TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Just a heads up for TOCWOC readers that the reference site Fold 3 has their Civil War records accessible for free for another week and a half, until July 18. It’s a great opportunity to research your ancestor’s CW service without having to subscribe. Fold 3 has most (but not all) of the CW CSRs […]

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Cap and Ball is at it again, this time to answer a question that often comes up about Civil War rifles. Did the addition of a bayonet have any effect on accuracy? He also has some commentary on the use of bayonets during the war. We often hear that Sam Colt invented the revolver, and […]

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For those of you who follow TOCWOC but are not regular readers of my Siege of Petersburg Online site, I thought I’d provide a little update here, the first in quite awhile. I’ve been VERY, VERY busy, so much so that my blogging here has dropped off more than I’d like.  That said, here’s where […]

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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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Very nice animated map of the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. If you’d like a short and concise campaign summary, check it out—it’s well done.

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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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It is the summer of 1860. The British government, rattled by a French invasion scare, seeks to train a sizable corps of volunteers armed with the new rifles, much as the Americans had done to them eight-five years earlier. To properly kick things off the queen herself pulls a silken cord and fires the first […]

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