Richmond Archives

Richmond

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

Richmond

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

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.

Richmond

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

Richmond

West Virginia: Seceding from the Confederacy

By Don Roberts

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

Richmond

Battle of Richmond, Kentucky: Cannae in the Bluegrass State

By Pedro Garcia

On 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

Richmond

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

Richmond

Battle of New Market Heights

By David Norris

Reports of a massive enemy force crossing the James River to assail the paper-thin Confederate lines defending Richmond reached Lt. Read more

Richmond

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

Rallying around their tattered flag, the 12th Virginia Infantry crashes into the Federal vanguard of Brigadier General Edward Ferrero at the edge of the Crater. Painting by John Adams Elder.

Richmond

Bloody Fiasco at the Crater

By Arnold Blumberg

In the summer of 1864, after six weeks of virtually constant combat in the Wilderness area of northern Virginia, the Union and Confederate armies of Ulysses S. Read more

A provost marshal’s office at Aquia Creek, Virginia, in February 1863 draws a desultory crowd. Some soldiers used provost duty to avoid combat.

Richmond

Military Intelligence: The Civil War Provost Guard

By John Wenner

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

Richmond

Stonewall Jackson & Nathaniel Banks at Cedar Mountain

By William E. Welsh

Following the completion of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s unsuccessful Peninsula campaign earlier in the month, General Robert E. Read more

Union intelligence chief Colonel George Henry Sharpe is pictured with his staff at Brandy Station in June 1863. Left to right are Sharpe, John C. Babcock, an unidentified man, and John McEntee.

Richmond

Civil War Intelligence

By Arnold Blumberg

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

Richmond

Clash at Bald Hill: Atlanta’s Bloodiest Day

By William E. Welsh

The guide shook uncontrollably when the gray-clad general pointed his pistol at him in the backwoods of central Georgia on the evening of July 21, 1864. Read more

Looking back at the Battle of Gettysburg

Richmond

The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

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

Richmond

Robert E. Lee: Confederate Icon

by Mike Haskew

When the Civil War broke out, Robert E. Lee of Virginia was offered command of the Union army. Read more

The bloody Battle of Cold Harbor marked the end of the Overland Campaign, a 40-day series of battles between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.

Richmond

On This Day in History: The Battle of Cold Harbor

On June 12, 1864, the American Civil War Battle of Cold Harbor came to a close, which became one of the final battles in Ulysses S. Read more

To say that the clash between the Merrimack and Monitor changed naval history is an understatement; the two made wooden ships a thing of the past.

Richmond

The Monitor and Merrimack: After the Fight

by Keith Milton

The subsequent careers of the Monitor and Merrimack were not as dramatic as their first clashes. The two ironclads never met in combat again after their infamous battle on March 9, 1862. Read more

This letter written by a soldier in the Confederate army offers insight into the prevailing attitudes of both Union and Confederate Armies at the time.

Richmond

The Confederate Army: Letters Home

by Earl Echelberry

On May 10, 1861 the Confederate Secretary of War, L.P. Walker, assigned “control of the forces of the Confederate States in Virginia” to Maj. Read more

Richmond

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

Richmond

Making “The Ors”: The 138,579-Page Official History of the Civil War

By Stephen D. Lutz

The title of the 128-book, 138,579-page work was a suitably large mouthful: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Read more

From Around the Network

Prisoner of the Gestapo: Freed by Words

Red Eclipse: Halting the Communist Drive on Seoul

The Malmédy Massacre and the Battle of the Bulge

The Korean Occupation of America