TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Military History

  • Sharps Conversions

    The Sharps rifles and carbines used during the Civil War used a soft combustible case of paper or linen that burned when the weapon fired. The Sharps used a falling block breech that sealed off the combustion gasses during firing, at least most of the time. Occasionally the system got out of order and gasses […]

  • Nafziger Civil War Order of Battle Marathon over Memorial Day Weekend

    Some people like Three Stooges marathons.  Others watch War movies all weekend.  I’ve done both in the past.  TOCWOC will be launching an entire weekend of Nafziger Collection Civil War orders of battle, every hour on the hour, from now until Monday evening at midnight Central time.  I’ll be celebrating and remembering my ancestors’ service […]

  • Short Takes

    Civil War soldiers turn up all over the place, even in sunny California. When Gordon Bricken saw a Confederate flag at an Orange County cemetery he began looking. Bricken found 348 Union and Confederate veterans buried at Santa Ana Cemetery, then tried nearby Fairhaven and found 278 more. He kept going, walking alone through the […]

  • Short Takes

    Bryn at 67th Tigers has posted some trajectories based on calculations of the ballistic coefficient of a Burton Minie ball. More realistic than the ones usually used from Jack Coggins’ book (and Coggins was using them for illustration only). The figures confirm something that Joe Bilby has been saying for some time—that using a “center […]

  • Short Takes

    Confederate general Ambrose Powell Hill, a man controversial enough in life, continues to cause problems 145 years after his death—or at least his portrait does. Nine years ago, amid considerable controversy, Hill’s portrait was removed from the county courthouse and put on display at the Museum of Culpeper History. During all that time, further controversy […]

  • More on Battle Ranges II

    I’ve done several posts on battle ranges and how and why they differ in various wars. Other bloggers have also addressed the subject either directly or indirectly. One is Sven Ortmann, a German blogger who specializes in international defence issues. In a recent post on Battlefield Visual Images he quotes and Israeli soldier on ranges: […]

  • We Remember

    By Mark Acres Wars fade from memory, but they fade very, very slowly. “For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns […]