Civil War Times

The interview with Moss Rudley, director of the National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center, in the February 2020 issue was an excellent and timely story to include in the magazine. There are many challenges Director Rudley, his staff

1. Candy maker Anthony Kale and his family owned this building at 706 Caroline Street from 1819 to 1904. Following the Battle of Fredericksburg, it housed Southern prisoners for a short time. Kale also owned the building next door at 708, which was u

While researching Civil War-era photographers, Library of Congress conservator turned photographic sleuth Adrienne Lundgren found that a famous image of the March 1861 inauguration of Abraham Lincoln was taken not by Alexander Gardner, as long assume

CONFEDERATE ARMIES NEVER LOST a battle because they lacked sufficient arms or ammunition. This achievement came despite formidable challenges and depended, to a significant extent, on the vision and efforts of Josiah Gorgas (1818-83). “In no branch o

ON A CHILLY SATURDAY MORNING, with a three-quarter moon lingering in a deep-blue sky, Sam Elliott and I stand atop Orchard Knob, site of Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s headquarters during the Battle of Missionary Ridge. To our right, in the far distance,

DIANE MILLER SOMMERVILLE, a history professor at Binghamton University in New York, spent 14 years on her latest book, An Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War Era South. She focused on unearthing material tucked away in diaries,

BY NO DEGREE OF PLANNING OR INTENTION, this issue contains articles about two atypical Confederates, Josiah Gorgas (P. 16) and Daniel Ruggles (P. 54). Both hailed from Northern states, the former from Pennsylvania and the latter from the abolitionist

Ole C. Johnson was born on February 23, 1838, in the Telemark region of Norway and immigrated to the United States when six years old. His family settled in Wisconsin and he was working as a teacher in Stoughton at the outbreakh of the Civil War. On

George and Elizabeth Spangler had worked hard to cultivate their farm south of Gettysburg. When they purchased the property in 1848, seven years after they married, it consisted of only 80 acres. By 1863, however, the farm had expanded to 166 acres.

Elizabeth Bacon Custer outlived her husband, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, by 57 years. In the nearly six decades between the annihilation of her husband and five companies of the 7th Cavalry on the Little Big Horn River in Montana and her own de

General Lewis A. Armistead’s arrival at the 11th Corps hospital at the Spangler Farm on the evening of July 3 likely coincided with the arrival of decades-long friend Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, commander of the 2nd Corps, at what was left of the

He was one of only three men born in Massachusetts to become a general in the Confederate Army. He was also fortunate. The general avoided Yankee bullets, outlasted political and military opponents in the Confederacy, and died in Fredericksburg in 18

Daniel Ruggles’ most famous Civil War moment came on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862, when he is credited with organizing between 53 and 62 cannons, depending on the source, to deliver massive artillery barrages at a position in

WITH TREES HEAVY WITH SPANISH MOSS and swamp water brown as whiskey, the lowlands of New Orleans looked nothing like home to Private Francis Stick. He’d joined the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry back in Harrisburg, Pa., a world apart from this bawdy Miss

Walt Whitman described Charles A. Dana as “a straight, trim-built, prompt, vigorous man, well-dressed with strong brown hair, beard, and mustache, and a quick, watchful eye. He steps alertly by, watching everybody…a man of rough, strong intellect, tr

This is a well-written and solidly researched account of the Confederacy’s effort to compete with the North in the construction of ironclads. As Union Admiral David Dixon Porter wrote after the war, the South did everything possible to be successful,

The capture of Vicksburg after a 47-day siege by Union forces under the command of Ulysses S. Grant is a turning point in the Civil War. What’s not so readily understood is why Grant twice tried to capture the Confederate bastion by direct assault. F

Allison Johnson’s work on Civil War wounds began as her doctoral dissertation. The challenge is to reformulate a dissertation’s content into a narrative accessible to an audience beyond knowledgeable academics and make it a useful contribution to Civ