Category: Civil War Research

  • ADAH Digital Collections On Line

    Rob Wynstra sends along a tip that the Alabama Department of Archives and History now has a lot of its collections available on the web, including quite a lot of Civil War info. This includes period photos and textual materials, and is well worth a look. The Confederate soldiers section, for example, has a wealth […]

  • 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 […]

  • Counting US Forces at Mansfield

    Even though I was able to count a sizable Confederates force that Taylor had at the Battle of Mansfield, wasn’t he outnumbered in the battle? Coming up with the total Present for Duty (PFD) on the US side is relatively easy since there is a table in the Office Records that shows the following Present […]

  • 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 […]

  • Counting Confederates at the Battle of Mansfield

    This is the first in a series of posts planned for the next several weeks that address aspects of the Red River campaign of 1864.  Rather than a chronological narrative about the campaign, I shall be examining different topics and decision points. — How many Confederates were at the battle of Mansfield (also known as […]

  • 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.

  • Where was Rosecrans?

    Previously I wrote about who really won the battle of Iuka. This time I am going to dig deeper into Rosecrans’ performance at that battle. Attention has often been deflected from Rosecrans by questions about where Grant and Ord were during the battle. A lot of ink has been spilled about ‘acoustic shadows’, mis-communication or […]