Fort Sumter
Editor’s note: Noted military writer Bud Feuer especially enjoys discovering first-person accounts and diaries. He found the following in “a junk shop” written in pencil on brown wrapping paper. Read more
Fort Sumter
When the Civil War started in 1861, there were only two officers in the Union Army who had commanded a force in battle larger than a brigade. Read more
Fort Sumter
On March 4, 1861, with war clouds threatening the land, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th president of the United States. Read more
Fort Sumter
For much of its history, artillery has been a weapon of mass destruction and attrition, a force designed to cause casualties, destroy fortifications, and wear an enemy down with its noise, explosions, and shrapnel. Read more
Fort Sumter
“But for you, there would have been no Battle of Bull Run.” When Confederate President Jefferson Davis made that blanket statement in the summer of 1862, he was not addressing Pierre G.T. Read more
Fort Sumter
With the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War began in earnest. The first recruits, on both sides, were completely uninitiated in the ways of military life. Read more
Fort Sumter
The call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more
Fort Sumter
The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more
Fort Sumter
As the early days of the American Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was being contested on the battlefield, President Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more
Fort Sumter
In selecting a leader for the attack on Fort Stedman, Robert E. Lee could scarcely have chosen a better commander than Maj. Read more
Fort Sumter
Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, four men in a rowboat made their way across the pitch-black harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, toward Fort Sumter, an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more
Fort Sumter
As the epicenter of the Civil War, Fort Sumter naturally attracted much photographic attention. The first photographer to visit the fort after the 1861 bombardment and surrender was F.K. Read more
Fort Sumter
In the wake of the humiliating and unexpected defeat, and fourth in a line that stretched back to Fort Sumter, the Battle of Bull Run, and the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the Union Congress created a seven-man Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to oversee and review all battles and the events surrounding them. Read more
Fort Sumter
The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, marked the beginning of the American Civil War. Read more
Fort Sumter
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
Fort Sumter
Of all the unlikely heroes of the Civil War, none was more unlikely than Bushrod Johnson, Ohio-born Quaker turned Confederate general. Read more
Fort Sumter
As the early days of the Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more
Fort Sumter
One of the catalysts for a major rebellion in the United States were irregular warfare in “Bleeding Kansas” from 1854 to 1861 between anti-slavery Free Staters and pro-slavery border ruffians. Read more
Fort Sumter
Seemingly from birth, William Haines Lytle was bound for glory. As the last surviving male offspring of one of Cincinnati’s leading pioneer families, Lytle was the prototypical golden boy. Read more
Fort Sumter
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
