Author: Fred Ray
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Short Takes from the Web
Why didn’t people smile in those old CW-era photos? Robinson Meyer gives some reasons, I can add a few more. First, it was a serious age. Young men grew beards to look older as soon as they could, quite unlike today when we have men in their 50s who try to look and act like […]
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A Couple of Civil War Guns
American Rifleman takes a look at two Civil War cavalry long guns. The Model 1847 Cavalry Musketoon: Adopted in 1847, the percussion Cavalry Musketoon was actually an attenuated version of the excellent U.S. Model 1842 Musket. Manufactured at Springfield Armory, the 1847 was handsome and made to high manufacturing standards. All steel parts were polished […]
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Review: The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot: The Fort Stevens Story by B.F. Cooling
The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot: The Fort Stevens Story by Benjamin Franklin Cooling III The Scarecrow Press $45.00 May 2013 ISBN: 978-0-8108-8622-3 Most people would put the high water mark of the Confederacy at a copse of trees near the crest of Cemetery Hill just outside of Gettysburg, PA, on the […]
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Archer’s Brigade sharpshooters (and who shot Reynolds)
Information about Confederate sharpshooter battalions is often hard to come by and you have to dig it out piecemeal and then try to assemble it into some sort of coherent whole. Often all you have is some offhand mentions in letters, reports and reminiscences. Such is the case with Archer’s mostly Tennessee brigade. The presence […]
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For Your Sunday Reading
A couple of articles that TOCWOC readers might enjoy. Joe Bilby continues his “Guns of” series for American Rifleman with “The Guns of Gettysburg.” If you want to know who shot who with what, Joe’s your man. Gettysburg was probably the first major battle anywhere where both sides were armed almost entirely with rifles. In […]
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Gettysburg on GIS
Smithsonian magazine has a very interesting map study of Gettysburg using modern GIS data to plot elevations and sight distances. You can take a look for yourself and see what the commanders actually saw on those fateful days. Which is not what we see on maps today where, looking down from above, we know exactly […]
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General Jacob Cox on Assault Tactics
When discussing tactics one needs to look not just at what pundits are saying now but what the people who actually practiced them said about it. I came across an excellent description of the failure of the column attacks at Kennesaw Mountain by someone who was there, Maj. Gen. Jacob Cox, who commanded a division […]