TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Military History

  • The Top 13 Controversies at Franklin: Part 2

    Editor’s Note: After I’d posted my recent comments on Lee’s possible endorsement of John Bell Hood for army command in 1864, I started going back over a lengthy nine or ten part series I did on Eric Jacobson’s book For Cause & for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin.  I had totally […]

  • The Top 13 Controversies at Franklin: Part 1

    Editor’s Note: After I’d posted my recent comments on Lee’s possible endorsement of John Bell Hood for army command in 1864, I started going back over a lengthy nine or ten part series I did on Eric Jacobson’s book For Cause & for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of […]

  • Hagood’s SC Brigade at the Battle of Globe Tavern: Postwar Accounts of the Siege of Petersburg

    I wanted to take a moment to thank K. S. McPhail (New Kent County History) for sending along multiple postwar accounts of the Siege of Petersburg, including a lengthy reminiscence on the August 21, 1864 action at the Battle of Globe Tavern by Confederate veteran John H. Neil.  Neil was a member of the 7th […]

  • Origins of “Sharpshooter”

    Some time ago I did a post on the origin of the word “sharpshooter” – that it came into the English language by way of the German mercenary riflemen hired by the British crown in the late 18th Century. A couple of commenters, however, took issue with that analysis and insisted that it came from […]

  • Short Takes from the Web

    Why didn’t people smile in those old CW-era photos? Robinson Meyer gives some reasons, I can add a few more. First, it was a serious age. Young men grew beards to look older as soon as they could, quite unlike today when we have men in their 50s who try to look and act like […]

  • The Road Not Taken

    After musing on the battle of Mansfield in my previous post, I come to the question of whether Banks was on the wrong road. The basics of the situation are this: by the first week of April 1864 U.S. forces had advanced as far as Grand Ecore and Natchitoches; it was about 75 miles further […]

  • What went wrong at the battle of Mansfield?

    As described previously, even though overall the US had more men in the campaign, Taylor enjoyed a numerical advantage at the moment he attacked at Mansfield. As a result Taylor was able to overwhelm the US front line, turning it in on itself and driving it back. So for Taylor, not much went wrong that […]