Confederacy Archives

Confederacy

Battle of Chickamauga: Death in the Deep Woods

By Cowan Brew

It was nearly 11 on the morning of September 20, 1863, and the woods around slow-moving Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia were ominously quiet. Read more

The rolling farmland of western Maryland is the site of the Antietam National Battlefield, the bloodiest one-day battle of the American Civil War.

Confederacy

Antietam National Battlefield to Receive Trump Donation

President Donald Trump has kept true to his pledge to donate his presidential income while in office, with the President’s first paycheck going, in full, to fund projects to maintain and restore the Antietam National Battlefield. Read more

Confederacy

Book Review: Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America

By Christopher Miskimon

The men of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment began a hard march at 8:30 am on February 20, 1864. Read more

Union General William T. Sherman and his army cut loose from Atlanta in November 1864 and began cutting a swath of destruction across Georgia.

Confederacy

Sherman’s March to the Sea

By William Stroock

On September 3, 1864, a triumphant Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman telegraphed Washington, “Atlanta is ours and fairly won.” Read more

Confederacy

Making “The Ors”: The 138,579-Page Official History of the Civil War

By Stephen D. Lutz

The title of the 128-book, 138,579-page work was a suitably large mouthful: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Read more

In October 1859, Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart of the U.S. Army helped take back the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry from notorious terrorist John Brown.

Confederacy

Harpers Ferry: The Rise of Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart

By Melanie Savage

On 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. Cook

A 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. Davis

Winter 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

The Last Long Ride: Wilson’s Selma Raid

By Arnold Blumberg

As 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. Ruder

The 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 Stroock

Robert 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. Norris

Four 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 Phifer

Lieutenant 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 Simmons

In 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. Haskew

Nathaniel 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 Garcia

The 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

Well-led and well-equipped, Union cavalrymen in the western theater of the war were able to match their Confederate opponents in both firepower and audacity. Premier Union cavalry leader Phil Sheridan got his start in Mississippi.

Confederacy

Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas

By Mike Phifer

Union 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 Shepherd

For 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