Remembering Ball’s Bluff

Today is the anniversary of the 1861 battle of Ball’s Bluff. A small affair by the standards established later in the war, the battle nonetheless had a magnified impact because it directly led to the establishment of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a Congressional effort to arm-chair general the Union effort for the rest of the war.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the battle, I want to give a shout-out to Jim Morgan, a historian I have immense amounts of respect for, who wrote an excellent account of the battle, A Little Short of Boats. I first met Jim when I interviewed him about his book back in 2011, and to my good fortune, he has since become a great friend of mine.

I want to take a moment to highlight some of Jim’s work, and other work we’ve done here on the blog, about Ball’s Bluff:

• Author James Morgan and the Battle of Ball’s Bluff
• Ball’s Bluff: A Conversation with Author James Morgan About His New Book, A Little Short of Boats
• Ball’s Bluff and the Fall of Charles Stone
• Symposium Spotlight: The Battle of Ball’s Bluff
• Ball’s Bluff National Cemetery

Jim also wrote about the impact of the battle in our Engaging the Civil War Series book Turning Points of the American Civil War (see more here).