TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Month: May 2011

  • Civil War Book Review: Love and War: The Civil War Letters and Medicinal Book of Augustus V. Ball

    Love and War: The Civil War Letters and Medicinal Book of Augustus V. Ball edited by Donald S. Frazier & Andrew Hillhouse, Transcribed by Anne Ball Ryals Product Details Hardcover: 528 pages Publisher: State House Press; annotated edition edition (October 25, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 9781933337425 ISBN-13: 978-1933337425 ASIN: 1933337427 A family and a war […]

  • Smith & Wesson Revolvers

    Smith & Wesson is now a giant in the firearms industry, but New England gunmakers Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson didn’t start that way. In fact, their first efforts ended in failure. In 1853 Smith & Wesson patented the “rocket ball,” a conical lead ball with a hollow base filled with power having a primer […]

  • A New Look at Fort Pillow

    Few battles in the Late Unpleasantness have aroused such passions as Fort Pillow. Battle or massacre? Truth or propaganda? Steve Cole is looking at the men who actually fought the battle and their fates. The Battle of Fort Pillow was part of General Forrest’s raid into western Tennessee in 1864.  Fort Pillow was the first […]

  • McFarland Civil War Book of the Week: Tennessee in the Civil War: Selected Contemporary Accounts of Military and Other Events, Month by Month

    Tennessee in the Civil War: Selected Contemporary Accounts of Military and Other Events, Month by Month Compiler: James B. Jones, Jr. TOCWOC’s Take: Tennessee in the Civil War: Selected Contemporary Accounts of Military and Other Events, Month by Month strives to take the reader beyond Shiloh, Stones’ River, Fort Pillow, and other famous battles.  This […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War

    Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War by Gail Stephens Product Details Hardcover: 301 pages Publisher: Indiana Historical Society (October 15, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0871952874 ISBN-13: 978-0871952875 Lew Wallace spent most of his life on the American stage.  While never a major player, he is important as a politician, military […]

  • 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 […]

  • McFarland Civil War Book of the Week: Colonels in Blue: Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia

    Colonels in Blue: Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia Author: Roger D. Hunt TOCWOC’s Take: Colonels in Blue: Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia is the fourth volume (with McFarland the third publisher!) in Roger D. Hunt’s invaluable research series covering Union colonels of the Civil War. Hunt aims to collect as much information on each Federal […]