The 14th New Jersey Infantry at the Battle of Monocacy
In the summer of 1864, as the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia were engaged in the battles of the Overland Campaign followed by the Siege of Petersburg,...
Category: Featured
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s Announcement to the Army of the Death of Abraham Lincoln
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was present in the room when President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15th, 1865, after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater the night before....
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles on the Death of Abraham Lincoln
Gideon Welles kept an extensive diary during his time in office as Secretary of the Navy under Abraham Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson. At that time, the Secretary of the Navy was a...
Fort Union on the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico Also Had a Role in the Civil War
In 1851, the U.S. Army constructed a fort along the Santa Fe Trail in northeastern New Mexico territory. Fort Union, as it was called, was one of the more important such installations in the...
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles on the Sinking of the USS Monitor
The battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (a.k.a. Merrimack) was the most famous Naval action of the Civil War. They fought to a draw on March 9th, 1862 in the first...
After the Carnage of the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Picket Lines on the Rappahannock River Were Remarkably Cordial
After losing the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the Army of the Potomac withdrew across the Rappahannock River to its camps at and around Falmouth, Virginia, and went into winter quarters. Except for...
Battlefield Victories and Votes from Soldiers Helped Propel Abraham Lincoln to Reelection in 1864
By the middle of the summer of 1864, Union offensives in Virginia and Georgia had bogged down into near stalemates. It was an election year, and with the Civil War dragging on, President Abraham...
Visiting the Glorieta Pass Battlefield at Pecos National Historical Park
On March 28th, 1862, an ambitious plan to expand the Confederacy into the Southwest ended with the defeat of invading Rebel forces at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, on the Santa Fe Trail between...