Jefferson Davis
Forty-rod, Blue Ruin & Oh Be Joyful: Civil War Alcohol Abuse
by David A. NorrisUnion General Benjamin Butler was baffled. Every night a picket guard went to an outpost 1½ miles from Fort Monroe, Virginia. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, was a hero of the U.S. Army during the Mexican War and U.S. Secretary of War. Born in Kentucky, Jefferson Davis represented the state of Mississippi in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Jefferson Davis was the only individual to serve as President of the Confederacy. In the last days of the war, Jefferson Davis fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and was captured by Union cavalry in Georgia. Jefferson Davis was imprisoned and indicted on treason charges but received a presidential pardon in 1868. He died in 1889 at the age of 81.
Jefferson Davis
Battle of Richmond, Kentucky: Cannae in the Bluegrass State
By Pedro GarciaOn September 7, 1862, Colonel Walter Taylor of General Robert E. Lee’s staff wrote to his sister: “The Yankee papers of the 6th exhibit a gloomy picture for our enemy. Read more
Jefferson Davis
End Game at Appomattox
By Mike PhiferLieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, personal aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, maneuvered his mount past ammunition wagons, ambulances, stragglers, and prisoners jamming the muddy roads leading back to headquarters from Five Forks, Virginia, on the evening of April 1, 1865. Read more
Jefferson Davis
The Murder of Bull Nelson
By Stuart W. SandersFew Civil War officers, in either army, were as polarizing as Union Maj. Gen. William “Bull” Nelson. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield
By Michael E. HaskewThe White House was a somber place in the summer of 1862. The Civil War was in the midst of its second costly year, and the Union armies had yet to win a significant victory in the eastern theater. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Chasing Jefferson Davis
By Don HollwayWhen the end came, on April 2, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was sitting in his customary pew at St. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory
By John WalkerAfter 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
Jefferson Davis
CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: The Greatest High Seas Duel of the Civil War
By Don HollwayOn 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
Jefferson Davis
Stand-up Fight at Peachtree Creek
By Arnold BlumbergDuring the early afternoon of July 9, 1864, the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. John M. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Edwin Stanton: From Secretary to First in Command
By Paul A. ThomsenIn the late hours of April 14, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sat at a small table in the Petersen House across the street from Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Johnston Goes After Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh
By Earl EchelberryBy the end of the winter campaign of 1861-1862, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had shattered the Confederate defenses in northwest Tennessee with a combined land and water attack on Forts Henry and Donelson, forcing General Albert Sidney Johnston to abandon his bastion at Nashville and retreat southward. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Civil War Stories: Libby Prison’s ‘Lottery of Death’
By James M. PowelsOne of the primary reasons given for the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run was the lack of adequate cavalry. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Last of the Gray Phantoms: The Confederate Blockade Runners
By R. Thomas CampbellDespite the increasing effectiveness of the Union naval blockade, more and more steamers plied the waters between the few remaining Confederate ports and Nassau, St. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy
By Michael E. HaskewThe June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Firing on Fort Sumter: the Start of Civil War
By Al HemingwayShortly 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 an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Rose O’Neal Greenhow: The Spy Who Won Bull Run
By David Alan Johnson“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
Jefferson Davis
Big Black River
By Kirk FreemanBig battles make the history books. But for the soldiers, it was often the smaller, fiercer fights they remembered most keenly later in their lives. Read more
Jefferson Davis
The Battle of Tupelo, June – July 1864
By Edward Holub and John Marchetti
“For God’s sake, if Mr. Forrest will let me alone, I will let him alone. Read more
Jefferson Davis
Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler’s 1863 Sequatchie Valley Raid
By Arnold BlumbergDuring 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
Jefferson Davis
Rolling the Dice: Robert E. Lee at Petersburg
By Joseph E. LowryBy 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
