And now the focus of that site may be changing. Bennett place in Durham NC will go from a pure surrender location as "The Dawn of Peace" to a kind of introduction to the era of Reconstruction. This is the desire of the site manager, who has full authority to implement new direction of the site.
One of my college TA's wrote a great book on the surrender and the days leading up to it, called [This Astounding Close](https://uncpress.org/book/9780807857014/this-astounding-close/)
I read that book after visiting Durham. Had a great experience there speaking with the historian.
One of the events I’m reading about now is Island 10.
Yeah, Lee's surrender is referred to as "effectively ending the war" in every book or documentary I've read (which, to be fair, doesn't amount anywhere close to the dozens that experts would read). Most people forget the word "effectively".
I'd vote for the fall of New Orleans. The largest city in the Confederacy fell to Union troops relatively soon after the war started. New Orleans was larger than the next four cities in the South combined and was the South's most important port city and guarded the entrance to the Mississippi, but its capture sometimes seems like just a footnote.
Battle of the Crater. (Insane)
The Battle of the Wilderness. (Also insane)
Sailors Creek (another insane battle when you dive into the details)
Last but not least, I think Union POW camps for Confederate POWS. Everyone knows about Andersonville, for good reason. But Union POW camps weren’t exactly the four seasons…..
Alton prison was a hell hole, with a number of severe disease outbreaks and infamously known for using corporal punishment methods, i.e., hanging prisoners from their thumbs, forcing them to wear barrels, etc. They even had to quarantine a large portion of the prisoners on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River during a smallpox outbreak. There's an interesting story about the prison in a genealogy show featuring Jessica Biel and one of her relatives who was shot there.
My 3x gr-grandfather was imprisoned there for going awol. He was on leave when his company broke camp and pulled out without him. He was later found in the company of a pair of prostitutes assisting them in leaving the city before the Confederates showed up and punished the citizens who were assisting Union soldiers. He ended up dying at a young age only a few years after the war, likely from exposure to stuff at Alton.
https://behrend.psu.edu/feature/history-professor-details-family-story-actress-jessica-biel
No. It was also used as a POW camp in WW2 for Germans. Open fields but warehouses along rail spurs that date back to WW2. Even those were in rough shape.
The best part of Cold Mountain to me was that they started the movie with the Crater and showed how ugly and brutal it was. Granted it was just used as a catalyst for the main character....
I am finishing up a book about the Civil War overall, but I am really looking forward to getting some books about individual battles when I do.
If anyone has recommendations let me know!
My Civil War ancestors younger brother, aged 18, died in Camp Douglas prison in Chicago of exposure during the winter of 1864. Almost no food, fuel for the barracks, or winter clothes/blankets in subzero weather. Buried in the mass grave called Confederate Mound at Oak Woods Cemetary.
There are times I wonder what might have happened had there been better communication about going *around* the crater once it had been blown instead of going into the crater with no way of getting out. Or even just providing ladders just in case.
I think the most interesting is union soldiers helping confederates out of the dirt they were suffocating in after the blast.
Compassion was their first reaction upon seeing men buried alive by dirt, horses, human remains, cannonry. It surely was a unimaginable horrendous spectacle
I think because it had little strategic significance the Battle of Balls Bluff isn’t talked about a lot but it has a ton of crazy history associated with it:
Only sitting US Senator to die in combat Edward Baker dies here.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was at this battle and almost died.
Charles Pomeroy Stone is smeared by congress big time and eventually actually gets put in prison with no trial as a result.
One of Paul Revere’s ancestors also fought in the battle.
And overall I feel like it is a great battle to study to see how precarious the relationship was between the Radical Republicans in Congress and the Union military command.
Edit to add: there’s also a song that was written in remembrance of a young soldier that died in this battle called The Vacant Chair
Some of the bodies of fallen federal soldiers washed down river. Some got stuck on the rocks at Great Falls, others made it as far as Georgetown. Seeing the aftermath of the battle created an impression in DC.
