TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Military History

  • Reflections of Glory

    Watched Glory and parts of it several times before the holidays, AHC was pretty much showing it non-stop, which gives you time to dissect things more completely. Conclusion: made in 1989, it holds up pretty well, and I think it’s one of the best Civil War movies from Hollywood. It also got Denzel Washington into […]

  • Short Takes

    A tour around the web for Civil War topics… A look at a recently acquired archive of Civil War telegraph messages, thought to be lost. As the article points out, there is quite a bit of similarity between the telegraph messages of the 19th Century and today’s text messages. Some are ciphered and the code […]

  • Review: Civil War Infantry Tactics by Earl Hess

    Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness by Earl J. Hess Hardcover: 368 pages 6.1 x 9.4 inches ISBN-10: 0807159379 ISBN-13: 978-0807159378 Publisher: LSU Press (April 13, 2015) Earl Hess has added yet another tome to his ever-growing list of Civil War books. His latest is devoted to infantry tactics, which I must […]

  • Blackford at Seven Pines

    Johnston continued to retreat until he was literally under the spires of Richmond. On May 31 he finally made his move at Seven Pines. The flooded Chickahominy River had split the Union army, leaving two corps isolated south of the river, which Johnston planned to strike with nearly his entire force. While the plan was […]

  • Retreat from Williamsburg

    McClellan continued to bring up his heavy siege guns to the Yorktown line, and on the night of May 3, 1862, Johnston withdrew toward Richmond rather than risk a battle. Blackford wrote his mother: At 8 o’clock the whole Army moved quickly out of the works. I, with my company, was left to support the […]

  • Sir Joseph Whitworth and His Deadly Rifles

    My article about Joseph Whitworth and his rifles is up on the Shock Troops web site. It originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of Civil War Times. In 1854, at the request of the British Board of Ordnance, Whitworth turned his attention to firearms, specifically the Enfield P53 .577 caliber service rifle, which he […]

  • Blackford at Yorktown

    Johnston’s army arrived on the Virginia Peninsula and established a line at the Warwick River to block McClellan’s advance. Blackford and his men scrambled to adjust to the novelty of a continuous contact with the Federals. On April 22nd Blackford wrote his parents from “Curtain to Redoubt No. ‘4’ near Yorktown, Va.”, first apologizing for […]