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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Smallpox, unlike the Minié ball, was an indiscriminate, equal-opportunity killer that killed about 30% of those it infected.  Although there was no cure, English physician Edward Jenner had devised a vaccine of sorts. He noticed that milkmaids often contracted cowpox, which resembled smallpox but was much less virulent, and were thereafter immune to smallpox. He […]

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Fold3 is offering free access to its records for the Memorial Day weekend. Especially if you’re still in lockdown this is an excellent chance to access Civil War records, including an extensive collection of service records.

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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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Cowan’s Auctions just completed a massive auction of Civil War items of all kinds. The catalog is fun to look through, even if you can’t afford to buy any of it. Three items I found particularly interesting were: A letter from General Lee to Virginia Senator Andrew Hunter in January 1865 about the enlistment of […]

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The 19th Century was a busy one for firearms development. At its beginning armies used .75 cal. smoothbore muskets like the Brown Bess, and by its end they were using the fully modern .30 cal. box magazine repeater with smokeless powder. One of the big technological jumps happened during the US Civil War with the […]

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