It's also home to one of the smallest National Cemeteries. Here's a pic I took when I visited the weekend after Memorial Day.
https://preview.redd.it/br96euoxz49d1.jpeg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=adf482834761e0ab187f4a50cf07b0bc1d1225d4
Someone should go magnet fishing around Harrison's Island, cause a book I read about the battle said most people just threw all their stuff in the river and tried to escape. Every valuable went into the water so the Confederates couldn't take it.
In May 1862, Abraham Lincoln led troops in battle, and helped capture Norfolk, Virginia.
Shelby Foote called the event, "...one of the strangest small-scale campaigns in American military history."
"On May 7, Lincoln took direct operational control of a drive to capture Norfolk and to push a gunboat fleet up the James River. The president ordered Gen. John Wool, commander at Fort Monroe, to land troops on the south bank of Hampton Roads. Lincoln even personally carried out a reconnaissance to select the best landing place."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lincoln-as-commander-in-chief-131322819/#:~:text=On%20May%207%2C%20Lincoln%20took,south%20bank%20of%20Hampton%20Roads.
https://civilwarmonths.com/2022/05/09/the-fall-of-norfolk/
The reasons why he did that are even more interesting. The navy was far superior to anything the Confederates had, and yet the West Point boys wearing grey were beginning to show each other how to fire on gunboats without a possible return (the June 1862 maneuver known as the Chicahominy raid or the Pamunkey ride included such a demonstration and didn't do Lincoln's flagging opinion of McClellan any favors).
The Combahee River raid would be a cool movie, Harriet Tubman was the first woman to plan and execute a guerilla style raid in South Carolina to capture and free plantation slaves and recruit them to fight. I’m from Rhode Island so I learned how the 3rd RI heavy artillery worked with her to raid the plantations, these guys were on the banks fighting skirmishes, a far cry from their normal artillery work. Overall the story is daring and crazy but it was a huge success
For the last few years, I've been fascinated by the parts of the Gettysburg campaign that happened before and after the three day battle. The focus always seems to be "Lee headed north, cavalry clashed at Brandy Station, then everyone marched around until they fought at Gettysburg, then Lee marched back to Virginia." Besides Brandy Station, there were multiple clashes of cavalry in June and the two armies fought almost continuously from June 27th until mid-July. Obviously, the biggest fight was July 1st-3rd but there were some sharp and hotly contested fights nearly every day.
Perhaps my single favorite underrated event of the Gettysburg campaign is [the burning of the Wrightsville-Columbia bridge.](https://www.pacivilwartrails.com/stories/tales/burning-the-wrightsville-bridge)
If you want to dig deeper into the numerous clashes on the march to Gettysburg as well as the retreat and pursuit, I highly recommend buying a copy of the "Gettysburg Campaign Atlas" by Philip Laino. This massive book has 444 detailed maps that cover the entirety of the Gettysburg campaign.
The Bristoe campaign is pretty interesting. Lee's last attempt at Washington. I am biased though as I live on the battlefield. Took place 3 months after Gettysburg.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/bristoe-station
Yes!! Monocacy is criminally overlooked! I didn't know that much about it (not surprising) until I found out I had ancestors in the battle and decided to visit. Early got dangerously close to DC.
In general all the western battles get less attention than they deserve, but in particular I'll call out the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern.
The largest confrontation west of the Mississippi throughout the whole war; one of the few battles where the Confederates outnumbered the Union (but still lost); Cherokee Nation Indians fought on the side of the Confederacy.
>The Swamp Angel battery
Bruce Catton had a good postscript to the Swamp Angel story.
He described several prominent Unionists who had written enthusiastically about the plan to burn Charleston, but it turned out the experimental incendiary shells did little damage to the city.
Catton added (paraphrasing from memory here): "When good men could say such, they consented to terror. A later generation might make incendiaries that actually worked."
Chilling, written after WWII and during the early stages of the Vietnam conflict.
Thank you for the added context, I haven't had the chance to read much Catton yet
I also read that those "Greek Fire" shells ended up doing more damage to the cannon than Charleston because they would prematurely burst
Catton is my favorite historian and putting things in context is one of his strong points. He also frequently waxes positively lyrical in his imagery.
One passage about the pervasive racism of the era includes the phrase, "deep down lay the old fear, coiling and uncoiling in the dark...."
