general james longstreet Archives

general james longstreet

First Manassas: The Battle of Bull Run

By Earl Echelberry

On March 4, 1861, with war clouds threatening the land, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th president of the United States. Read more

Federals shoot at Rebel cavalrymen attempting to overwhelm a supply train. The deeper Union armies penetrated into the Southern heartland, the longer and more vulnerable their supply lines. Confederates went after them with gusto and not just to hurt Northern armies; they could luxuriate for a time on the food, clothing, and ammunition they captured.

general james longstreet

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

Determined to win back eastern Tennessee from the advancing Federals, Confederates hurled themselves at the Northerners in the forested and broken fields near Chickamauga Creek in northwestern Georgia.

general james longstreet

On They Came Like an Angry Flood: The Battle of Chickamauga

By Arnold Blumberg

It had been a little over six months since Major General William S. Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland had checked the Confederates at the Battle of Stones River (December 31,1862–January 2,1863). Read more

general james longstreet

Rolling the Dice: Robert E. Lee at Petersburg

By Joseph E. Lowry

By the early spring of 1865, the Southern Confederacy was on the cusp of extinction. In every theater of the four-year-old Civil War, the gray-clad Rebels were getting the worst of things. Read more

general james longstreet

War So Terrible: The Battle of Fredericksburg

By Arnold Blumberg

Word spread like wildfire through the camps of the Army of the Potomac during the second week of November 1862: “Little Mac” was out, “Old Burn” was in. Read more

Confederate Brigadier General Wade Hampton, momentarily alone, desperately fends off enemy saber blows in a swirling melee in the farmland south of the York Turnpike at Gettysburg in Don Troiani’s painting, Hampton’s Duel.

general james longstreet

“Keep to your Sabers, Men”: J.E.B. Stuart’s Charge at Gettysburg

By Cowan Brew

An angry gloom hung like dust over the 6,000 Confederate cavalrymen trooping up the York Turnpike in the early dawn of July 3, 1863. Read more

general james longstreet

The Battle of Kernstown: Stonewall’s Victorious Defeat

By Lawrence Weber

Sunday morning, March 23, 1862, was sunny and warm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a devout Christian, did not like to fight on the Lord’s Day. Read more

general james longstreet

The Knoxville Campaign: Battle of Fort Sanders

By Arnold Blumberg

After the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more

general james longstreet

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

general james longstreet

Mowed Down by the Fifties

By William E. Welsh

As Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, rode together on horseback along the dust-choked Quaker Road from Glendale to Malvern Hill on the morning of July 1, 1862, they stopped to confer with Maj. Read more

A 19th-century print offers a fanciful depiction of the desperate fighting along the Orange Plank on the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. Although the battle ended in a draw with both sides suffering heavy casualties, the Army of the Potomac under the watchful eye of Commander-in-Chief Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant chose not to retreat, but continue south.

general james longstreet

James Longstreet’s Daring Advance

By Arnold Blumberg

The column of Confederates marched east as quietly as possible along the bed of an unfinished railroad that knifed through the Wilderness south of the Rapidan River shortly before midday on May 6, 1864. Read more

general james longstreet

Peach Orchard Bloodbath: Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg

By Mike Phifer

On July 2, the day of the Battle of Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard conflict, Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Read more

general james longstreet

Longstreet’s Hammer Blow at Manassas

By Joshua Shepherd

In the rolling fields on the south side of the Warrenton Turnpike, the men of the 5th New York of Colonel Gouverneur K. Read more

general james longstreet

John Bell Hood at the Battle of Gettysburg

By Don Williams

Ward’s Union Brigade faced some of the most formidable troops in General Robert E. Lee’s army on the afternoon of July 2. Read more

Chancellorsville is often touted as Robert E. Lee’s 'greatest victory,' but cost the Army of Northern Virginia 13,000 men plus the irreplaceable Stonewall Jackson.

general james longstreet

The Battle of Chancellorsville: A Perfect but Flawed Campaign

By Kevin M. O’Beirne

The Chancellorsville campaign has been called many things, from “a stupendous defeat” for the curiously cautious “Fighting Joe” Hooker, to Robert E. Read more

Looking back at the Battle of Gettysburg

general james longstreet

Facts About the Battle of Gettysburg

Gettysburg Fact #1: There Were 50,000 Military Casualties, 1 Civilian

Despite roughly 50,000 casualties reported on both sides during the Battle of Gettysburg, there was only one reported civilian casualty: Mary Wade, a seamstress, was hit by a stray bullet while making bread in her kitchen. Read more

general james longstreet

Bushrod Johnson: Yankee Quaker, Confederate General

By Roy Morris Jr.

Of all the unlikely heroes of the Civil War, none was more unlikely than Bushrod Johnson, Ohio-born Quaker turned Confederate general. Read more

general james longstreet

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

Stonewall Jackson's II Corps engaged Brig. Gen. John Gibbon's Iron Brigade in a fierce confrontation at the tiny of hamlet of Groveton.

general james longstreet

Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and the Battle of the Wilderness

The year 1864 was shaping up to be a critical one in the American Civil War. During the previous year, Federal armies had gained control of the Mississippi River and consolidated their grip on Tennessee. Read more