Category: Civil War Odds & Ends

  • Short Takes

    Cap and Ball is at it again, this time with a P56 Enfield Short Rifle. This is the shorter version of the more common P53 Rifle Musket used extensively by North and South. The P56 (which also came in the slightly different P58 and P60 models) was a favorite of Confederate sharpshooters, both because of […]

  • Using Speech to Text Software to Transcribe Primary Sources?

    This post is really me taking an off the wall idea and bouncing it off of fellow Civil War buffs.  Over at The Siege of Petersburg Online, I’ve got tons of newspaper articles collected which are in PDF or image form.  My challenge is to get those items transcribed for use on my site, either […]

  • Echoing Bad History

    The other day Dimitri Rotov had a blog post comparing a quote from James M. McPherson’s new book with similar quotes from other books.  What bothers Dimitri is that McPherson isn’t original; what also ticks me off is that McPherson mimics bad history. The quotes in question link the Red River Campaign of 1864 to […]

  • Book Alert

    Just a heads up to various TOCWOC readers – bookseller Edward R. Hamilton has a lot of remaindered and discontinued books of all kinds, but they have an excellent selection of Civil War books. Nice folks to deal with, shipping is prompt and reasonable. Some examples: STAFF OFFICERS IN GRAY: A Biographical Register of the […]

  • Civil War Maladies

    Civil War Maladies By Jack McGuire As if the advantages of manufacturing and industrialization weren’t enough the North had over twenty two million people and the South just nine million.  On the other hand the Confederacy did enjoy the advantages of familiarity with the roads and terrain of the South over the invading Northerners.   They […]

  • The Confederacy on…Mars?

    Yup. John Carter, former Confederate officer, is somehow transported to Barsoom, which we know as Mars. There his muscles, formed in the heavier gravity of Jasoom (Earth) give him an overwhelming advantage given the primitive sword-and-shield technology of the other world. As told by Edgar Rice Burroughs via Disney.

  • Lincoln’s Bullet, Sickles’ Leg

    And many other “morbid” things, are going to a new home. The $12 million relocation established a permanent home for an institution that has had 10 addresses since 1862. That’s when Surgeon General William Hammond directed medical officers in the field to collect “specimens of morbid anatomy” for study at the newly founded museum along […]