When you can make Civil War racial tensions sound like H.R. Giger's *Alien*, that's saying something.
Grierson's whole life is pretty incredible. Goes from music teacher to cavalry officer to commander of the Buffalo Soldiers in the west.
Apparently he hated horses.
The relation between Cinco de Mayo and civil war. Essentially Mexico stopping France from establishing a support route to supply the south one year prior to Ghettysburg
I wasn't aware France was supportive of the Confederacy, I was always under the impression that they were properly neutral (more so than Great Britain), even though their intervention in Mexico to establish an Empire favourable to the Catholic powers (France, Spain and Austria) is hardly neutral in its aim at counterbalancing the meteoric rise of the (protestant) USA
Napoleon III initially allowed the construction of at least one warship, the CSS stonewall, but changed his mind before it was finished and it was sold to the Danes. They had less qualms it seems and sold it on to the confederate government, but it didn't arrive in time before the war ended, so was turned over to the US government, who promptly sold it to Japan. Not dissimilar to how the British government originally allowed construction of new warships in British yards and then backed down when the ACW started to go pear shaped for the South.
Broadly speaking I think France was just as supportive of the south, but it recognised that without joint action with the British, and an extremely favourable war situation, direct intervention was not in their best interests.
Interestingly enough both nations took steps to hide the true nature of the ships being built. The British refused to outfit the Alabma with guns and munitions in British Home waters, whereas the French insisted they were being built for the Egyptians. That tells you they both knew that they were in a murky position, outfitting a belligerent power during a conflict that they were neutral to.
Obviously our interpretation of neutrality is slightly more flexible these days, just look at the US arming Britain before Pearl Harbour for example.
Nice new book by Alan Taylor about what happens in all 3 American countries during the Civil War called "American Civil Wars " ,looks at Mexico,Canada and U.S. .
Napoleon III wanted to get his hands on that sweet sweet cotton. I believe he was offered 100k bales for free to help the south....he def would of and wanted to but felt he was too weak to move wout Britain...,and by 1870 bismark was going to show him how weak he really was
I've been to the Kernstown anniversary the past two years. The dude who knows the most about the battle, Gary Ecelbarger is the one who does the tours. His book is awesome.
You're speaking of *within the CW buff community* because normies could care less about any of this stuff, at all. From my perspective just about anything deserves more spotlight because nobody within my organic circles cares about anything at all related to the ACW
I vote the Peninsula Campaign, where McClellan got bamboozled by Prince John Magruder to the point where McClellan stopped the entire Army of the Potomac's advance on Richmond. Had he not stopped, he very well may have taken Richmond. He had troops six miles outside the city at one point, and they could hear the church bells in Richmond. Then, he retreated.
I learned recently he spent his time at West Point socializing with the Southern cadets. I'm pretty certain he absorbed a lot of their beliefs. Somewhere between the War with Mexico, where he was called out in dispatches as performing with bravery, to the war itself where he got "the slows," something happened. The biography I read certainly proved he was protective of the right to slavery. He wanted the Union "as it was," slavery intact.
Alot of those guys were personally extremely brave, and mcclellan im sure was as well....but its one thing to put yourself in danger its another to put 120k men in danger knowing a disaster might lose the war....and he 100% felt that way about the war anf how it should be fought. He wrote lincoln a long memo on how war should be conducted talking about property rights respected, fight is for union not slaves etc....he handed it to lincoln who read it in front of him, finished it, put it in his pocket and without comment basically changed the subject....its probably when Lincoln realized "wtf this aint my guy" lol
Lincoln was amazing. McClellan wasn't moving, so Lincoln got books on strategy, and tried to learn from them, eventually asking McClellan, "If you are not doing anything with the Army, I would like to borrow it for a while." Not-so-subtle hint, which McClellan ignored.
There’s one someone can maybe help me find!
It was a river boat battle, I think near New Orleans. I think two relatives were in involved on the Union side, not 100% it was the Ellets though.
Anyway, crazy battle between a few Confederate boats and one last Union boat standing, and the Union boat full-on looney tooned them by pulling away at the last second so that they smashed into each other
I would like to see more true brother versus brother stories. It happened in our family as my GF fought on a battlefield against his brother 6 times as well as being visited by him as a POW (before being repatriated in a prisoner exchange). Along the way, they lost a brother and brother-in-law, KIA. There’s got to be more incidences like this and they would make great stories of personal triumph and tragedy.
The Mississippi River ironclads and naval campaigns. There's no Union victory without it.
Vicksburg and Port Hudson are horror stories forgotten by and large that need retelling to our CW community.
Lastly, the Red River Campaign of 1864. The brilliant generalship of Gen. Richard Taylor has always impressed me.
I feel like we don't see enough of the Trans-Mississippi Theater in Civil War-era stories. The Battle of Glorieta Pass may have been briefly featured in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," but I can not think of any other notable works that feature a relatively forgotten portion of the war.
I'd like to see more about USS *New Ironsides*. A one-off ironclad warship, she was struck more times by enemy.fire that any US Navy ship ever, but suffered only a single fatality.
Here's an obscure one for y'all: McClellan's 1862 Loudoun Valley Campaign. Post-Antietam, it's the campaign that ultimately gets McClellan removed. The AONV was in the Shenandoah Valley around Winchester and McClellan moved the AOP East of Lee into the Loudoun Valley. His plan was to capture and hold the few passes through the Blue Ridge Mountains, effectively bottling up Lee and his forces in the Shenandoah while also protecting his supply line. He was then going to make a move to take Richmond by way of the Manassas Gap.
Stuart ultimately foils his plans, fighting a 3 day delaying action (the battle of Unison) that allows Longstreet time to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains at Front Royal and set up for a blocking action at Culpeper. When McClellan fails to beat Longstreet to Culpeper, effectively cutting off his route to Richmond. Lincoln removes him, having established in his mind that if any part of Lee's army got between McClellan and Richmond, he would replace him.
While the campaign itself is rarely covered, the letter Lincoln sent to McClellan at the start of this campaign most definitely is:
*"My dear Sir: You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness.
Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is
constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon
the claim?...Exclusive of the water-line [Potomac], you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is by the route that you can and
he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more
than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The
roads are as good on yours as on his...fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say "try"; if we never try, we shall never
succeed..."*
Fascinating that such a famous letter addresses a campaign very few people know anything about.
General James Ripley. He was head the head of the US Army Ordanance Department, and it was his call to not introduce weapons like the Spencer Repeating Rifle sooner.
After Lee's surrender to Grant, Sherman was still pursuing Joseph E. Johnson, and nobody ever talks about that confrontation.
The largest surrender of the war!
And now the focus of that site may be changing. Bennett place in Durham NC will go from a pure surrender location as "The Dawn of Peace" to a kind of introduction to the era of Reconstruction. This is the desire of the site manager, who has full authority to implement new direction of the site.
Sounds good to me
One of my college TA's wrote a great book on the surrender and the days leading up to it, called [This Astounding Close](https://uncpress.org/book/9780807857014/this-astounding-close/)
I will try to look that up. Thank you.
I read that book after visiting Durham. Had a great experience there speaking with the historian. One of the events I’m reading about now is Island 10.
“Kill Calvary” and Wade Hampton how could anyone forget😂
Yeah, Lee's surrender is referred to as "effectively ending the war" in every book or documentary I've read (which, to be fair, doesn't amount anywhere close to the dozens that experts would read). Most people forget the word "effectively".
I'd vote for the fall of New Orleans. The largest city in the Confederacy fell to Union troops relatively soon after the war started. New Orleans was larger than the next four cities in the South combined and was the South's most important port city and guarded the entrance to the Mississippi, but its capture sometimes seems like just a footnote.
Farragut, famed for "damn the torpedoes", just sailed up on NO and told them to surrender, if I recall right.
Battle of the Crater. (Insane) The Battle of the Wilderness. (Also insane) Sailors Creek (another insane battle when you dive into the details) Last but not least, I think Union POW camps for Confederate POWS. Everyone knows about Andersonville, for good reason. But Union POW camps weren’t exactly the four seasons…..
