Book Review: Preeminent Strategist: General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, The...
Preeminent Strategist: General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, The Confederacy’s Most Agile General. By F. Gregory Toretta. Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2026. Hardcover, 272 pp. $34.95. Reviewed by...
View ArticleGabriel’s Horn
As Capt. Lindley Miller sat in his camp in Goodrich’s Landing, Louisiana, in January 1864, he sought a way to capture the unique spirit of his regiment, the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment (African...
View Article“May God blot it from our land”: John A. Logan, Military Emancipation and the...
Lorenzo Thomas was not a compelling orator. Nearly sixty years of age, with snowy white hair and a face creased by decades of frontier service, the adjutant-general of the Federal Army was, “not...
View ArticleECW Authors “Get Illustrated”: Chris Mackowski
part of a series We’re excited to present a special video series titled “ECW Authors ‘Get Illustrated.’” Over the past half a year or so several of our authors, contributors, and friends have...
View ArticleGrant Tells the War, Part 03: Vicksburg
part of a series As part of their preparation to co-author their book Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War, Chris Mackowski and Curt Fields (as U.S. Grant) sat down to talk about...
View ArticleECW News: Proposed New Visitor Center at Vicksburg NMP Requires Boundary...
Plans are underway in Vicksburg, Mississippi, for a new visitor center for Vicksburg National Military Park. However, the project will require a minor boundary adjustment so that the state of...
View ArticleBook Review: Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign: The Eighteen Critical...
Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign: The Eighteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation. By Larry Peterson. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2024. Paperback, 215 pp. $29.99....
View ArticleBook Review: The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen...
The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863. By Timothy B. Smith. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2024. Hardcover, 531pp. $54.99. Reviewed by Robert M....
View ArticleBook Review: When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th...
When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th Regiment West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. By Philip Hatfield, Ph.D. & Terry Lowry. Charleston, WV: 35th Star Publishing, 2024....
View ArticleStars and Bearss
While searching for some Vicksburg-related images at the Naval History and Heritage Command website today, I came across this photo from salvage operations for the USS Cairo. The Cairo hit a mine in...
View ArticleECW Podcast: Bayou Battles for Vicksburg
Get ready to head into the swamps and backwaters of Louisiana and Mississippi in the newest episode of the Emerging Civil War Podcast. Historian Timothy B. Smith joins us to talk about the latest...
View ArticleThe case of the Douglas orphans’ seized cotton
Union troops in the South often confiscated cotton and other goods belonging to Confederates, in order to support the Northern war effort. In one case, they took Mississippi cotton to which a Unionist...
View ArticleBook Review: Vicksburg
Although published in 2019 this work is extremely thorough and well worth reviewing a few years late. Vicksburg is one of the few major battle sites I have not been to, and this book has made me...
View Article“Do We Know the Name…?”: The Battle of Jackson illuminates a research challenge
“History is lunch.” That’s the premise of a lunchtime speaker series hosted by the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson. On Wednesday, the battle of Jackson, Mississippi, was on the menu and I was...
View ArticleHalleck: The Art of Pretending to Say Something or Nothing
Henry Halleck I came across a dispatch from Henry Halleck to U.S. Grant the other day that serves as a nearly perfect Halleckism. By early April 1863, Grant was undertaking yet another of his attempts...
View ArticleWhat If. . .Vicksburg Had Fallen in July ’62?
David G. Farragut on the deck of USS Hartford In his memoirs, Admiral David D. Porter recollected a November 1861 meeting with President Lincoln and navy secretary Gideon Welles in which—he says—he...
View ArticleVicksburg Campaign on Video
The Big Black River near the site of the May 17, 1863, fighting Yesterday, May 17, marked the anniversary of the fight at the Big Black River bridge during Grant’s Mississippi overland campaign. The...
View Article“The prison over the Pearl River at Jackson, Mississippi, where Union...
In researching my forthcoming book on the battle of Jackson, Mississippi—which took place on this date in 1863 as part of Grant’s campaign through Mississippi to take Vicksburg—I stumbled on a little...
View ArticleA Taste of Vicksburg – The Story of the Jam Jar
Tucked away in the collection’s storage at the University of West Florida’s Historic Trust is a simple artifact with a greater history than meets the eye. A brown stoneware jar, about Jam jar brought...
View ArticleAttrition Rates of City-Class Ironclads
City-Class Ironclads off Cairo, Illinois 1862 (Naval History and Heritage Command) Perhaps nothing is more identifiable with the Mississippi River valley’s naval campaigns as the city-class ironclads....
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