TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Civil War Units

  • Need Help From TOCWOC Readers: Mounted Pioneer Corps?

    This request for help from those more knowledgeable on the subject of engineer/pioneer units comes about as a result of reading Myron M. Miller’s The Soul of a Soldier: The True Story of a Mounted Pioneer in the Civil War. The book is a collection of letters as well as a biographical sketch of Miller’s […]

  • One Union Regiment

    The infantry regiment is the basic building block of Civil War armies.  This unit is administrator, trainer, supply point, responsible for discipline and medical service.  The regiment is home for the majority of soldiers for their entire service.  Mission assignments go to regiments, who are responsible to garrison, escort, protect or hunt down whatever the […]

  • Civil War Book Review: A History of the 3rd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Battalion (James Battalion): 1861-1865

    This is the second review for the second release of titles in the South Carolina Regimental-Roster Set series from Broadfoot Publishing Company.  A significant portion of each review will show you how this particular volume compared to the others in the series in terms of regimental history length, amount of annotation, depth and print size […]

  • John Buford’s Readiness

    If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Hamlet, Act V, Scene ii As the sun broke over McPherson’s Ridge on the morning of July 1, 1863, John Buford and the men […]

  • A Top Notch Source for Unit History Bibliographies

    Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at Beyond the Crater earlier today. The U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center site is chock full of interesting and useful Civil War materials. Today, I want to highlight the Civil War Unit Bibliographies area of the Resource Guides/Finding Aids section of the site. As many readers of TOCWOC […]

  • Review: Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War

    Swan, James B. Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War. Southern Illinois University Press (2009). 306 pages, roster, notes, maps, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978-0-8093-2890-1 $32.95 (Hardcover). What was life like for western Irish volunteers in the American Civil War? Historian James B. Swan attempts to answer that question in Chicago’s Irish […]

  • Army of the Potomac Ordnance at the Battle of Fredericksburg

    I was browsing the web for Quarterly Ordnance Returns (i.e. the type and number of weapons each unit had at a given time) for the Army of the Potomac. I found a gem at the Fredericksburg National Battlefield site. Historian Eric Mink apparently transcribed the Ordnance returns for the Army of the Potomac for the […]