Ambrose Bierce and the Civil War
Ambrose Bierce was born in Ohio on June 24th, 1842. He was the 10th of 13 children of Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura. The family moved to Warsaw, Indiana in 1848. By...
Iron Brigader Blog
The Pontoon Bridges at the Battle of Fredericksburg
In November 1862, President Abraham Lincoln promoted Major General Ambrose Burnside to commander of the Army of the Potomac, replacing Major General George McClellan. Burnside developed a plan to capture the Confederate capitol of...
North Carolina’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration
North Carolina was the last state to secede from the Union, doing so on May 20th 1861. The state contributed about 125,000 soldiers to the Confederacy, and of these, 19,673 were killed in battle...
Thanksgiving Day 1863: First Official Thanksgiving
Sara Hale and Abraham Lincoln When most people think of the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., they think of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians celebrating at Plymouth in 1621. While the...
Nat Turner Rebellion Blamed on Abolitionists
Nat Turner was hanged on November 11, 1831, for his bloody insurrection in Virginia 29 years before the Civil War officially took place, but the slave’s revolt contributed even more fuel to the simmering...
Lincoln’s 1860 Election and Secession: November and December 1860
November and December 1860 in the Civil War This is the first of a series of overviews of the events of the Civil War in chronological order. These overviews will cover varying lengths of...
Indiana’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration
The state of Indiana furnished over 210,000 men for the Union Army and Navy in the Civil War, and over 24,400 of these men died in the war. One of the more famous Indiana...
John S. Mosby, George A. Custer and the Front Royal Executions of 1864
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...