CW-Summer-16

The Legendary Lincoln-Douglas Debates

By Roy Morris Jr.

The two men facing each other across the debate stage at Ottawa, Illinois, on the afternoon of August 21, 1858, were no strangers to one another. Read more

CW-Summer-16

Union General Joseph Mansfield

By Steven L. Ossad

For more than 45 years, Joseph Mansfield prepared himself for the ultimate test of a soldier—high command in time of war. Read more

CW-Summer-16

Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler’s 1863 Sequatchie Valley Raid

By Arnold Blumberg

During the evening of September 20,1863, the following message reached Washington and was given to the president of the United States: “We have met with a serious disaster; extent not yet ascertained. Read more

CW-Summer-16

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

By John Walker

After an almost uninterrupted, four-month-long string of Union successes beginning in early 1862, followed by the advance of a 100,000-man enemy army to the eastern outskirts of its capital at Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly found itself in a life-or-death struggle for its very survival. Read more

CW-Summer-16

Union General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea

 

By Mike Haskew

Union General William T. Sherman was a friend and trusted subordinate of General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all Union armies in the field during the Civil War. Read more

CW-Summer-16

“Put the Boys In”: Confederate Cadets at the Battle of New Market

By Pedro Garcia

As the Civil War continued in the spring of 1864, a Shenandoah Valley resident lamented, “Our prospects look gloomy, very gloomy.” Read more

CW-Summer-16

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

CW-Summer-16

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

CW-Summer-16

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

CW-Summer-16

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

CW-Summer-16

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

CW-Summer-16

Could the United States Have Gone to War With France Over Mexico?

By Roy Morris

The continued presence of a handpicked French puppet emperor in Mexico, which had so worried the Lincoln administration during the Civil War, remained a sore point with American political and military leaders after the Union victory in 1865. Read more