Commanders
Published: 2/10/14
The Civil War on the Great Lakes
When President Jefferson Davis refused to sanction a plot to take the American Civil War to the Great Lakes in the winter of 1863, Confederate Navy Lieutenant Robert D. Minor...
Published: 12/2/13
“Destructionist and Capturer”
Navy Lieutenant W.T. Glassell was furious that his faithful service was being questioned when he landed in Philadelphia in early 1862. He was coming off a long tour that had...
Published: 7/15/13
The Pursuit
On July 7 Major General George Gordon Meade left Gettysburg and traveled to Frederick, Maryland. He found the streets crowded with people eager to get a glimpse of him. The...
Published: 5/27/13
Captain Kit Dalton on Guerrilla Memory, Civility, and the Rules of War
In spring 1880, more than a decade after his famous—or perhaps infamous, locale depending—“March to the Sea,” Union General William Tecumseh Sherman observed of a large gathering in Columbus, Ohio,...
Published: 5/24/13
An Interview with John Marszalek
Our conversation with Dr. John Marszalek, the Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. Dr. Marszalek is also the Giles...
Published: 5/20/13
Grant and the Forgotten Court of Inquiry
During the siege of Vicksburg, General U. S. Grant had to deal with racial problems, but those problems were always a lower priority than his main goal—the capture of Vicksburg....
Published: 2/14/13
An 1863 Valentine
Letter from Alexander Hays to Annie Adams McFadden Hays, February 14, 1863 Union Mills, Va., February 14th, 1863. Dear Wife: It has this minute struck me that this is St....
Published: 10/1/12
The Consequences of Damning the Torpedoes
Rear Adm. David Farragut famously “damned the torpedoes” when he closed off the port of Mobile as a haven for blockade runners. But the Union navy’s and army’s final push...
Published: 8/27/12
Bowdoin’s Other Civil War Sons
Discussions surrounding Bowdoin College and the Civil War invariably return to the famous Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine and the acts of his regiment at Gettysburg on July...