American Civil War

Gettysburg. Does any other single word in any language invoke so much passion and angst, enthusiasm and sadness, as do those ten letters? But what ...

The second installment in a sweeping history of the 5th Texas InfantryThe Bloody Fifthone of only three Texas regiments to fight with Robert E. Lee...

Some Confederates called him a Bluebelly, Mudsill, and even a Lincolnite (for President Abraham Lincoln), but the name that has carried down throug...

Jeffrey Hunts Meade and Lee After Gettysburg: The Forgotten Final Stage of the Gettysburg Campaign, from Falling Waters to Culpeper Court House, Ju...

The Civil War was the first conflict in which railroads played a major role. Although much has been written about the role of railroads in general,...

The diminutive Union XII Corps found significant success on the field at Antietam. Its soldiers swept through the East Woods and the Miller Cornfie...

The fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 fundamentally changed the strategic picture of the American Civil War, though its outcome had been anything but ...

May God forgive me for the order, Confederate Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge remarked as he ordered young cadets from Virginia Military Institute i...

Robert E. Lee is well known as a Confederate general and as an educator later in life, but most people are exposed to the same handful of images of...

Douglas S. Freemans Pulitzer Prize-winning four-volume study on Robert E. Lee remains the most thorough history of the man. After spending so many ...

Contrary to popular belief, the Eastern Theater during the late summer and fall of 1863 was anything but inconsequential. Generals George Meade and...

The Civil War was a long and bloody affair that claimed the life of some 750,000 men. When it ended, former opponents worked to rebuild their commo...

West Virginia was the child of the storm, concluded early Mountaineer historian and Civil War veteran, Maj. Theodore F. Lang. The northwestern thir...

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was the first Union officer killed in the American Civil War. When it happened, on May 24, 1861, the entire North was aghas...

In the popular memory, the end of the Civil War arrived at Appomattox with handshakes and amicable banter between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Gran...

Ironclad against ironclad, we maneuvered about the bay here and went at each other with mutual fierceness, reported Chief Engineer Alban Stimers fo...

July 1863 was a momentous month in the Civil War. News of Gettysburg and Vicksburg electrified the North and devastated the South. Sandwiched geogr...

Johnsonville doesnt mean much to most students of the Civil War. Its contribution to Union victory in the Western Theater, however, is difficult to...

Johnsonville doesnt mean much to most students of the Civil War. Yet, its contribution to the Union victory in the Western Theater is difficult to ...

Long called by some the Andersonville of the North, the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-...

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led the 7th U.S. Cavalry into the valley of the Little Bighorn. By sunset, Custer and five of hi...

Most studies of the Mississippi River focus on Union campaigns to open and control it, overlooking Southern attempts to stop them. Now in paperback...

By the spring of 1864, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia had become battle-hardened, battle-weary foes locked in an ongoing...

As the brigade he commanded attacked a Confederate battery on a hill outside Petersburg in July 1864, a bursting shell blew Col. Joshua L. Chamberl...