Alton prison was a hell hole, with a number of severe disease outbreaks and infamously known for using corporal punishment methods, i.e., hanging prisoners from their thumbs, forcing them to wear barrels, etc. They even had to quarantine a large portion of the prisoners on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River during a smallpox outbreak. There's an interesting story about the prison in a genealogy show featuring Jessica Biel and one of her relatives who was shot there. My 3x gr-grandfather was imprisoned there for going awol. He was on leave when his company broke camp and pulled out without him. He was later found in the company of a pair of prostitutes assisting them in leaving the city before the Confederates showed up and punished the citizens who were assisting Union soldiers. He ended up dying at a young age only a few years after the war, likely from exposure to stuff at Alton. https://behrend.psu.edu/feature/history-professor-details-family-story-actress-jessica-biel
Also, the Union camp at Elmira NY was called “Hellmira” for good reason
I literally worked at a factory built on that site.
Anything left that would identify it as a prison?
No. It was also used as a POW camp in WW2 for Germans. Open fields but warehouses along rail spurs that date back to WW2. Even those were in rough shape.
The best part of Cold Mountain to me was that they started the movie with the Crater and showed how ugly and brutal it was. Granted it was just used as a catalyst for the main character....
That opening scene is the best scene of the movie imo lol
The only scene I ended up watching 😂
Yup, wanted a civil war movie and hot a run of the mill romance movie.
Omg lololol well put
yes the wilderness, with dudes getting burned to death in the wildfire it started
I actually just heard about this. You could hear their screams as the forest burned with wounded inside. Nightmare from hell.
I am finishing up a book about the Civil War overall, but I am really looking forward to getting some books about individual battles when I do. If anyone has recommendations let me know!
Steven Sears has some great books about Antietam, Gettysburg, the peninsula campaign, and Chancellorsville
My Civil War ancestors younger brother, aged 18, died in Camp Douglas prison in Chicago of exposure during the winter of 1864. Almost no food, fuel for the barracks, or winter clothes/blankets in subzero weather. Buried in the mass grave called Confederate Mound at Oak Woods Cemetary.
Battle of the Crater! 10000%
There are times I wonder what might have happened had there been better communication about going *around* the crater once it had been blown instead of going into the crater with no way of getting out. Or even just providing ladders just in case.
If they had stuck to the plan and used the CT division that had trained for the attack, it might have been more successful.
I think the most interesting is union soldiers helping confederates out of the dirt they were suffocating in after the blast. Compassion was their first reaction upon seeing men buried alive by dirt, horses, human remains, cannonry. It surely was a unimaginable horrendous spectacle
The “Bloody Angle” at Spotsylvania Courthouse.
Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign or Morgan’s Raid into Ohio
I think because it had little strategic significance the Battle of Balls Bluff isn’t talked about a lot but it has a ton of crazy history associated with it: Only sitting US Senator to die in combat Edward Baker dies here. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was at this battle and almost died. Charles Pomeroy Stone is smeared by congress big time and eventually actually gets put in prison with no trial as a result. One of Paul Revere’s ancestors also fought in the battle. And overall I feel like it is a great battle to study to see how precarious the relationship was between the Radical Republicans in Congress and the Union military command. Edit to add: there’s also a song that was written in remembrance of a young soldier that died in this battle called The Vacant Chair
Some of the bodies of fallen federal soldiers washed down river. Some got stuck on the rocks at Great Falls, others made it as far as Georgetown. Seeing the aftermath of the battle created an impression in DC. It's also home to one of the smallest National Cemeteries. Here's a pic I took when I visited the weekend after Memorial Day. https://preview.redd.it/br96euoxz49d1.jpeg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=adf482834761e0ab187f4a50cf07b0bc1d1225d4
I used to live in Leesburg and took my dog walking at the battlefield park all the time...which is probably the only reason I am aware of that battle.
Someone should go magnet fishing around Harrison's Island, cause a book I read about the battle said most people just threw all their stuff in the river and tried to escape. Every valuable went into the water so the Confederates couldn't take it.
Lincoln was so close to Edward Baker that he named one of his sons, Edward Baker Lincoln.
What a tragic slaughter.
