TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Update March 30, 2015: post edited to show a change in how the series will unfold. In my opinion, several aspects of the Red River campaign of 1864 are misunderstood. An example of this is the role of General Ulysses S Grant. This post is the first in a six an eight part series that […]

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Dr. Richard J. Sommers, author of Richmond Redeemed, recently reprinted in a Second Edition by Savas Beatie, recently gave a talk about leadership at the Siege of Petersburg which aired on CSPAN.  Luckily for us, as Dr. Sommers writes in an email, it’s now available online: C-SPAN filmed a presentation on “Richmond Redeemed: Enduring Lessons […]

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Every so often in my Siege of Petersburg research I run into something which might be a bit of a “find.”  I recently obtained page images of the 1873-1874 newspaper version of “Our Living and Our Dead,” a New Bern, North Carolina newspaper edited by Stephen D. Pool.  On page 2 of the March 18, […]

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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 […]

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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: […]

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I wanted to take a moment to thank K. S. McPhail (New Kent County History) for sending along multiple postwar accounts of the Siege of Petersburg, including a lengthy reminiscence on the August 21, 1864 action at the Battle of Globe Tavern by Confederate veteran John H. Neil.  Neil was a member of the 7th […]

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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 […]

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