Showing results for "Revolutionary War"
The Nashville Petition of 1865 and the Promise of Reconstruction: Part I
ECW welcomes guest author Heath Anderson “Whether freeman or slaves the colored race in this country have always looked upon the United States as the Promised Land of Universal freedom, and no earthly temptation has been strong enough to induce us to rebel against it.” These words were written to a convention of white Unionists […]
Read more...Ironclads vs. Fort: Drewry’s Bluff and Fort Darling
On a steamy Virginia day this summer, I visited the site along the west bank of the James River where a small-scale but significant engagement took place on May 15, 1862, during the Virginia Peninsula campaign. Fort Darling on Drewry’s Bluff is a lovely, isolated spot any time of year encompassing 42 wooded acres of […]
Read more...An Extraordinary Life: Mohammad Ali Nicholas Sa’id, Polyglot Genius of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts
The ink was barely dry on Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in January, 1863 when Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew successfully petitioned the War Department to recruit a Black regiment for the Union Army. Andrew’s recruitment team, led by John Mercer Langston and George Stearns, fanned out across the North, while celebrated abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William […]
Read more...What if…Garibaldi Had Commanded the Union Army?
The near catastrophe at Manassas in July 1861 left the Lincoln administration, the Union Army, and many citizens of the North in a state of shock. Just six days following the battle, the president directed Secretary of State William H. Seward to reach across the Atlantic in search of new leadership. Seward instructed Henry S. […]
Read more...The Battle of Memphis and Its Fallen Federal Leader
One of the most consequential battles of the war—and one of the shortest—took place on June 6, 1862: the battle of Memphis. Federals suffered only a single casualty, Col. Charles Ellet, Jr., the man most responsible for the victory in the first place. Although he would not die immediately, Ellet would not live long enough […]
Read more...The Wet March: USS Monitor Almost Sinks
If by “on the march,” we mean the exercise of rapidly shifting a combat unit from behind the lines to where the action is while overcoming formidable obstacles of terrain and weather, then the U.S. Navy had its own wet marches.
Read more...160 Years: “Unlike Anything That Ever Floated” In Hampton Roads
It was morning, Sunday, March 9, 1862. As executive officer and second in command of the revolutionary ironclad, USS Monitor, Greene supervised the weapons in the turret while his captain, Lieutenant John L. Worden, commanded the vessel from the little pilothouse some 50 feet forward of the guns. They had just sallied forth to meet […]
Read more...Ships vs Forts 1861: Off to the Races
L to R: USS Harriet Lane (background), USS Wabash, USS Minnesota, USS Pawnee It was unthinkable for wooden warships in the long age of sail to engage massive forts mounting huge guns often firing heated shot plunging from the heights. Reliant on fickle winds for movement, they were sitting, flammable ducks. Ocean sailors in large, […]
Read more...The Ely/Faulkner Exchange Part I
ECW welcomes back guest author Max Longley New York Congressman Alfred Ely, imprisoned in the South, and Virginia ex-Congressman Charles James Faulkner, imprisoned in the North, traded for each other in 1861 after each spent a few months in the military prison systems of the different belligerents. The story begins with Congressman Ely’s capture at […]
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