The Model 1841 12 Pounder Mountain Howitzer was a lightweight, scaled down field artillery weapon that was used by both the Union and Confederate armies. Most field artillery in the Civil War was transported by using teams of horses to pull the weapons, but mountain howitzers were designed to be taken apart and the components [...]
Continue reading about Portable Civil War Artillery: The Mountain Howitzer
In August 1864, Major General Phillip Sheridan launched a campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan organized his Army of the Shenandoah as it was called, in the northern end of the valley, in the vicinity of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. This was an area where Lieutenant Colonel John S. Mosby [...]
Continue reading about John S. Mosby, George A. Custer and the Front Royal Executions of 1864
The Gray Ghost, as John S. Mosby was known, inspired both the Union and Confederate armies. Mosby and his men inspired pride in the South and struck fear in the hearts of Union soldiers. That fear was captured in a poem by Herman Melville, called “The Scout Toward Aldie.” “All spake of him, but few had seen [...]
