Month: July 2012

  • Wilmington Part 4

    Retreat and Failure Encouraged by the apparent lack of enemy troops on the works Curtis continued to urge his men to find a way into the fort. LT William Walling of Co. C 142nd New York Infantry braved the friendly naval fire to grab the downed enemy flag. Scampering through a gap in the palisades […]

  • Civil War Book Review: No Freedom Shrieker: The Civil War Letters of Union Soldier Charles Biddlecom

    Aldridge, Katherine M. (editor). No Freedom Shrieker: The Civil War Letters of Union Soldier Charles Biddlecom (Paramount Market Publishing, Inc., December 5, 2011). 292 pages, illustrations, bibliography, endnotes, index. ISBN: 078-0-9830436-7-6 $24.95 (Paperback). Imagine rummaging through what is essentially junk on a new property you just bought. Then imagine finding hundreds of Civil War letters […]

  • William Holden at Corinth

    I have posted two of Iowa soldier William Holden letters before, one at the end of the war and one from Atlanta. This one is a detailed description of the Second Battle of Corinth fought on October 3-4, 1862 at Corinth, MS between the Confederates under generals Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price, and the […]

  • DE ARAGON, The Chronicle of a Confederate Surgeon – Part 14

    Author’s note: This covers the Battle of Nashville and Hood’s retreat into Mississippi. The Battle of Nashville   December 1, the day following the battle (Franklin), virtually every house in Franklin was turned into a hospital to accommodate the thousands of Confederate wounded. While the surgeons toiled to cope with the overwhelming numbers of mangled and torn men, Hood urged […]

  • Looking for Civil War Newspaper Transcribers

    UPDATE: If you have any issue with the contact form just leave a comment at the bottom of this post indicating your interest and I’ll contact you privately by email. All, For those of you who do not know, I run a Siege of Petersburg site which is dedicated to posting as much primary source […]

  • July 2012 Civil War Book Notes

    Those that can’t write, Review! July 2012 James W. Durney *********************************************************** New books with July publication dates or in the stores Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Famous Leaders and Battles of the Civil War is 544 pages with 740 period engravings. Lincoln’s Senior Generals: Photographs and Biographical Sketches of the Major Generals of the Union Army is […]

  • Wilmington Part 3

    Naval Bombardment – 24 Dec 1864 The failure of the gun boat experiment left Porter no alternative but to reduce the fort by standard naval bombardment. He probably reveled in the thought of unleashing his armada. With Butler and his troops still unavailable there was a chance to provide a victory without assistance from the […]