TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Month: December 2008

  • A Georgia Sharpshooter

    I came across some letters from a Georgia sharpshooter, Milton Barrett, in The Confederacy Is on Her Way Up the Spout, published in 1992 by University of Georgia Press. This is how I’ve gotten a lot of my information, by going through the letters and diaries of men like Barrett. Since most sharpshooters were detailed […]

  • Short Takes

    “The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty.” Who said it? Yep, that ol’ unreconstructed Neo-Confederate, Karl Marx himself! That and many other period quotes are […]

  • Old Jube—In Trouble Again!

    Nope, not the Confederate general but his namesake ferry across the Potomac at White’s Ford. For the last few years the ferry has been in a more or less continuous battle with the Coast Guard over its non-compliance with some regulations or other. So far the ferry Jubal Early, true to its namesake and ever […]

  • Rifles against artillery

    Bill Adams sent me an interesting graphic he scanned from a period book and has agreed to let me post it. Widely published and commented on the time, it shows the results of a test conducted at the British musketry school at Hythe in the mid-1850s. Thirty riflemen who did not know the distances involved […]

  • Who Killed Uncle John (and John Reynolds)?

    A popular activity for the Civil War buff is trying to figure out who killed certain generals. To help I have posted my article “The Killing of Uncle John” that originally in Civil War Times in June 2006. In it I look at the contemporary and eyewitness accounts of the death of Major General John […]

  • Birthday of a Confederate cavalryman

    Even those of you who are Civil War buffs may not be aware that today (Dec. 6) is the 175thanniversary of the birth of Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby (1833-1916). I know this because the inspiration for the main character in my Civil War novel came from Mosby – a charismatic officer who was the leader […]

  • Short Takes

    Three men in Southampton County, VA (near Hampton Roads) have been arrested for desecrating a Civil War grave site. Kyle Sinclair Burks, 21, of Drewryville, Aaron Richard Howard, 20, of Courtland, and Justin Thomas Rainey, 23, of Franklin, have been charged with attempted grand larceny and violation of a sepulcher, both felonies, said Robert Morris, […]