TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Military History

  • Short Takes

    The Indiana University Press is having a sale next Wednesday, Sept. 15, with 60% off all books not already on sale, so it’s definitely worth a look, especially at the Civil War section. One day only and the discount code is SIXTY. From a letter sent to our local Civil War Round Table: The Sixth […]

  • Short Takes

    UPDATE II:  Amazon.com has a special on Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary—less than forty bucks today only! UPDATE: I watched an interview on After Words with David Kilcullen, a former Australian soldier and counterinsurgency adviser to US commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan on C-SPAN last night. It’s definitely worth watching not only for what’s going […]

  • Short Takes

    Earlier I did a couple of posts on Tom Dooley and his defense counsel Zeb Vance. Now Dooley has come to the stage here in Burnsville, NC, in a locally-produced musical, Tom Dooley. The Kingston Trio gave this tale national, if not global, visibility, but the story of Tom Dooley is based on historical events […]

  • Engels on Artillery

    Fredrick Engels is best known for his political partnership with Karl Marx, especially his editorship of Das Capital after the latter’s death. However, Engels was one of the few political radicals of his time with some actual military field experience, having served in the Prussian army and having taken part in the abortive revolution of […]

  • Some Interesting Guns

    Couple of interesting CW period guns. One is the Norwich rapid fire cannon, which was to compete with Gatling’s gun. This prototype Norwich rapid fire “Gatling type” cannon was made in Greenville, Connecticut by James D. Mowry’s company which became the Norwich Arms Company.  It was made in about 1862 as a prototype for competition in […]

  • British Books on Tactics I

    I’ve been reading a series of book on tactics from both the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars as a background for my ongoing study of Civil War tactics. Part of this is to try to determine, as British military pundit Paddy Griffith had it, if the American Civil War was another Napoleonic war. How much, if […]

  • Review: Confederate Alamo by John Fox

    The Confederate Alamo: Bloodbath at Petersburg’s Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865 John Fox III, Angle Valley Press 2010, ISBN: 978-0-9711950-0-4 Price: $34.95 In his new book The Confederate Alamo John Fox takes a look at one of the least-known but most important battles of the Petersburg campaign—the defense of Fort Gregg and its associated […]