Confederate

Grant’s Ordeal at the Battle of Shiloh

By Eric Niderost

It was raining heavily, a deluge of almost Biblical proportions that hammered down on the exhausted men of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee. Read more

Confederate

J.E.B. Stuart and Kilpatrick Butt Heads at Buckland Mills

By Arnold Blumberg

For the Federal government at Washington, D.C., the news from Tennessee was grim in late September 1863. The Union Army of the Cumberland, under Maj. Read more

Confederate

Final Attack at the Battle of Stones River

By Jim Heenehan

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

Confederate

Confederate Submarine H. L. Hunley

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

At the start of the American Civil War in April 1861, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that he planned to blockade the Confederacy by stationing warships in waters off its shores. Read more

Confederate

World War I Doughboys’ Bloody Baptism

As the fateful day drew to a close, the exhausted World War I soldiers of the German 25th and 82nd Reserve Divisions huddled in their trenches. Read more

Confederate

Comparing the Battle of Gettysburg to the Entire Civil War

by Brooke Stoddard

The occasion was, for the North, inauspicious. In the Battle of First Manassas, the Federals were routed, humiliated, and almost utterly crushed. Read more

Confederate

Woefully Unequipped For the American Civil War

By Kirk Freeman

When the American Civil War erupted in 1861 Iowa soldiers were equipped with old converted smoothbore flintlock muskets. Read more

Confederate

Flanks vs. Frontal Attacks: Meade and Lee’s Tactics

by Robert Suhr

All day on July 4, 1863 the Union and Confederate armies stared at each other during the Battle of Gettysburg. Read more

Confederate

Richard Ewell’s Difficult Decision on July 1

By William Welsh

The Confederate II Corps commander was as bruised and tired as the troops in his command by the late afternoon of July 1 at the strategic Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg. Read more

Confederate

Louisiana’s Role in the American Civil War

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

Confederate

On This Day in History: The Battle of Cold Harbor

On June 12, 1864, the American Civil War Battle of Cold Harbor came to a close, which became one of the final battles in Ulysses S. Read more

Confederate

The Gallant 4th Army Regulars at the Battle of Gettysburg

When the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, the 10 companies of the 4th U.S. Infantry were spread along the West Coast from Puget Sound to the Gulf of California in various small, far-flung garrisons. Read more

Confederate

Confederate-Occupied Territory: Alexandria, Virginia

by Kevin Hymel

Under bright moonlight, Union troops marched into Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861, one day after Virginia seceded from the Union. Read more

Confederate

The Monitor and Merrimack: After the Fight

by Keith Milton

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

Confederate

“The Gallant Pelham” at the Battle of Williamsburg

by Nat R. Louis

During the Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia, in May 1862, General Joseph Hooker’s Union forces were in pursuit of the withdrawing Confederates. Read more

Confederate

At Shiloh, the Civil War Took a Turn

By Roy Morris, Jr.

No one expected this—not the fiercest “fire-eater” in South Carolina or the flintiest abolitionist in New England. Read more

Confederate

On This Day in History: The Battle of Philippi

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

Confederate

Understanding the Civil War Though Photography

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

Confederate

A Murderous Order at Culp’s Hill

By Joshua Sheperd

Although Union Colonel Silas Colgrove had previously led his men through some of the most horrific fighting in the eastern theater of the Civil War, the order he received on the morning of July 3, 1863, in the woods near Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, was the most unnerving he had ever received. Read more

Confederate

B-29 Production

Written by: Joe Kirby

By Joe Kirby

When Maj. Gen. Curtis Lemay, the hard-driving commander of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force based in Guam, decided to change tactics in early 1945 to boost the effectiveness of the B-29 Superfortress, it was the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia, that ultimately provided him with the stripped-down bombers that played such a key role in ending the war in the Pacific. Read more