Confederacy
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
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
“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
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
Early in the American Civil War, during the first months of 1862, Union General Henry Halleck, commanding from his headquarters in St. Read more
Confederacy
Late in the morning of January 2, 1863, Confederate Maj. Gen. John Breckinridge gazed through the brush at newly arrived Union infantry occupying a partially wooded hill to his front near Murfreesboro, Tenn. Read more
Confederacy
The epic battle between the Virginia (Merrimack) and Monitor might never have taken place because, as strange as it may seem, the Confederates did not have enough experienced men to man their ship. Read more
Confederacy
On September 7, 1862, Colonel Walter Taylor of General Robert E. Lee’s staff wrote to his sister: “The Yankee papers of the 6th exhibit a gloomy picture for our enemy. Read more
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
With its whistle blaring, the Confederate gunboat Grampus steamed into Madrid Bend, where Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas come together on the Mississippi River. Read more
Confederacy
Reports of a massive enemy force crossing the James River to assail the paper-thin Confederate lines defending Richmond reached Lt. Read more
Confederacy
On November 8, 1861, two distinguished diplomats from the newly established Confederate States of America were arrested and removed from the British mail steamer Trent by the American ship San Jacinto in the Bahama Channel near Havana, Cuba. Read more
Confederacy
For three weeks in February 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis led his Army of the Southwest on a 200-mile advance southward across the Ozark plateau in Missouri and into northern Arkansas. Read more
Confederacy
In the spring of 1861, a group of influential northern men and women, led by Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows and social reformer Dorothea Dix, met in New York City to discuss the formation of a sanitary commission, modeled after the British Sanitary Commission established during the Crimean War, to provide relief to sick and wounded soldiers in the Union Army. Read more
Confederacy
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
Confederacy
After the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more
