TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Eastern Theater

  • New 1864 Diary of 148th Pennsylvania Soldier Published

    Editor’s Note: This blog entry was cross-posted at The Siege of Petersburg Online. I recently received a care package from Bill Black, who has been hard at work with Carolee Michener in editing the diary of Ithiel B. Snyder of Co. G, 148th Pennsylvania Infantry.  The 148th belonged to the 4th Brigade, 1st Division, II […]

  • 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 […]

  • Archer’s Brigade sharpshooters (and who shot Reynolds)

    Information about Confederate sharpshooter battalions is often hard to come by and you have to dig it out piecemeal and then try to assemble it into some sort of coherent whole. Often all you have is some offhand mentions in letters, reports and reminiscences. Such is the case with Archer’s mostly Tennessee brigade. The presence […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • The Ewell Contribution

    A few days ago I wrote about the ‘Ewell Option ‘ — a plan for General Richard Ewell to strike at US forces in northern Virginia in April or May 1862 — and how instead Ewell decided to stick with Stonewall Jackson and support his efforts in the Shenandoah Valley. The resulting campaign became famous and […]