Gettysburg

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

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

Gettysburg

West Virginia: Seceding from the Confederacy

During the Civil War western Virginia was crucial to the Union. The region that lay west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River held nearly a quarter of Virginia’s nonslave population when the war began in 1861. Read more

Gettysburg

Avoiding the Nameless Grave—Civil War ID Tags

The American Civil War may well have been the first major conflict in which soldiers felt the need to wear some sort of a personal identification badge in the event that they were killed or wounded in battle. Read more

Gettysburg

The Model 1857 12-pounder

Among the historic inventory of the United States Army’s artillery weapons, few pieces have enjoyed a more predominant role or reputation than the Model 1857 12-pounder gun-howitzer, which became a mainstay of the Federal artillery during the Civil War. Read more

Gettysburg

Healers or Horrors: Civil War Medicine

Safe behind its ocean barriers, the United States paid scant attention to the wars that raged abroad during the early 19th century, taking little notice of the lessons that might have been learned from the European experience with mass killing. Read more

Gettysburg

Civil War Intelligence

The Union officer saw it quite clearly across the Rappahannock River: a hand-painted sign held up by a Rebel soldier that read, “Burnside and his pontoons stuck in the mud. Read more

Gettysburg

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

Gettysburg

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

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

Gettysburg

Richard Ewell’s Difficult Decision on July 1

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

Gettysburg

A Murderous Order at Culp’s Hill

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

Gettysburg

U.S. Army Heritage Museum

In the heart of Pennsylvania, not far from the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, stands the U.S. Read more

Gettysburg

Battle of Chickamauga: Death in the Deep Woods

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

Gettysburg

West Point Museum and Hyde Park: New York’s Greatest Military History Museums

The West Point Museum, located in Olmsted Hall and adjacent to the Visitor Center at the United States Military Academy, about an hour’s drive north of New York City, contains what is considered to be the oldest and largest diversified public collection of military artifacts in the Western Hemisphere. Read more

Gettysburg

CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: The Greatest High Seas Duel of the Civil War

On August 24, 1862, newly promoted Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate States Navy called his largely English crew to the quarterdeck of his new command, the 220-foot battle cruiser Alabama, lying off the coast of Terceira in the Azores. Read more

Gettysburg

A Confederate Intelligence Coup Won the Siege of Charleston Harbor

The Union bid to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1863 was set in motion seven months earlier, in the autumn of 1862. Read more

Gettysburg

Grant Takes D.C.

On March 8, 1864, a rainy Tuesday, President and Mrs. Lincoln held a reception at the White House in Washington. Read more

Gettysburg

Misbegotten Attack at Bristoe Station

In late July 1863, after the conclusion of the Gettysburg campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Read more

Gettysburg

Swirling Cavalry Fight at Trevilian Station

Despite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more

Gettysburg

4th U.S. Regulars at Gettysburg

When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, the 10 companies of the 4th U.S. Read more

Gettysburg

Colonel George S. Patton, Sr.: Civil War Veteran

The famed general of World War II, George S. Patton III, often spoke with pride of the military deeds of his forefathers. Read more