Battle of Gettysburg
On a hot July afternoon, 12,000 Southern soldiers started across an airless valley toward bristling enemy lines a mile away. For a moment, time stood still. The fate of two nations hung in the balance. Then the shooting began.

James Longstreet: Robert E. Lee's Most Valuable Soldier
Lost Cause rancor aside, Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s tactical and command skill made him Lee’s most valuable soldier.

Battle of Antietam: 7th Maine's Senseless Charge On the Piper Farm
Major Henry Hyde led his small 7th Maine down into the Piper farm swale at Antietam as Rebel brigades and artillery blasted apart his lone regiment. He would forever rue that he had not “dared to disobey orders.”

17th Maine Infantry in the Battle of Gettysburg
The 17th Maine helped transform a Gettysburg wheatfield into a legend.

General Bragg's Impossible Dream: Take Kentucky
The 1862 invasion of Kentucky had great promise, but disappointing results.

America's Civil War: Why the Irish Fought for the Union
Irish-American soldiers overcame intense prejudice to create their own Civil War lore.

USS Monitor: A Cheesebox on a Raft
The U.S. Navy bureaucracy wanted an ironclad "rigged with two masts" for sails. John Ericsson bucked orthodoxy to create a ship that changed the world.

Lieutenant Colonel Horace C. Porter: Eyewitness to the Surrender at Appomattox
Lieutenant Colonel Horace C. Porter provides a firsthand account of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.

Major General George Stoneman Led the Last American Civil War Cavalry Raid
Even as General Robert E. Lee was surrendering at Appomattox, a vengeful Union cavalry horde led by Maj. Gen. George Stoneman made Southern civilians pay dearly for the war. It was a last brutal lesson in the concept of total warfare.

Battle of New Market Heights: USCT Soldiers Proved Their Heroism
On a gunfire-swept slope near Richmond on September 29, 1864, USCT soldiers stood to the test and proved black men made good professional troops. Fourteen of them received the Medal of Honor for their bravery.

The Truth About Civil War Surgery
If you think Civil War surgeons were ill-trained sawbones who loved to amputate -- usually without anesthesia -- you need to read this!

Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez: Heroine or Hoaxer?
Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez wrote a controversial memoir disclosing her activities as a double agent and brave soldier during the Civil War.

Siege of Petersburg: The City and Citizens Were Impacted from the Start
Circled by Confederate trenches, hard pressed by Union forces, the people of Petersburg, Virginia, had nothing left to do but endure -- and pray for a miracle.

Thomas A. Botts: An American Civil War Confederate Prisoner
Confederates who survived the harsh conditions of Elmira Prison looked back fondly on one fellow inmate who did not: a good-natured man with an odd sense of style and a nickname to match. By Hudson Alexander