TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Civil War Research

  • Announcing Beyond the Crater: A New Petersburg Campaign Web Site

    Ever since Harry Smeltzer started his Bull Runnings blog/site focusing on the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), I’ve wanted to do something similar for the Petersburg Campaign.  I’m happy to say I’ve finally started on that project.  The new web site is called Beyond the Crater: The Civil War Petersburg Campaign Online.  The site […]

  • The Becker Collection

    Another most amazing Civil War resource has recently become available at Boston College—The Becker Archive, an extensive collection of the original drawings of the special artists working for Frank Leslie’s Weekly. There’s a long article about in Boston College magazine. It is … an extraordinary cache of previously undocumented eyewitness depictions from the second half […]

  • Fort Sanders Sorority

    Well, sort of. Some of the Confederate trenches near Fort Sanders have been unearthed while constructing a new building at University of Tennessee. Fire pits and ruts from cannon wheels are still visible in places. Archaeologists also uncovered soldier’s belt buckles, ammunition, pottery, and firing mechanisms for the cannons. But the most significant find is […]

  • Fake Photos Revisited

    The venerable New York Times carries a section today about fake photos, including Lincoln’s head pasted on John C. Calhoun’s body and a really elaborate paste-up of US Grant made from three photos. There’s an excellent web site devoted to this sort of fakery, The Museum of Hoaxes. Photo fakery started as soon as the […]

  • Reynolds Family Papers on line

    Thanks to a recent grant Franklin & Marshall College has posted the Reynolds Family Papers on line. For Civil War students the ones of the most interest are those pertaining to Major General John F. Reynolds, killed on July 1 at Gettysburg. These are both facsimiles of the originals and transcriptions, and include both personal […]

  • Recent Technological Advances Aid Descendents of Slaves

    Editor’s Note: The following blog entry is a guest post by Britney Wilkins, a writer for Best Online Colleges. The Civil War stood poised to transition the newly formed country into a free nation in which slaves were freed from the Emancipation Proclamation and were thereby allowed to begin their own history.  However, many descendents […]

  • Missing Archives

    * Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln. * Original signatures of Andrew Jackson. * Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. * NASA photographs from space and on the moon. * Presidential pardons. What do these all have in common? They were all in the National Archives at one time but now are not, or at […]