TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Author: Fred Ray

  • Moore’s Patent Revolver

    UPDATE: Welcome to all of the readers at SayUncle!  For informaton on Civil War and other arms and armament, check out some other posts in our Arms and Armament category. I seem to be on a roll with CW-period revolvers. Came across another one the other day, the Moore’s Patent Revolver. The gun’s owner, who […]

  • Short Takes

    Did “Angels’ Glow” protect some wounded soldiers at Shiloh? How true were stories of wounds that actually glowed in the dark? More true than you might think. Some of the Shiloh soldiers sat in the mud for two rainy days and nights waiting for the medics to get around to them. As dusk fell the […]

  • Pocket Pistols Then & Now II

    In the last post we looked at an early cartridge pocket revolver, the Otis Smith, and compared it to a modern Kel-Tec pocket pistol. Today let’s take a jump a bit farther back to the 1840s, when Colt’s cap and ball revolvers were just coming into wide use. Much has been written about how Colt’s […]

  • Pocket Pistols Then & Now

    How far have pocket pistols come in 150 years? Let’s take a quick look. The Otis Smith revolver, which I posted about earlier, is a good example of the breed in the 1860s and 70s. It’s a knock-off of the Smith & Wesson Model 1½ introduced near the end of the Civil War. Smith introduced […]

  • Short Takes

    If you missed Gary Joiner’s interview on C-SPAN on his book One Damn Blunder From Beginning To End: The Red River Campaign of 1864  you can catch it on the web. The book’s on my list to read, based on good reviews and the interview. This campaign ought to get more attention than it does […]

  • Short Takes

    Carter. John Carter. Captain, First Virginia Cavalry. Ten minute trailer with lots of gratuitous Yankee-bustin’. and Looks like John Wilkes Booth won’t be bob-bob-boblin’ along at the Gettysburg store any more. Bobblehead dolls of the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln have been pulled from sale at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitors’ center bookstore. […]

  • Short Takes

    The Indiana University Press is having a 50% off spring sale coming up March 20-22. All regularly priced items are half off, free shipping on orders of $30 or more in the US. Use the code SAVE50 at checkout. Karen Thatcher of Martinsburg, WV, recently identified a photo of a Civil War relative. “That’s Uncle […]