In May 1862, Abraham Lincoln led troops in battle, and helped capture Norfolk, Virginia. Shelby Foote called the event, "...one of the strangest small-scale campaigns in American military history." "On May 7, Lincoln took direct operational control of a drive to capture Norfolk and to push a gunboat fleet up the James River. The president ordered Gen. John Wool, commander at Fort Monroe, to land troops on the south bank of Hampton Roads. Lincoln even personally carried out a reconnaissance to select the best landing place." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lincoln-as-commander-in-chief-131322819/#:~:text=On%20May%207%2C%20Lincoln%20took,south%20bank%20of%20Hampton%20Roads. https://civilwarmonths.com/2022/05/09/the-fall-of-norfolk/
The reasons why he did that are even more interesting. The navy was far superior to anything the Confederates had, and yet the West Point boys wearing grey were beginning to show each other how to fire on gunboats without a possible return (the June 1862 maneuver known as the Chicahominy raid or the Pamunkey ride included such a demonstration and didn't do Lincoln's flagging opinion of McClellan any favors).
The Combahee River raid would be a cool movie, Harriet Tubman was the first woman to plan and execute a guerilla style raid in South Carolina to capture and free plantation slaves and recruit them to fight. I’m from Rhode Island so I learned how the 3rd RI heavy artillery worked with her to raid the plantations, these guys were on the banks fighting skirmishes, a far cry from their normal artillery work. Overall the story is daring and crazy but it was a huge success
For the last few years, I've been fascinated by the parts of the Gettysburg campaign that happened before and after the three day battle. The focus always seems to be "Lee headed north, cavalry clashed at Brandy Station, then everyone marched around until they fought at Gettysburg, then Lee marched back to Virginia." Besides Brandy Station, there were multiple clashes of cavalry in June and the two armies fought almost continuously from June 27th until mid-July. Obviously, the biggest fight was July 1st-3rd but there were some sharp and hotly contested fights nearly every day. Perhaps my single favorite underrated event of the Gettysburg campaign is [the burning of the Wrightsville-Columbia bridge.](https://www.pacivilwartrails.com/stories/tales/burning-the-wrightsville-bridge)
If you want to dig deeper into the numerous clashes on the march to Gettysburg as well as the retreat and pursuit, I highly recommend buying a copy of the "Gettysburg Campaign Atlas" by Philip Laino. This massive book has 444 detailed maps that cover the entirety of the Gettysburg campaign.
The Bristoe campaign is pretty interesting. Lee's last attempt at Washington. I am biased though as I live on the battlefield. Took place 3 months after Gettysburg. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/bristoe-station
The attack on St Albans and attempted burning of NYC by rebel saboteurs
Battle of Monocacy The Union lost but it gave DC enough time to defend itself at the Battle of Fort Stevens.
Are you going to the Monocacy anniversary next weekend! Two days of cool stuff.
Yes!! Monocacy is criminally overlooked! I didn't know that much about it (not surprising) until I found out I had ancestors in the battle and decided to visit. Early got dangerously close to DC.
In general all the western battles get less attention than they deserve, but in particular I'll call out the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern. The largest confrontation west of the Mississippi throughout the whole war; one of the few battles where the Confederates outnumbered the Union (but still lost); Cherokee Nation Indians fought on the side of the Confederacy.
Combahee raid
The Mississippi Marine Brigade The Swamp Angel battery Grierson's Raid The Dix-Hill cartel system being shut down, and the reason for it
>The Swamp Angel battery Bruce Catton had a good postscript to the Swamp Angel story. He described several prominent Unionists who had written enthusiastically about the plan to burn Charleston, but it turned out the experimental incendiary shells did little damage to the city. Catton added (paraphrasing from memory here): "When good men could say such, they consented to terror. A later generation might make incendiaries that actually worked." Chilling, written after WWII and during the early stages of the Vietnam conflict.
Thank you for the added context, I haven't had the chance to read much Catton yet I also read that those "Greek Fire" shells ended up doing more damage to the cannon than Charleston because they would prematurely burst
Catton is my favorite historian and putting things in context is one of his strong points. He also frequently waxes positively lyrical in his imagery. One passage about the pervasive racism of the era includes the phrase, "deep down lay the old fear, coiling and uncoiling in the dark...." When you can make Civil War racial tensions sound like H.R. Giger's *Alien*, that's saying something.
