TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

In fact, they can, with modern forensic archeology, be quite eloquent. Case in point comes from the Manassas battlefield, when recent excavations have revealed quite a lot about about wounds and surgical practices. In an article for Smithsonian magazine, recently discovered remains of Union soldiers show a lot about their fate. The bones were discovered […]

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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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My essay on Picketing, Skirmishing, and Sharpshooting in the Civil War is up at Essential Civil War Curriculum, a Sesquicentennial project of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech. Primary sponsors are Dr. James I. (Bud) Robertson and Professor William C. (Jack) Davis, both Professors at Virginia Tech. The security of an […]

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One of the most interesting but at the same time frustrating parts of researching sharpshooters is finding new sharpshooter units. Of course if you find one there are probably more, but the information on them if often maddeningly vague and incomplete. I’ve recently come across evidence of Federal brigade sharpshooters. We’ve know about the Confederate […]

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Intriguing article by a biomedical researcher at Duke University, whose research suggests that the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley died from the effects of their own torpedo. … after an exhaustive three-year Duke study that involved repeatedly setting blasts near a scale model, shooting authentic weapons at historically accurate iron plate and doing […]

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There was gallantry during the conflict and the larger armies generally observed the rules of war. However, in smaller actions the conduct of both sides was often extremely brutal. Here’s a letter from Thomas J. Bond of the 2nd Ohio, who describes how some suspected guerillas were summarily dealt with. The letter is up for […]

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As part of the continuing quest to find the origins of the term “sharpshooter,” I directed a query to the Museum of Military History (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) in Vienna, Austria. The Austrians, after all, were the first to employ rifle units and true light infantry in the 18th Century, and Central Europe (the Tirol, southern Germany, […]

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