Civil War Times

How diligent research revealed the identity of the Devil’s Den “sharpshooter.” http://bit.ly/SharpshooterPhoto The surrender at Appomattox Court House has been remembered—and misremembered—from the day the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms

In the December issue’s “Armament,” the picture of the flintlock is not of a Model 1816 but of a Model 1795 musket. The features of the 1795 are a faceted pan, a curl on the end of the frizzen, flat faceted hammer, and a flat and rear “teated” lockpl

As Civil War scholarship and public interpretation expands, a greater importance is being paid to sharing the story of the African American experience during the Civil War, including on the home front and the role of Black troops in the U.S. Army. As

ON SEPTEMBER 28, the North-South Skirmish Association (N-SSA) held its inaugural American Civil War Live Fire Firearms Seminar at Fort Shenandoah in Winchester, Va., the N-SSA’s main range. A handful of participants, including Civil War Times Editor

SOMEONE, perhaps the subject himself, delicately scratched James L. Baldwin’s name on his photograph. Behind that name lies a story of a man striving for freedom. Before the war, Baldwin was enslaved on a plantation near Port Gibson, Miss. In 1863, h

LINCOLN FORUM SCHOLAR and philanthropist Frank Williams has donated a bronze sculpture depicting the mortally wounded president to the Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana at Mississippi State University Libraries in Starkville. Scul

In August 2021, the Sphinx, a prominent rock formation in the depression between Big Round Top and Little Round Top at Gettysburg National Military Park, collapsed. In an online note, the Adams County Historical Society compared a William Tipton phot

Interested in living in history-steeped Alexandria, Va., and owning a home with a direct connection to the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia? Then this home is for you. Just bring deep pockets (it’s listed at $5.9 million) to the table. Robe

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WHEN CAPTAIN ANDREW RUSSELL, photographer for the United States Military Railroad, exposed the wet plate in his camera to take this image shortly after the December 11-13, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg, he took a rare picture of live Confederates in

IN MAY 2021, Wayne Motts was named president and chief executive officer of the Gettysburg Foundation, an organization founded in 1989 to help preserve Gettysburg National Military Park. A lifelong aficionado of the Civil War, Motts began his career

AS I RACE DOWN Rohrersville Road near Boonsboro, Md., the magnificent South Mountain range to the left and a sign advertising a local moonshine tasting to the right, three thoughts linger: Will that duct tape hold up on the crumpled left, rear panel

ANYONE INTERESTED IN the military history of the Civil War owes a debt to William F. Fox and Frederick H. Dyer. Both Union veterans, they engaged in almost unimaginably tedious research, organized a mass of statistical and descriptive information, an

WHAT FAMOUS GELDING is attached to this ear? The first person who sends in the correct answer wins a Civil War Times water bottle. Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com, subject heading “Whoa!” CONGRATULATIONS to Al Walgenbach of Shelby Township,

I RARELY SEE anyone exploring the ground behind the visitor center at Antietam National Battlefield. I know I never, until recently, tramped that ground. There are no monuments or tablets to draw you there and most visitors whisk by in vehicles, eage

The Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, is often thought of as four separate groups of fighting: The Cornfield, Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s West Woods disaster, the fight for the Sunken Road, and then the Union capture of Burnside Bridge and the

Colonel William Irwin’s 6th Corps brigade of Maj. Gen. William F. “Baldy” Smith’s 2nd Division was an experienced unit, whose regiments were mustered into service between May 9, 1861, and November 23, 1861. They participated to varying degrees in all

The location of the Antietam battlefield photo above had eluded researchers for years. Who took it and when, however, was well known. Photographers Alexander Gardner and his assistant, James Gibson, both employed by Mathew Brady, took the images on S

The Gardner image in question shows dead Union troops on the Antietam battlefield. That is uncommon in the Gardner series, which mostly shows the bodies of dead Confederates. Federal troops held the field and naturally buried their comrades first. Th

Just beyond the Old Post Chapel entrance gate at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., stands an obelisk headstone bearing a detailed yet spartan inscription: Commissioned surgeon of colored volunteers, April 4, 1863, with rank of Major. Com

Often overlooked among surviving Civil War accounts are the records of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.). The largest of all Civil War veterans organizations, from 1866 to 1956 the Grand Army of the Republic counted hundreds of thousands of Uni

Alexander Augusta served as the chief surgeon at Camp Stanton, a recruiting and training post for African American Union soldiers named for Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and located south of Washington in Charles County, Md., along the Patuxent R

Organized in 1866 in Illinois, the Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization of veterans of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines who served during the Civil War. First formed to provide for fellowship, it soon became a powerful political ad

When Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House, it began a series of pivotal capitulations that brought the war to its close. The surrenders sent thousands of former Confederates on the move back to their homes.

At the April 9, 1865, surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, General Ulysses S. Grant’s terms had promised that General Robert E. Lee’s men would be allowed to return to their homes immediately. But Lee and Grant had fa

The Army of the Potomac’s passage across the Rapidan River in early May 1864 promised the first battlefield confrontation between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. The stakes could scarcely have been higher: a Union defeat might well lead to an arm

AMERICANS CALL IT the Minié ball after French Captain Claude Etienne Minié, but we should really call it the Burton ball after James H. Burton, the Harpers Ferry armorer who refined Minié’s slug into the conical killer we all know. Three rings, two r

From the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I, a period known as the Gilded Age, America experienced unprecedented industrial growth, vast accumulations of wealth for a privileged few, and frequent, often violent, labor unrest pitting

Shortly after the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms on April 12, 1865, thousands of Confederate veterans began heading back to their homes. Throughout the Carolinas and into Georgia and beyond, they clambered onto railroad cars. Railroad t

I’ve been reading William Marvel’s new biography about General Fitz John Porter, Radical Sacrifice: The Rise and Ruin of Fitz John Porter, which I like very much. It is very deeply researched and also very readable. Marvel skillfully lays out the det

One would be tempted to say that Brian Swartz’s editor and publisher have thrown him under the bus by allowing him to employ less than reliable, dusty old sources, when these mentors have promised something new and enlightening. It could also seem th

INSIDE THIS UNASSUMING, BATTERED BOX, Lieutenant Alfred W. Kredel kept mementoes of his service. Kredel, of German descent, was from Allegheny City, Pa., today part of Pittsburgh. He first served from 1861-1862 in the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves. Wound