Month: January 2014

  • The Top 13 Controversies at Franklin: Part 6

    Editor’s Note: After I’d posted my recent comments on Lee’s possible endorsement of John Bell Hood for army command in 1864, I started going back over a lengthy nine or ten part series I did on Eric Jacobson’s book For Cause & for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin.  I had totally […]

  • Civil War Book Review: Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864

    Newsome, Hampton. Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864. (The Kent State University Press, 2013). 447 pages, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978-1-60635-132-1 $45.00 (Cloth). Slowly but surely, the Siege of Petersburg’s various offensives are beginning to see the light of day in modern books on the subject.  Hampton Newsome’s new book Richmond Must Fall: […]

  • Review: Stuart’s Finest Hour by John Fox

    Stuart’s Finest Hou: The Ride Around McClellan June 1862 by John Fox III ISBN 978-0-9711950-5-9 Copyright 2014 Format 6 x 9 hardback, 344 pages, 7 maps, 75 photos, appendices, bibliography and index. $31.95 James Ewell Brown Stuart was one of the many men vaulted into sudden prominence by the Civil War, and his ascent began […]

  • The Battle of Ft. Harrison: Richard S. Ewell’s Previously Unpublished Account

    Lt. General Richard S. Ewell is well-known among students of the early was battles, perhaps being most famous for his decision not to attack the Union position on Cemetery Hill on the evening of July 1, 1863 at Gettysburg.  Ewell’s performance at Gettysburg, in the Fall of 1863 and in the Overland Campaign caused General […]

  • Savas Beatie and the Siege of Petersburg

    I was recently emailing back and forth with John Horn, author of several Civil War books on the Siege of Petersburg, and he let me know that he is working with Savas Beatie to produce an updated version of his look at the Siege of Petersburg’s Fourth Offensive in 1864.  The original, The Petersburg Campaign: […]

  • The “Confederate Column” in the Richmond Times Dispatch: A Gold Mine of First Person Accounts

    Recently K. S. McPhail, who runs the excellent New Kent County History web site, has been sending me a ton of excellent first person accounts from post-war newspapers, many of which you’ll find on my Siege of Petersburg Postwar Newspaper accounts page.  The articles Mr. McPhail has been sending along are mostly from papers which […]

  • Chickasaw Bayou (8)

    December 28 – Lake House Road On the Lake House Road BG Morgan prepared for his renewed attack by assigning 7th Battery, Michigan Light Artillery, normally a 2nd Brigade asset, to DeCourcy. The six guns were placed on the south side of the road and took the 29th Louisiana under fire. Their exposed position was […]