TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Author: Fred Ray

  • Fort Stevens – Scaring Able Lincoln Like Hell

    A hundred and forty-nine years ago today the Confederates stood with sight of the unfinished US capitol dome—the closest they would get to it under arms. The resulting fracas is usually called the Battle of Fort Stevens and altho minor compared to contests like Gettysburg, it was a hard fought action, well remembered by those […]

  • Duke Digitized

    Archive.com now has an extensive collection of digitized material from the Duke libraries, including an excellent selection of Civil War related materials. Click “C” in Browse By Title and you will get a list of Confederate Circulars and related government papers. Also of interest is an 1861 city directory of New Orleans.

  • Who’s a Cracker?

    There’s been a good deal of discussion lately about the origins and meaning of the word “cracker” because of its use in the high profile Zimmerman murder case in Florida. Just before being shot Trayvon Martin complained about a “creepy-ass cracker” following him, and considerable ink has been spilled about whether this was a racial […]

  • Two Views of Gettysburg Town

    With the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg almost on us I thought I’d post a couple of contemporary views of the town. As most of you know the Confederates swept through the town on July 1, driving the Federals before them and capturing large numbers of them. The Federals, however, held Cemetery Hill just […]

  • Short Takes

    Tony Horowitz (Confederates in the Attic) has an article on “150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War.” A better title would be “150 Years of Changing Interpretations of the Civil War.” Historians, as Lord Acton observed, are merely politicians looking backwards, and they have their own prejudices and points of view. As he notes most […]

  • Need Help With US Grant Quote

    I am looking for a cite for a U. S. Grant quote. It was supposedly made while touring in France after the war when someone asked him what he’d learned from Napoleon. I faced two problems during the war. One was the rifled musket behind works and the other was moving huge amounts of men […]

  • Santa Monica Shooter’s Civil War Pistol

    I’m sure everyone has heard of the awful events in Santa Monica, CA, where a gunman shot several people. He used the ubiquitous AR-15, but he also had a pistol in his “arsenal” (which in California apparently means anything more than one firearm)—a reproduction Remington 1858 cap & ball revolver. Introduced in 1863, it was […]