Remembering Ball’s Bluff

Author James Morgan with Chris Mackowski at the Ball’s Bluff battlefield 2011

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:

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).



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