Gen. Sherman’s Atlanta conquest took a little longer than he hoped. Five grueling months, to be exact. Joe Johnston insisted after the war that he had not been surprised by Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman at the outset of the Atlanta Campaign. And yet some decisions the veteran Confederate commander made as he prepared …
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U.S. Grant’s famous order changed the Union’s tune—but had Meade thought of it first? Few places in the Civil War were less pleasant than the Wilderness battlefield on May 7, 1864. Two days of brutal and bitter battle with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had marked Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s initiation …
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John Edwin Forbes was a 23-year-old, classically trained artist when he was recruited in 1862 to join a corps of “special correspondents”—artists sent to report on the war through their illustrations. Forbes was hired by Frank Leslie to follow the Union Army and file his sketches for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. First in the Shenandoah …
The post Embedded with the Union Army appeared first on HistoryNet.
Was the greatest cavalry battle on U.S. soil the beginning of the end for Jeb Stuart? HE WAS A LIVING LEGEND. With his ostrich-plumed soft hat, red-lined cape, gold-tasseled sash and thigh-high gold-spurred cavalry boots, he was the most dazzling example of the Southern beau sabreur to serve in the Civil War. At a time …
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In early April 1862, shortly after Union forces had taken Fort Pulaski in Savannah Harbor, 14-year-old Susie Baker was taken aboard a Federal gunboat and delivered, along with other fugitive slaves, to St. Simon’s Island, Ga. Susie had been “born under the slave law in Georgia.” In 1862 she became part of, and early witness …
The post Her War: ‘In the company’ with Susie King Taylor appeared first on HistoryNet.
If it’s springtime in the United States in an even-numbered calendar year, then it must be the dawn of another supposedly do-or-die election season—another of those contests, as we the people have been warned from time immemorial, that will bring either the joyous revival or the devastating ruination of the country we all love… with …
The post Cease Fire: Think this election’s critical? Consider 1864 appeared first on HistoryNet.
Guilt to go around The writer who wrote the article about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s ambush at Fort Pillow is misguided in his story. Sure the ambush occurred, but what about the massacre of Southern civilians by Sherman and his cronies in the Union Army. I feel those stories are never told and they should because …
The post Letters from Readers- America’s Civil War May 2014 appeared first on HistoryNet.