Confederacy
Harpers Ferry: The Rise of Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart
By Melanie SavageOn the morning of October 17, 1859, an aide to Secretary of War John B. Floyd hurried off with an urgent message for Colonel Robert E. Read more
Confederacy
Dying to Get Home: PTSD in the Civil War
By Kevin L. CookA slight knee wound brought the New Jersey boy to a Washington military hospital, but “his mind had suffered more than his body,” wrote volunteer nurse Louisa May Alcott. Read more
Confederacy
Military Music of the Civil War
By James A. DavisWinter was the calmest period for Civil War soldiers. Knowing that there was no combat immediately looming on the horizon allowed the soldiers to relax and recuperate in ways they had not been able to enjoy beafore. Read more
Confederacy
CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: The Greatest High Seas Duel of the Civil War
By Don HollwayOn August 24, 1862, newly promoted Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate States Navy called his largely English crew to the quarterdeck of his new command, the 220-foot battle cruiser Alabama, lying off the coast of Terceira in the Azores. Read more
Confederacy
The Last Long Ride: Wilson’s Selma Raid
By Arnold BlumbergAs reveille sounded through the Union encampments on the south bank of the Tennessee River between Eastport, Mississippi, and Chickasaw, Alabama, on March 22, 1865, sleepy Federal troopers roused themselves, built fires, and cooked breakfast. Read more
Confederacy
A Confederate Intelligence Coup Won the Siege of Charleston Harbor
By Stephen C. RuderThe Union bid to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1863 was set in motion seven months earlier, in the autumn of 1862. Read more
Confederacy
The Grand Review of 1865
By William StroockRobert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, presaging the subsequent surrender of other Confederate forces in the West and the capture of Southern President Jefferson Davis a few weeks later, marked the triumphant end of the nation’s great sundering. Read more
Confederacy
Black Thursday at Sayler’s Creek
By David A. NorrisFour hundred Confederate sailors and marines, their small arms loaded and ready, awaited their orders. Some men had their cutlasses within easy reach. Read more
Confederacy
End Game at Appomattox
By Mike PhiferLieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, personal aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, maneuvered his mount past ammunition wagons, ambulances, stragglers, and prisoners jamming the muddy roads leading back to headquarters from Five Forks, Virginia, on the evening of April 1, 1865. Read more
Confederacy
The Trent Affair: When the Union and Great Britain Nearly Went to War
By Mark SimmonsIn November 1861, word swept through London that an American warship, James Adger, in port at Southampton, was planning to put to sea and intercept a British ship bringing Confederate emissaries to Europe. Read more
Confederacy
The Disastrous Red River Campaign
By Michael E. HaskewNathaniel Banks was a political creature, and with his country in the throes of civil war, he now held the politically obtained rank of major general in the Union Army. Read more
Confederacy
Fort Fisher: Last Bastion of the Confederacy
By Pedro GarciaThe prospect of running the Federal blockade at Wilmington was easy in the beginning. North Carolina’s principal seaport was blockaded by a single warship, USS Daylight, and no one took the threat seriously. Read more
Confederacy
Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas
By Mike PhiferUnion Colonel Benjamin Grierson stuck his left foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Orders were quickly given, and soon a column of 1,700 blue-jacketed troopers of Grierson’s 1st Brigade, along with a battery of artillery, trampled southeast from La Grange, Tennessee, in the early dawn of April 17, 1863. Read more
Confederacy
The Battle of Stones River: Into the Cauldron
By Joshua ShepherdFor the weary troops of the Army of the Cumberland, there was precious little sleep to be had in the farm fields and cedar thickets northwest of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Read more
Confederacy
Misbegotten Attack at Bristoe Station
By Arnold BlumbergIn late July 1863, after the conclusion of the Gettysburg campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Read more
Confederacy
Swirling Cavalry Fight at Trevilian Station
By Arnold BlumbergDespite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more
Confederacy
The 1st and 2nd Cavalry Regiments: Jefferson Davis’s Pet Project
By Cowan BrewUnder a bright, high sun in a pale blue Midwestern sky, six companies of the United States Cavalry’s 1st Regiment rode into a grassy valley bordering the south fork of the Solomon River in northwestern Kansas on the afternoon of July 29, 1857. Read more
Confederacy
Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield
By Michael E. HaskewThe White House was a somber place in the summer of 1862. The Civil War was in the midst of its second costly year, and the Union armies had yet to win a significant victory in the eastern theater. Read more
Confederacy
Morgan’s Ohio Raid
By Joshua Shepherd“It was a sad, sorrowful day,” recalled Confederate Major James McCreary, “and more tears of grief rolled over my weather beaten cheeks on this mournful occasion than have before for years.” Read more
Confederacy
Brawl at Brawner’s Farm: Jackson’s Bloody Stalemate at Second Manassas
By John WalkerThe ground around Manassas, Virginia, was not auspicious for Union Army forces in the first two years of the Civil War. Read more
