Battle of Antietam

How Did Stonewall Jackson Actually Die?

By J.D. Haines

Following his greatest victory, at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Union General Joseph Mansfield

By Steven L. Ossad

For more than 45 years, Joseph Mansfield prepared himself for the ultimate test of a soldier—high command in time of war. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Photographing the Battle of Antietam

By Roy Morris, Jr.

Two days after the unparalleled bloodletting at Antietam, a bushy-bearded Scottish photographer and his pudgy, clean-shaven assistant rolled onto the battlefield with their bulky stereoscopic cameras and portable darkroom. Read more

Battle of Antietam

“Keep to your Sabers, Men”: J.E.B. Stuart’s Charge at Gettysburg

By Cowan Brew

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

Battle of Antietam

To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft

By Mike Haskew

The call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Assault on Burnside’s Bridge at the Battle of Antietam

By Rob Willis

Colonel John F. Hartranft surveyed the blue-jacketed ranks to his front with a mixture of frustration and humiliation, and some of the men returned the favor. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Hancock the Superb: Winfield Scott Hancock & the Battle of Gettysburg

By John Deppen

On East Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg National Military Park, an equestrian statue of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock stands facing west toward the Evergreen Cemetery gatehouse. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Rolling the Dice: Robert E. Lee at Petersburg

By Joseph E. Lowry

By the early spring of 1865, the Southern Confederacy was on the cusp of extinction. In every theater of the four-year-old Civil War, the gray-clad Rebels were getting the worst of things. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Ambrose Powell Hill: His Greatest Action at the Battle of Antietam

By William E. Welsh

By mid-afternoon on September 17, 1862, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia were locked in mortal combat on the rolling hills overlooking the sluggish waters of Antietam Creek in northwestern Maryland. Read more

Battle of Antietam

The Heroism of Vision: Photographs from the Battlefield

By Al Hemingway

On the morning of February 23, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima, a 40-man patrol gathered at the 5th Marine Division headquarters for their final briefing with battalion commander Lt. Read more

Battle of Antietam

The Pen & the Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents

By Roy Morris Jr.

Men have been reporting their wars almost as long as they have fighting them. The first prehistoric cave drawings depicted hunters bringing down wild animals, and spoken accounts of battles, large and small, formed the starting point for the oral tradition of history. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Bloody Fiasco at the Crater

By Arnold Blumberg

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

Battle of Antietam

Gallant Charge at Antietam

By William E. Welsh

The Union soldiers of Colonel Harrison Fairchild’s brigade prepared to attack uphill against a key Rebel position on the outskirts of Sharpsburg at 3 pm on September 17, 1862. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Healers or Horrors: Civil War Medicine

By Richard A. Gabriel

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

Battle of Antietam

Alfred Duffie: A ‘Napoleon’ in the Civil War

By Arnold Blumberg

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

Battle of Antietam

Civil War Intelligence

By Arnold Blumberg

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

Battle of Antietam

The Men of the Iron Brigade Faced Death in a Cornfield at Antietam

By Robert L. Durham

The dense formation that constituted the Army of the Potomac’s Black Hat Brigade formed up on Joseph Poffenberger’s farm at dawn on September 17, 1862. Read more

Battle of Antietam

Colonel Patrick Kelly at the Battle of Gettysburg

by Joseph G. Bilby

Colonel Patrick Kelly, who led the Irish Brigade into the Wheatfield on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, was born in Castle Hackett, County Galway, in 1821. Read more

Battle of Antietam

The 1862 Battle of Antietam: Casualties and Death Toll

By Mike Haskew

During the September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam, casualties piled almost too high to count. The culmination of the first invasion of the North during the American Civil War by General Robert E. Read more

Battle of Antietam

The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more