TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Month: August 2010

  • Civil War Book Review: The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War

    The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War by Donald Stoker Product Details Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 15, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0195373057 ISBN-13: 978-0195373059 Nations often stumble into war.  Miscalculations, expectations and preconceptions work together to blind one or both parties to reality.  The result is a war […]

  • Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate

    Henry Morton Stanley is best remembered for his role as an African explorer. His 1874-77 journey, charting the Congo river, started the Scramble for Africa. Before Stanley, the white man had been largely content to nibble at the edges, staking little more than ports such as Freetown, Cape Town and Mombasa. After Stanley, the white […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Commanding Lincoln’s Navy: Union Naval Leadership During the Civil War

    Commanding Lincoln’s Navy: Union Naval Leadership During the Civil War by Stephen R. Taaffe Product Details Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Naval Institute Press (May 4, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 1591148553 ISBN-13: 978-1591148555 The author brings his considerable talents to the US Navy during the Civil War, their mission and their management.  As with Commanding the […]

  • 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 […]