TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Author: Fred Ray

  • C.S.S. Jack Daniels

    Not really, but this Prohibition-era whiskey-running submarine, preserved at the Grand Gulf battlefield, is still pretty cool. Other than the lack of a spar torpedo and of course considering that it was powered by an automobile engine (from a Model T) it is strikingly similar in appearance to the H. L. Hunley. This isn’t really […]

  • Indian Sharpshooters at Olustee?

    Fought just west of Jacksonville on February 20, 1864, Olustee was another one of those pull-it-out-by-the-skin-of-the-teeth Confederate victories that staved off defeat just a little longer. I recently came into possession of a letter by a member of a New York regiment about the battle, where he describes Confederate Indians shooting white officers leading back […]

  • Requiem For A Black Confederate

    William Alexander Smith was a private soldier in Co. C, 14th North Carolina. He was gravely wounded at Malvern Hill in 1862, which disqualified him for further service, but he kept in touch with his surviving mates in his old company, the Anson Guards, and eventually wrote its history. Smith became a successful businessman and […]

  • Short Takes

    I was fortunate to do some research at the Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Duke recently. Nice place, friendly and knowledgeable staff. They have a huge collection of Civil War primary sources and manuscripts, including supposedly the largest collection of unpublished Confederate manuscripts in the world. Well worth visiting (certainly was for me). […]

  • H. L. Hunley Righted

    Follow the link and you too can see what no living person has seen—the complete Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, which has just been turned to an upright position. No way you’d get me on that thing, but I salute the brave men who went out on it. More here, with lots of photos.

  • Steamboats on the Tombigbee

    While visiting relatives in LA (Lower Alabama) I came across a copy of Rufus Ward’s book The Tombigbee River Steamboats: Rollodores, Dead Heads, and Side-Wheelers. Ward takes a look at Alabama’s almost forgotten steamboat era from the 1840s to the 1880s, in which the steamboats plying the Mobile, Alabama, Warrior and Tombigbee rivers dominated the […]

  • Short Takes

    Professor J. David Hacker takes and new look at Civil War dead and concludes there was a major undercount, especially in the South. Even as Civil War history has gone through several cycles of revision, one thing has remained fixed: the number of dead. Since about 1900, historians and the general public have assumed that […]