Union Army
In November 1861, word swept through London that an American warship, James Adger, in port at Southampton, was planning to put to sea and intercept a British ship bringing Confederate emissaries to Europe. Read more
Union Army
Nathaniel Banks was a political creature, and with his country in the throes of civil war, he now held the politically obtained rank of major general in the Union Army. Read more
Union Army
The prospect of running the Federal blockade at Wilmington was easy in the beginning. North Carolina’s principal seaport was blockaded by a single warship, USS Daylight, and no one took the threat seriously. Read more
Union Army
Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson stuck his left foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Orders were quickly given, and soon a column of 1,700 blue-jacketed troopers of Grierson’s 1st Brigade, along with a battery of artillery, trampled southeast from La Grange, Tennessee, in the early dawn of April 17, 1863. Read more
Union Army
On March 8, 1864, a rainy Tuesday, President and Mrs. Lincoln held a reception at the White House in Washington. Read more
Union Army
For the weary troops of the Army of the Cumberland, there was precious little sleep to be had in the farm fields and cedar thickets northwest of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Read more
Union Army
In late July 1863, after the conclusion of the Gettysburg campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Read more
Union Army
Despite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more
Union Army
“It was a sad, sorrowful day,” recalled Confederate Major James McCreary, “and more tears of grief rolled over my weather beaten cheeks on this mournful occasion than have before for years.” Read more
Union Army
The ground around Manassas, Virginia, was not auspicious for Union Army forces in the first two years of the Civil War. Read more
Union Army
“For sugar the government often got sand; for coffee, rye; for leather, something no better than brown paper; for sound horses and mules, spavined beasts and dying donkeys; and for serviceable muskets and pistols, the experimental failures of sanguine inventors, or the refuse of shops and foreign armories.” Read more
Union Army
When the end came, on April 2, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was sitting in his customary pew at St. Read more
Union Army
The struggle for the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg occurred on July 2, 1863, under a hot and cloudless afternoon. Read more
Union Army
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
Union Army
Shortly after midnight on the morning of Monday, August 18, 1862, an uneasy group of Santee Sioux warriors arrived at the simple frame home of Taoyateduta, known to the whites as Little Crow. Read more
Union Army
The continued presence of a handpicked French puppet emperor in Mexico, which had so worried the Lincoln administration during the Civil War, remained a sore point with American political and military leaders after the Union victory in 1865. Read more
Union Army
The year 1864 was shaping up to be a critical one in the three-year-long Civil War. During the previous year, Federal armies had gained control of the Mississippi River and consolidated their grip on Tennessee. Read more
Union Army
Although several overzealous Union Army field commanders organized African Americans into ad hoc militia units early in 1862 and several black regiments were mustered into service later that year, it wasn’t until after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, that the federal government began actively recruiting and enlisting black soldiers and sailors. Read more
Union Army
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
Union Army
When Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first conscription act in American history in March 1863, one of the most unpopular parts of the widely unpopular act was the provision allowing draft-eligible males to hire substitutes to take their place in the army. Read more