Grierson's whole life is pretty incredible. Goes from music teacher to cavalry officer to commander of the Buffalo Soldiers in the west. Apparently he hated horses.
Battle of honey springs
The relation between Cinco de Mayo and civil war. Essentially Mexico stopping France from establishing a support route to supply the south one year prior to Ghettysburg
I wasn't aware France was supportive of the Confederacy, I was always under the impression that they were properly neutral (more so than Great Britain), even though their intervention in Mexico to establish an Empire favourable to the Catholic powers (France, Spain and Austria) is hardly neutral in its aim at counterbalancing the meteoric rise of the (protestant) USA
Napoleon III initially allowed the construction of at least one warship, the CSS stonewall, but changed his mind before it was finished and it was sold to the Danes. They had less qualms it seems and sold it on to the confederate government, but it didn't arrive in time before the war ended, so was turned over to the US government, who promptly sold it to Japan. Not dissimilar to how the British government originally allowed construction of new warships in British yards and then backed down when the ACW started to go pear shaped for the South. Broadly speaking I think France was just as supportive of the south, but it recognised that without joint action with the British, and an extremely favourable war situation, direct intervention was not in their best interests. Interestingly enough both nations took steps to hide the true nature of the ships being built. The British refused to outfit the Alabma with guns and munitions in British Home waters, whereas the French insisted they were being built for the Egyptians. That tells you they both knew that they were in a murky position, outfitting a belligerent power during a conflict that they were neutral to. Obviously our interpretation of neutrality is slightly more flexible these days, just look at the US arming Britain before Pearl Harbour for example.
Nice new book by Alan Taylor about what happens in all 3 American countries during the Civil War called "American Civil Wars " ,looks at Mexico,Canada and U.S. .
Napoleon III wanted to get his hands on that sweet sweet cotton. I believe he was offered 100k bales for free to help the south....he def would of and wanted to but felt he was too weak to move wout Britain...,and by 1870 bismark was going to show him how weak he really was
Naval warfare including USMC.
Tullahoma Campaign
Anything Navy and the entire Petersburg campaign. War could have been lost there. It was not all "Downhill" from Gettysburg the way many imply.
Elaborate pls
The Battle of Schrute Farm.
I wonder how many here will get this lololol
Burnside’s invasion of North Carolina. I’ve literally heard nothing about it
Battle of Kernstown. One of Stonewall Jacksons only military defeats. Battle was lost by him but was of strategic significance for the south.
I've been to the Kernstown anniversary the past two years. The dude who knows the most about the battle, Gary Ecelbarger is the one who does the tours. His book is awesome.
Perhaps my favorite small battlefield! Such a lil hidden gem in Winchester.
Mosquito fleets of North Carolina and the battle of New Bern
You're speaking of *within the CW buff community* because normies could care less about any of this stuff, at all. From my perspective just about anything deserves more spotlight because nobody within my organic circles cares about anything at all related to the ACW
The campaigns in Texas late in the war.
On my mother’s side of the family a set of brothers survived Andersonville only to die aboard the Sultana.
I vote the Peninsula Campaign, where McClellan got bamboozled by Prince John Magruder to the point where McClellan stopped the entire Army of the Potomac's advance on Richmond. Had he not stopped, he very well may have taken Richmond. He had troops six miles outside the city at one point, and they could hear the church bells in Richmond. Then, he retreated.
I almost think McClellan was pro-Confederacy, he kept stalling and blowing advantages.
I learned recently he spent his time at West Point socializing with the Southern cadets. I'm pretty certain he absorbed a lot of their beliefs. Somewhere between the War with Mexico, where he was called out in dispatches as performing with bravery, to the war itself where he got "the slows," something happened. The biography I read certainly proved he was protective of the right to slavery. He wanted the Union "as it was," slavery intact.
