Robert E. Lee

War So Terrible: The Battle of Fredericksburg

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

“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

Robert E. Lee

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

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

Robert E. Lee

The Knoxville Campaign: Battle of Fort Sanders

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

Robert E. Lee

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

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

Robert E. Lee

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

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

Robert E. Lee

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Mowed Down by the Fifties

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

Robert E. Lee

The Main Civil War Generals Who Helped Define the War

Mr. Morris is the author of seven well-received books on 19th Century American history and literature. He has served as a consultant for A&E, the History Channel, and edited a three-book series for Purdue University Press on American Civil War and post-Civil War history, journalism and literature. Read more

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

Sharp Clash at North Anna

Dripping wet Union soldiers stepped out of the North Anna River’s Jericho Ford on May 22, 1864, setting foot in Hanover County, Virginia. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Longstreet’s Hammer Blow at Manassas

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

Robert E. Lee

J.E.B. Stuart and Kilpatrick butt heads at Buckland Mills

For the Federal government at Washington, D.C., the news from Tennessee was grim in late September 1863. The Union Army of the Cumberland, under Maj. Read more

Robert E. Lee

The 1862 Battle of Antietam: Casualties and Death Toll

During the September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam, casualties piled almost too high to count. The culmination of the first invasion of the North during the American Civil War by General Robert E. Read more

Robert E. Lee

American Civil War Timeline: Piecemeal Operations

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had no military experience and discarded most of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott’s so-called Anaconda Plan, which critics deemed too conservative. Read more