Month: July 2013
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America in 1913, 50 Years after the War
1913 The celebration of the 100th Birthday of a local community started me thinking about what America was like as the 50th anniversary of the War Between the States occurred. This paper is a very quick look at America during the 50th anniversary of the events of 1863. Woodrow Wilson is President, the first Southerner […]
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Gettysburg on GIS
Smithsonian magazine has a very interesting map study of Gettysburg using modern GIS data to plot elevations and sight distances. You can take a look for yourself and see what the commanders actually saw on those fateful days. Which is not what we see on maps today where, looking down from above, we know exactly […]
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Arkansas Post – Part 5
The Expedition Begins On the morning of January 5th three City Class gunboats, De Kalb, Louisville, and Cincinnati, led the convoy of transports and six lighter gunboats out from Milliken’s Bend into the Mississippi River. In an effort to conceal their final destination they by passed the mouth of the Arkansas River. The going was […]
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General Jacob Cox on Assault Tactics
When discussing tactics one needs to look not just at what pundits are saying now but what the people who actually practiced them said about it. I came across an excellent description of the failure of the column attacks at Kennesaw Mountain by someone who was there, Maj. Gen. Jacob Cox, who commanded a division […]
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Counting Confederates at the Battle of Mansfield
This is the first in a series of posts planned for the next several weeks that address aspects of the Red River campaign of 1864. Rather than a chronological narrative about the campaign, I shall be examining different topics and decision points. — How many Confederates were at the battle of Mansfield (also known as […]
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Fort Stevens – Scaring Able Lincoln Like Hell
A hundred and forty-nine years ago today the Confederates stood with sight of the unfinished US capitol dome—the closest they would get to it under arms. The resulting fracas is usually called the Battle of Fort Stevens and altho minor compared to contests like Gettysburg, it was a hard fought action, well remembered by those […]