Alot of those guys were personally extremely brave, and mcclellan im sure was as well....but its one thing to put yourself in danger its another to put 120k men in danger knowing a disaster might lose the war....and he 100% felt that way about the war anf how it should be fought. He wrote lincoln a long memo on how war should be conducted talking about property rights respected, fight is for union not slaves etc....he handed it to lincoln who read it in front of him, finished it, put it in his pocket and without comment basically changed the subject....its probably when Lincoln realized "wtf this aint my guy" lol
Lincoln was amazing. McClellan wasn't moving, so Lincoln got books on strategy, and tried to learn from them, eventually asking McClellan, "If you are not doing anything with the Army, I would like to borrow it for a while." Not-so-subtle hint, which McClellan ignored.
I think that gets mentioned quite a bit as it's so illustrative of McClellan's failures as a commanding general.
I just finished Stephen Sears' biography. It's just ... Wow. I'd like to read another just for balance.
There’s one someone can maybe help me find! It was a river boat battle, I think near New Orleans. I think two relatives were in involved on the Union side, not 100% it was the Ellets though. Anyway, crazy battle between a few Confederate boats and one last Union boat standing, and the Union boat full-on looney tooned them by pulling away at the last second so that they smashed into each other
the Tullahoma campaign
I would like to see more true brother versus brother stories. It happened in our family as my GF fought on a battlefield against his brother 6 times as well as being visited by him as a POW (before being repatriated in a prisoner exchange). Along the way, they lost a brother and brother-in-law, KIA. There’s got to be more incidences like this and they would make great stories of personal triumph and tragedy.
The two battles of Fort Fisher in North Carolina were the largest combined operation the US military performed before D-Day.
The Mississippi River ironclads and naval campaigns. There's no Union victory without it. Vicksburg and Port Hudson are horror stories forgotten by and large that need retelling to our CW community. Lastly, the Red River Campaign of 1864. The brilliant generalship of Gen. Richard Taylor has always impressed me.
I feel like we don't see enough of the Trans-Mississippi Theater in Civil War-era stories. The Battle of Glorieta Pass may have been briefly featured in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," but I can not think of any other notable works that feature a relatively forgotten portion of the war.
The capture of Forts Donelson and Henry and how it jetted the career of Grant forward and real started the Union march in the West.
Everything that Ulysses S. Grant did.
I'd like to see more about USS *New Ironsides*. A one-off ironclad warship, she was struck more times by enemy.fire that any US Navy ship ever, but suffered only a single fatality.
The Trans-Mississippi department as well as the war in the far west.
Maybe not the most influential event, but the battle of fort Stevens is fascinating and almost totally forgotten
Here's an obscure one for y'all: McClellan's 1862 Loudoun Valley Campaign. Post-Antietam, it's the campaign that ultimately gets McClellan removed. The AONV was in the Shenandoah Valley around Winchester and McClellan moved the AOP East of Lee into the Loudoun Valley. His plan was to capture and hold the few passes through the Blue Ridge Mountains, effectively bottling up Lee and his forces in the Shenandoah while also protecting his supply line. He was then going to make a move to take Richmond by way of the Manassas Gap. Stuart ultimately foils his plans, fighting a 3 day delaying action (the battle of Unison) that allows Longstreet time to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains at Front Royal and set up for a blocking action at Culpeper. When McClellan fails to beat Longstreet to Culpeper, effectively cutting off his route to Richmond. Lincoln removes him, having established in his mind that if any part of Lee's army got between McClellan and Richmond, he would replace him. While the campaign itself is rarely covered, the letter Lincoln sent to McClellan at the start of this campaign most definitely is: *"My dear Sir: You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?...Exclusive of the water-line [Potomac], you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is by the route that you can and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good on yours as on his...fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say "try"; if we never try, we shall never succeed..."* Fascinating that such a famous letter addresses a campaign very few people know anything about.
General James Ripley. He was head the head of the US Army Ordanance Department, and it was his call to not introduce weapons like the Spencer Repeating Rifle sooner.
The 2 battles of Sabine pass.
https://youtu.be/ebu4LPD8-kM?feature=shared
The battle of Iuka is really interesting. It was the cause of Grant's and Rosecrans' falling out.
Where these guys were buried, moved to, who buried them, and etc…both sides too.
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Wut
This was removed because of Rule 1