Civil War

Civil War

Costly Confederate Victory at Gaines’ Mill

With just an hour of daylight remaining on the smoke-shrouded battlefield near Gaines’ Mill six miles northeast of Richmond, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Read more

Civil War

One Gallant Rush: Black Soldiers at Fort Wagner

The sun had already set, but the western sky was still bright from its fiery departure not long before. Read more

Civil War

“Let Us Die Like Men”

Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne rose to his feet in the early afternoon of November 30, 1864, when he saw the courier galloping toward him. Read more

Civil War

Grant’s Army of the Tennesee overcame adversity on the roundabout road to Vicksburg.

Major General Ulysses S. Grant sat on his horse in late April 1863 next to a narrow bridge over a wide marsh on the west bank of the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. Read more

Civil War

Healers or Horrors: Civil War Medicine

Safe behind its ocean barriers, the United States paid scant attention to the wars that raged abroad during the early 19th century, taking little notice of the lessons that might have been learned from the European experience with mass killing. Read more

Civil War

The Knoxville Campaign: Battle of Fort Sanders

After the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more

Civil War

The Death of General Robert McCook

When the Civil War erupted, so many of Lisbon, Ohio-born Robert McCook’s large extended family joined the Union Army that the clan became known as the “Fighting McCooks.” Read more

Civil War

Wilson’s Creek: Bull Run of the West

At the beginning of 1861, Missouri was in turmoil. A slave state since its inception in 1820, Missouri had grown increasingly tied to urban industry. Read more

Civil War

A Spectacle Of Singular Magnificence

It was the afternoon of September 20, 1863, and the right wing of the Union Army of the Cumberland was in full flight at the battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia. Read more

Civil War

Medal of Honor Recipient Daniel Butterfield

The series of battles that constituted the Confederate offensive against the Union army on the eastern outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, in summer 1862 would thrust a number of Union officers into the limelight. Read more

Civil War

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

After an almost uninterrupted, four-month-long string of Union successes beginning in early 1862, followed by the advance of a 100,000-man enemy army to the eastern outskirts of its capital at Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly found itself in a life-or-death struggle for its very survival. Read more

Civil War

City Under Siege: The New York Draft Riots

For four breathlessly hot days in mid-July 1863, New York City became the northernmost battleground of the Civil War. Read more

Civil War

The Crater: Explosion of Death

It was just after 3 am on Saturday, July 30, 1864. A month of relative quiet along a two-mile stretch of Union and Confederate trench lines immediately east of Petersburg, Virginia, was about to come to an explosive end. Read more

Civil War

We Will Hold It or Die Here!

Amid the fog of powder smoke in the north-Georgia forest, the frayed remnants of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland faced determined Confederate troops who sensed an impending victory. Read more

Civil War

Death at the Crossroads

An unrelenting rain soaked the gray-clad troops of Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s reinforced division of Confederate soldiers on the morning of March 30, 1865. Read more

Civil War

The Confederate Secret Service

The night of April 14, 1865, was one of celebration in Washington, D.C. Just a few days earlier, on April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Read more

Civil War

Clash at Bald Hill: Atlanta’s Bloodiest Day

The guide shook uncontrollably when the gray-clad general pointed his pistol at him in the backwoods of central Georgia on the evening of July 21, 1864. Read more

Civil War

“Chancellorsville: Lee’s Greatest Battle,” a History by General Edward J. Stackpole

Historians began writing about the Civil War even before it had become history. Battlefield accounts by traveling correspondents were a staple of Northern and Southern newspapers during the war, and a flood of memoirs, letters, official records, and unit histories followed in the decades after the war. Read more

Civil War

Not War, But Murder: The Clash at Cold Harbor

By William E. Welsh

Private Augustus Du Bois marched forward at daybreak on June 3, 1864, along with hundreds of other members of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery regiment to a thin belt of timber a mile south of the key road junction of Cold Harbor. Read more

Civil War

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more