TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862 by Joseph L. Harsh I recently purchased the three books of Joseph Harsh’s trilogy dealing with Confederate strategy during from the beginning of the war to the end of the Maryland Campaign in September 1862. The first of the trilogy, Confederate Tide […]

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I’ve always been interested in Present for Duty (hereafter referred to as PFD) strengths of various units during the war, just due to my own curiosity and also due to my hobby of wargaming the Civil War. One area in particular along these lines involves the Maryland Campaign of 1862, culminating in the Battle of […]

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One thing I completely forgot about when reading Struggle for the Shenandoah: Essays on the 1864 Valley Campaign (edited by Gary Gallagher) was the usual “Bibliographic Note” at the end of each volume. In these areas, Gallagher and his fellow essayists choose the books most pertinent to the campaign they have just covered. These lists […]

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To complete my undergraduate history degree last Spring, I was required to write a thesis driven paper at least 20 standard pages long. After getting some guidance from my supervising professors, I wrote a paper twice that size on the historiography and public perception of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Conversely, I am not sure a paper […]

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I’ve often been asked by the people who know me why I love the study of the Civil War so much. My brother and sister are both into other time periods and subjects in history, so while the Civil War bores them, they at least understand my passion for the subject. My parents and my […]

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http://www.brettschulte.net/ACWBooks/southcarolina.htm Secessionville: Assault on Charleston. Patrick Brennan. Savas Publishing Company (1996). 394 pp. 23 maps. This is a review and summary of Patrick Brennan’s Secessionville: Assault on Charleston. Secessionville is a detailed battle history focusing on the James Island Campaign of June 1862 and the resulting Battle of Secessionville on June 16, 1862. The author […]

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Reading Secessionville: Assault On Charleston has reawakened my interest in the Coastal Operations of the Civil War, particularly Burnside’s North Carolina Expedition and the numerous Union efforts around Charleston. In this first part of “Wargaming Carolinas Coastal Operations”, I hope to give scenario designers some basic research materials that I have come across both in […]

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