Tag Archives: military
Should Pope Be a Punchline?
This article by Professor Gary Gallagher is from the Autumn 2021 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “Many years of speaking about Civil War topics has taught me that some military leaders elicit almost universal scorn. Mentioning them prompts members of audiences to smile, chuckle, and nod knowingly, as if they are in on a joke […]
General Charles Smith’s Two-Front War
This article is from the Autumn 2021 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “From his early days at the U.S. Military Academy, Ulysses S. Grant placed Charles Ferguson Smith in elite company. ‘I regarded General [Winfield] Scott and Captain C.F. Smith…as the two men most to be envied in the nation,’ Grant would write in […]
They ‘Literally Ate Crow’: How Starving Confederate Troops Made It Home After the Civil War
This article by Professor Caroline Janney is from the Winter 2022 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “Shortly after the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms on April 12, 1865, thousands of Confederate veterans began heading back to their homes. Throughout the Carolinas and into Georgia and beyond, they clambered onto railroad cars. Railroad travel proved […]
Meet the Big River Bushwhacker—the Dashing, Dangerous, Illiterate Outlaw Bent on Revenge
This article comes from the Winter 2022 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “From 1861 to 1865, war-torn Missouri produced its share of guerrillas and brigands. The deeds of many Missourians who rode ‘under the black flag’—’Bushwhacker Bill’ Wilson, Cole Younger, and ‘Little Arch’ Clement, to name just a few—fell far outside the bounds of what […]
Canister and Grape: You Wouldn’t Want to Get Hit with Either
This article comes from the Fall 2021 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “In a famous incident at the Battle of Antietam, Brig. Gen. John Gibbon jumped off his horse and raced over to Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, whose men were firing canister as fast as they could at Confederates across the Hagerstown Pike. Gibbon […]
Liquor Numbed the Pain, Took the Edge Off Homesickness… and Caused Havoc During the Civil War
This article by Professor Megan Bever is from the Spring 2023 issue of Civil War Times magazine. “Rain fell along Virginia’s Rapidan River in December 1863 as the 5th New York Cavalry set about building its winter quarters at Germanna Ford. The thickly wooded hill of Devil’s Leap offered a good location—so good, in fact, […]
Southern by the Grace of God but Prussian by Common Sense: James Longstreet and the Exercise of Command in the U.S. Civil War
This article by Richard L. DiNardo is from The Journal of Military History Volume 66, No. 4, October 2002, pp. 1011-1032. “Owing to the smear campaign that was mounted against him after the Civil War, Longstreet had long been regarded primarily as the man responsible for Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg. More recent scholarship, however, has […]
The Little Town in Illinois that Helped Decide the Civil War
This article was published in the Winter 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “In the anxious days that followed the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Illinois Governor Richard Yates worried in particular about a disease-ridden little town jutting into the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Flood-prone Cairo (pronounced ‘Kay-row’), located […]
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