of Colonel John Wilder’s Mounted Infantry Brigade armed with Spencer repeating rifles delay Confederate attempts to cross at Alexander’s Bridge over Chickamauga Creek at midday on September 18, 1863. The rebels suffered heavy casualties but eventually overpowered the defenders by sheer force of numbers.

Civil War

“A Terrible Cyclone”

By Lawrence Weber

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

Blood on the Fallow Fields

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

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

Colonel J.E.B. Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry troopers galloping at full speed crash into the flank of the New York Fire Zouaves as the battle turns in the Confederate favor in a painting by Don Troiani.

Civil War

Bloody Repulse at Bull Run

By Joshua Shepherd

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

A Federal battery fords a tributary of the Rappahannock on the day of battle. At the outset of the campaign, Jackson hoped to defeat the newly established Federal Army of Virginia one corps at a time.

Civil War

Bloody Collision at Cedar Mountain

By David A. Norris

In the shadow of Cedar Mountain on the southern outskirts of Culpeper, Virginia, Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson deployed the troops at the head of his column of march against a reinforced Union corps on August 9, 1862. Read more

Civil War

Cavalry Clash at Kelly’s Ford

By David A. Norris

With freshly honed sabers, more than 2,000 Union cavalrymen rode toward the Confederate-held Rappahannock River crossing of Kelly’s Ford in March 1863 with orders to attack and rout or destroy Maj. Read more

Civil War

Eugene A. Carr’s Heroic Stand

By William E. Welsh

Union artillery shells burst in the trees at the north end of Cross Timber Hollow as Confederates in gray and butternut-colored uniforms creeped through the tangled underbrush on both sides of Telegraph Road. Read more

Civil War

Meade’s Impressive Performance at Fredericksburg Earned Him Army Command

George Gordon Meade did not want command of the Army of the Potomac when it was thrust upon him on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg seven months after the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, but he had the distinction of being the division commander who had led the successful Union assault during the bloody battle in December 1862 on the south side of the Rappahannock River. Read more

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