Robert E. Lee Archives

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.

Robert E. Lee

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

Flourishing his famous red-and-white headquarters flag, Union General Phil Sheridan rides along the front ranks after his dramatic return to the battlefield at Cedar Creek. Painting by Thure de Thulstrup.

Robert E. Lee

Glory Enough for One Day: Phil Sheridan’s Victory at Cedar Creek

By Roy Morris Jr.

Phil Sheridan had a bad feeling. The bantam-sized Union general always trusted his instincts, and now, in mid-October 1864, those instincts were telling him that trouble was brewing back at the front, where his Army of the Shenandoah was encamped near Cedar Creek, Virginia, resting and relaxing after a busy few weeks burning civilian farms and slaughtering thousands of head of livestock from Staunton north to Woodstock. Read more

Matthew Brady’s photograph of Broadway Landing was taken at the time of the Battle of the Crater. Cobb’s Hill Signal Tower and the pontoon bridge are clearly visible on the left.

Robert E. Lee

Petersburg’s Broadway Landing: Union Supply Depot

By Nicholas Bolash

In 1864, the Civil War was raging across the United States. At the epicenter of the seemingly stalemated conflict was the vital Confederate stronghold at Petersburg, Va. Read more

Robert E. Lee

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

Fanciful engraving of Jackson’s death shows him inside a tent, rather than a small house, near Guiney Station.

Robert E. Lee

How Did Stonewall Jackson Actually Die?

By J.D. Haines

Following his greatest victory, at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Read more

This mortar battery was erected outside Confederate earthworks at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1862. McClellan slowed his advance to bring mortars up. The Southerners then retired toward Richmond.

Robert E. Lee

Civil War Artillery

By John D. Gresham

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

The 9th Massachusetts Battery fights a desperate rear-guard action near the Trostle Farm at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. Painting by Don Troiani.

Robert E. Lee

The Model 1857 12-pounder

By Gustav Person

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

In what is considered an accurate depiction by artist Tom Lovell of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Virginia, Horace Porter stands immediately to General Grant’s right.

Robert E. Lee

Medal of Honor Awardee Horace Porter’s Astonishing Career

By Richard H. Owens, Ph.D.

Horace Porter was born April 15, 1837 in Huntingdon, Pa. He traced his ancestry and family motto, “Vigilantia et virtute,” to William De La Grange, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Union General Joseph Mansfield

By Steven L. Ossad

For more than 45 years, Joseph Mansfield prepared himself for the ultimate test of a soldier—high command in time of war. Read more

The Scottish-built, 252-foot-long blockade-runner Banshee II represented the state of the art in mid-19th-century shipbuilding. Giant sidewheels drove her through the water at nearly 16 knots.

Robert E. Lee

Last of the Gray Phantoms: The Confederate Blockade Runners

By R. Thomas Campbell

Despite 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

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

Robert E. Lee

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

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.

Robert E. Lee

“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

Robert E. Lee

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

Robert E. Lee

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

By Michael E. Haskew

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

The Confederate high tide at Gettysburg broke at the low stone wall known as “the Angle,” where Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York regiments beat back the heroic but doomed assault depicted in this epic painting by Peter F. Rothermel.

Robert E. Lee

Pickett’s Charge: “We Gained Nothing But Glory”

By Eric Niderost

July 3, 1863, dawned clear and bright, the warm sun promising even greater heat to come. By noon, temperatures were already in the low 90s, a typically hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Stonewall Jackson’s Hard Defeat At The Second Battle of Manassas

By Todd S. Berkoff

As the bright red sun was slowly setting over their shoulders on the balmy evening of August 28, 1862, Union troops marching east along the Warrenton Turnpike knew nothing of what awaited them. Read more

Robert E. Lee

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

Robert E. Lee

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

Robert E. Lee

Hancock the Superb: Winfield Scott Hancock & the Battle of Gettysburg

By John Deppen

On East Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg National Military Park, an equestrian statue of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock stands facing west toward the Evergreen Cemetery gatehouse. Read more

Robert E. Lee

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

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