TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Author: Ned B.

  • The Road To Villanow, May 7th and 8th, 1864

    Back in 2012 I wrote a post about the Confederate defense of Resaca, Georgia, in which I argued that General Joseph Johnston took adequate measures to protect the town and the railway bridge from the movement made by the Army of the Tennessee through Snake Creek Gap on May 9, 1864. But a question remains: […]

  • Varney v. Burnside, a brief for the defense

    As discussed earlier this month, I recently read General Grant and the Rewriting of History by Frank Varney.  Though it is marketed as a book about the impact of Ulysses Grant’s memoirs on the writing of history,  I found that it is mostly about reframing the Civil War career of General William Rosecrans. In doing […]

  • The Case of the Missing Telegram

    Last week, in expressing my initial thoughts about General Grant and the Rewriting of History by Frank Varney, I wrote “do not be surprised to find me writing multiple blog posts” about the book. And so here I am, at it again. In the comments section to the previous post there was some discussion of […]

  • Enlisting nature itself – Confederate engineering of the Red River

    Back in the summer I wrote a couple of posts about the Red River campaign of 1864.  I intended to follow them with this concluding post, but my time has been occupied with other things, so I am only now getting around to putting it up. During the Red River campaign, the river was a […]

  • Frank Varney and the Mangling of History

    I have been working my way through General Grant and the Rewriting of History by Frank Varney, that was published by Savas Beatie this past July, and I have a problem: I am so annoyed by it I might not be able to finish. I wanted to like this book, but do not be surprised […]

  • A Critical Review of Osprey Publishing’s “Shenandoah Valley 1862”

    To successfully describe the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign can be a challenge because the campaign was so dynamic. Osprey Publishing recently released a new book on the campaign, “Shenandoah Valley 1862”, and unfortunately it fails to meet the challenge. The following are some examples of why it falls short. Maps are a great way to […]

  • The Road Not Taken

    After musing on the battle of Mansfield in my previous post, I come to the question of whether Banks was on the wrong road. The basics of the situation are this: by the first week of April 1864 U.S. forces had advanced as far as Grand Ecore and Natchitoches; it was about 75 miles further […]