TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

TOCWOC Editor’s Note: This one grew out of a research project I’ve been working through for The Siege of Petersburg Online, cataloging the ordnance officers of the Army of Northern Virginia one Compiled Military Service Record at a time. Philip Beverley Stanard was the Third Corps’ Chief Ordnance Officer under A.P. Hill from 1863 to […]

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Reorganizing the Confederate Valley Ordnance Department After the Disaster at Waynesboro Lt. Col. Briscoe G. Baldwin, Chief of Ordnance, Army of Northern Virginia Briscoe Baldwin isn’t a name that gets much attention outside of Lee’s staff studies, but by the last winter of the war he was about as embedded in the Army of Northern […]

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It has become somewhat of a cottage industry to try to identify who shot various prominent figures like generals Sedgwick and Reynolds. The other say I ran across this postwar newspaper article dealing with the shooting of General Winfield Hancock at Gettysburg. The article credits Sergeant William Wood of Company H, 56th Virginia (Kemper’s brigade, […]

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Nice article on James Burton, who, as it says, was one of the most important and influential men in firearms design and development, especially regarding manufacture. An American, he also figures prominently in the Civil War. In April 1844, Burton took a job as a machinist at the Harpers Ferry Armory. Coincidentally, the B&O Railroad […]

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Rethinking U. S. Grant seems to be the in thing right now. History has no judgment, but historians do, and these tend to run in cycles (witness views of the Confederacy). So it is with Grant, who seems to be on the upswing. Claremont Review of Books reviews some of the latest scholarship, including books […]

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Being in New England Massachusetts suffers from an acute shortage of Confederate monuments, giving activists little to do. However, creative ones will find a way, and you can always go after Union heroes. One Massachusetts lawmaker has a problem with General Joseph Hooker (a native son) because an entrance named in his honor insults “women’s […]

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Raynor’s Historical Collectible Auctions site is worth a visit to look at the Civil War manuscripts for auction. You can learn a lot just by looking at the excepts of the letters about soldiers’ attitudes about the war, their enemies, politicians, their leaders, and slavery. It’s often quite different than what you read in the […]

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