Showing results for "Vicksburg"
Finding Missouri Governor and Union Brigadier General Thomas C. Fletcher in Hillsboro
For many history buffs and road trippers, rural Jefferson County, Missouri is usually not very high – or maybe not at all – on the Civil War bucket list of sites to see. Sitting due south of St. Louis is the county seat, Hillsboro, where one of Missouri’s most influential Civil War and Reconstruction governors […]
Read more...Opossum for Christmas Dinner?
Arthur J. Robinson of Company E, 33rd Wisconsin Infantry Volunteers, had a unique Christmas Dinner in 1863, and in 1913 the veteran published his account in verse form. When he wrote the account, only two veterans survived from the eight member mess. In the author notes, Robinson carefully noted that the incident really happened, and […]
Read more...“You can do a great deal in eight days”: Ulysses S. Grant’s Forgotten Turning Point (part two)
Part two of two With an escort of twenty cavalrymen, Ulysses S. Grant rode on the evening of May 3, 1863, into the newly captured town Grand Gulf, Mississippi. He passed the now-abandoned Confederate forts, Cobun and Wade, and made his way to the river where four ironclads—Carondelet, Louisville, Mound City, and Tuscumbia—hunkered on the […]
Read more...“You can do a great deal in eight days”: Ulysses S. Grant’s Forgotten Turning Point (part one)
Part one of two Ulysses S. Grant had envisioned his arrival in Grand Gulf, Mississippi, under other circumstances. A week earlier, he had targeted the landing as the ideal spot to cross his army from the west bank of the Mississippi River to the east, and from there, he would launch an overland trek to […]
Read more...Week In Review: December 13-20, 2020
Lots of preservation news this week on the blog, more perspective on monuments, a burning raid on the Baltimore-Ohio Railroad, book dicussions, and more! Sunday, December 13: In the evening, Chris Heisey posted a photo of the Sgt. Kirkland monument in the snow.
Read more...Incendiaries on the B&O: The Burning of the Fish Creek Spans During the Jones-Imboden Raid (Part II)
See Part I here… On the night of April 27, 1863, Hannah Church spied five men building a fire under the two spans of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad crossing of a fork of Fish Creek bearing her family’s name. Hannah’s parents had both died in 1860 at a combined age of 214 years (!). […]
Read more...Incendiaries on the B&O: The Burning of the Fish Creek Spans During the Jones-Imboden Raid (Part I)
Civil War cavalry raids often rank among the most romantic of Civil War tales. This often has to do with the characters most often associated, with names like Stuart, Morgan, Mosby, Rosser, Gilmor and others. These raids would be recalled in song and verse and were often recorded by civilians in places like Missouri, Ohio, […]
Read more...Book Review: “Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Course of the Civil War, June 23—July 4, 1863”
When one thinks about June-July 1863, inevitably Gettysburg and Vicksburg come to mind. Between the bloodiest battle of the war and Federal forces gaining control of the Mississippi River, that is understandable. But in the shadows of those two giant clashes was a third campaign that saw Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland […]
Read more...The Things ECW is Thankful For
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” wrote President Lincoln in his 1863 proclamation establishing the first national day of Thanksgiving. “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea […]
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