CW-Winter-13

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

CW-Winter-13

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more

CW-Winter-13

Fire Over Texas: Galveston in the Civil War

By R. Thomas Campbell

When Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, it did not take long for the new Confederate government to realize that the state’s 385-mile coastline was extremely vulnerable to enemy assaults. Read more

CW-Winter-13

The Days of Shoddy: Worst Manufacturers of the Civil War

By Timothy Koenig

“For sugar the government often got sand; for coffee, rye; for leather, something no better than brown paper; for sound horses and mules, spavined beasts and dying donkeys; and for serviceable muskets and pistols, the experimental failures of sanguine inventors, or the refuse of shops and foreign armories.” Read more

CW-Winter-13

Union Disaster: The Battle of Thompson’s Station

By Robert L. Durham

The winter of 1863 was a time of general inactivity for the exhausted armies in middle Tennessee. Read more

CW-Winter-13

The Dahlgren Affair: Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid on Richmond

By Robert Suhr

On the night of February 28, 1864, an advanced unit of bluecoat troopers captured two guards at the Rapidan River ford, and the remainder in a house near the river. Read more

CW-Winter-13

Union General John Pope: Cracking Island No. 10

By Robert Collins-Suhr

With its whistle blaring, the Confederate gunboat Grampus steamed into Madrid Bend, where Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas come together on the Mississippi River. Read more

CW-Winter-13

Miracle at Chattanooga’s Battle of Missionary Ridge

By Mike Phifer

Peering through a pair of field glasses, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest perched in an oak tree on Missionary Ridge, overlooking the Tennessee town of Chattanooga, and observed a Union army in complete disarray. Read more

CW-Winter-13

The South’s Famous Orphan Brigade

By Michael E. Haskew

On April 15, 1861, three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteer troops. Read more