Confederacy
Woefully Unequipped For the American Civil War
By Kirk FreemanWhen the American Civil War erupted in 1861 Iowa soldiers were equipped with old converted smoothbore flintlock muskets. Read more
Confederacy
When the American Civil War erupted in 1861 Iowa soldiers were equipped with old converted smoothbore flintlock muskets. Read more
Confederacy
1864 was an important year in the American Civil War. On May 31, Maj. General’s cavalry unit seized the vital crossroads at Cold Harbor, marking one of the final battles in Ulysses S. Read more
Confederacy
Louisiana held an interesting political climate during the American Civil War. It was a prominent slave state; by 1860, nearly half of Louisiana’s population came from slaves. Read more
Confederacy
Under bright moonlight, Union troops marched into Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861, one day after Virginia seceded from the Union. Read more
Confederacy
The subsequent careers of the Monitor and Merrimack were not as dramatic as their first clashes. The two ironclads never met in combat again after their infamous battle on March 9, 1862. Read more
Confederacy
During the Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia, in May 1862, General Joseph Hooker’s Union forces were in pursuit of the withdrawing Confederates. Read more
Confederacy
No one expected this—not the fiercest “fire-eater” in South Carolina or the flintiest abolitionist in New England. Read more
Confederacy
On this day in 1861, Union and Confederate forces met at the Battle of Philippi in modern day West Virginia. (The area still belonged to Virginia during the early years of the Civil War.) Read more
Confederacy
In selecting a leader for the attack on Fort Stedman, Robert E. Lee could scarcely have chosen a better commander than Maj. Read more
Confederacy
Much of the American Civil War can be understood through military correspondence, army documents and letters. But to understand the social impact of the bloodiest battles in the nation’s history, researchers and citizens alike often turn to what was then a budding technology: photography. Read more
Confederacy
Strategically isolated from the South, geographically isolated from the Far West, and separated from the Union plains states by the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Texas was a backwater whose ultimate fate depended on the success of the Confederacy. Read more
Confederacy
The ground around Manassas, Virginia, was not auspicious for Union Army forces in the first two years of the Civil War. Read more
Confederacy
In celebration of the sesquicentennials of General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea, the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History is opening a special exhibit titled “1864.” Read more
Confederacy
The H.L. Hunley was a Confederate submarine that played a small, yet interesting role in the American Civil War. Often labeled as the first combat submarine that successfully sank another warship, the Hunley demonstrated some of the early advantages armies could attain by exploring undersea warfare. Read more
Confederacy
According to a CNN article, 2014 was the 150 anniversary of “the peak year of suffering” in American Civil War prisons. Read more
Confederacy
1861 to 1865 marked a bitter time in U.S. history. Arguments over states’ rights, slavery and the role the federal goverment should play in national affairs brought both the North an South into a terrible conflict that became the American Civil War. Read more
Confederacy
For General Philiip Sheridan, war was a tonic.
“He was a wonderful man on the battle field,” one of his fellow Union officers recalled, “and never in as good humor as when under fire.” 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 Fort Sumter, an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more
Confederacy
It isn’t how most would characterize William T. Sherman’s famous march across Georgia in 1864, but Thomas Ricks of Stars and Stripes begs to differ. Read more
Confederacy
Seen from the Atlantic coast, the task of Northern armies appeared (at least to a skeptic) almost impossible, for the South looked truly boundless, an ocean of fields, valleys, mountains, forests, and rivers. Read more