Showing results for "First Manassas"
A Nature Trail Through a History Park
Although I’ve done a fair amount of hiking in the past few months, I haven’t had my hiking shoes out of their box since I wore them to Uganda back in January. Flecks of Uganda’s rust-colored clay still line the crevices of the shoes’ treads. The shoebox I pull them from says “Keen,” a reminder […]
Read more...Remembering the war, the centennial, and the sesquicentennial
Guest-poster Caroline Davis is wrapping up an internship at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Now that the dust has settled from the Chancellorsville sesquicentennial, we asked her to reflect on what she learned from the commemoration. Because her work this year has allowed her to dip into the park’s archives, she pulled together some […]
Read more...Eastern Theater versus Western Theater: Where the Civil War Was Won and Lost: The Conclusion to a Series
The conclusion of a series. This series was put together from one of my extended graduate school research papers. The sources used were the current research between 2007-2008, obviously the historiography of the Civil War expands on a monthly basis, thus some of the “current research” in the paper is no longer exactly current. ********* […]
Read more...Pick #3 in my Top 10 List: A set of maps
Part of a Series: Books Every Civil War Buff Ought to Own The third book, or books, every Civil War buff needs on the bookshelf is a good set of maps. These are invaluable–nothing less. They give form to the function of a campaign or battle and, depending on your choices, can put you virtually […]
Read more...A Pennsylvania Blacksmith Goes to War
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Charles R. Bowen found it fitting to include a brief biographical sketch of his father, Levi A. Bowen, in the Biographical Annals of Cumberland County Pennsylvania. Charles was around thirty years of age when the book was published in 1905. Although Levi was by no means famous as […]
Read more...The Fallen Generals of Antietam
On September 17, 1862, outside the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, and along the banks of Antietam Creek, Union and Confederate soldiers fought, bled, and died. That early autumn day is still the bloodiest single day—with 23,000 Americans as casualties—in American history. The majority of the men who fell at Antietam lay in unmarked graves, as […]
Read more...From Iron for Granite: The Army Career of John Gibbon
On August 28, 1862, a Brigadier General would lead his novice brigade of Mid-Westerners against Stonewall Jackson’s hardened Veterans. The Battle of Brawner Farm saw the ascendency of one of the best known and hardest fighting units in the Army of the Potomac. There have been volumes written about this brigade, from memoirs to modern […]
Read more...ECW Historians Contribute to Civil War Trust’s Hallowed Ground Magazine
In August, Manassas will be the scene of another anniversary. As a prelude to that second bloody installment in Northern Virginia, fellow Emerging Civil War historian Dan Davis and myself conducted a few battlefield visits. The idea for “Scary Sequel” rose from those visits as we felt that the Battle of Groveton had been overshadowed. […]
Read more...Reynolds Reconsidered
Was John Fulton Reynolds a great corps commander? Was Reynolds even a great general? And why do Civil War buffs have such a high regard for an officer who did so little in the Civil War compared to the likes of Stonewall Jackson, George Meade, Robert E. Lee, or Ulysses S. Grant? While these questions […]
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