TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Military History

  • More from Carolina

    Ben Steelman takes a look at pre-bellum Wilmington: Wilmington was the largest municipality in mostly-rural North Carolina by a wide margin – New Bern, the next largest town, had only about 5,000 people – and it was growing fast. Its population had doubled in just 20 years. NC was not a cotton state—most of its […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd

    Editor’s Note: This review originally appeared at The Siege of Petersburg Online: Beyond the Crater earlier today. Jordan, Mary & Hatch, Joyce. Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd. Six Mile Creek Press (January 2011). 176 pp., 100+ illustrations, notes. ISBN: 978-1-57003-922-5 $34.95 (Cloth). Reading a collection of wartime soldier letters […]

  • The Battle for the Bliss Farm at Gettysburg: July 3, 1863

    The Battle for The Bliss Farm: July 3, 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg by James W. Durney Gettysburg is the most studied battle in American History, Noah Andre Trudeau in “Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage” apologized for adding to the weight of books on the battle and called writing about Gettysburg a cottage industry.  […]

  • Army of the Potomac Morale at the Siege of Petersburg

    Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at The Siege of Petersburg Online: Beyond the Crater on Monday, January 17, 2011.  Bryce Suderow is an author, researcher, and Siege of Petersburg specialist. “The Troops Did Not Meet the Attack with Vigor and Courage and Determination”: Union Army Morale at the Siege of Petersburg by Bryce Suderow […]

  • Civil War Book Review: The Rashness of That Hour by Robert Wynstra

    The Rashness of That Hour: Politics, Gettysburg, and the Downfall of Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Iverson by Robert J. Wynstra 6×9, 360 pages, hardback, $32.95 32 photos, 6 maps ISBN 9781932714883 Savas Beatie, December 2010 The “banners and bugles” regimental history has fallen out of favor lately in favor of a more socially oriented narrative […]

  • Infantry Hand Weapon Study Available

    Earlier this year I posted some excerpts from an Army study (once classified Secret) from the early sixties, “Operational Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon,” which was instrumental in the military’s decision to adopt the smaller caliber M-16 rifle. Other militaries did essentially the same study and came to the same conclusions, adopting reduced power […]

  • Short Takes

    Civil War novelist Kim Murphy takes a look at contraception during the mid-Nineteenth century. In the decades before the Civil War, there was no organized movement to advocate or control contraception. Freethinking printers and publishers began spreading the word about reproductive choices, and Charles Knowlton became the first American legally tried for the publication of […]