The few remaining survivors of the struggle, Northern as well as Southern, will be repelled by the very subject of this book; probably the average reader will question the worth-whileness of an exhaustive study of that which seems to record a nation’s shame….Much is to be [...]

By late 1864 the Confederacy had been strangled by General Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy of total war. The Confederate capitol of Richmond was cut off from most of the rest of the Confederacy, due to Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta and Savannah, [...]

May 25, 1861 was a tragic day for President Abraham Lincoln. Virginia had seceded the day before, making a full scale Civil War a certainty, troubling for Lincoln, who’d conceded to many of the mighty Virginia’s demands before the state decided to secede. Yet that was [...]

During the Civil War era, New Orleans, with a population of nearly 170,000, was the largest city in the South, and one of the largest cities in the United States. New Orleans was also one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, and most of [...]

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 is one of the most infamous events in American history, one that undoubtedly changed the course of history as far as Reconstruction in the South is concerned.
Few realize, however, that the assassination that took Lincoln’s life was not [...]

Not unlike their husbands, Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Davis Howell had much in common. Both were first ladies of countries besieged by war. Both women grew up in prosperous, slave-owning families. Both were well-educated, better educated, in fact, than most women of the day. Both [...]

As impending civil war became a reality rather than a possibility, every state in the United States has a decision to make - whether to stay with the Union or join the nascent Confederacy.
For states where slavery had been abolished, the decision was clear. For those [...]

Arlington…where my affections and attachments are more strongly placed than any other place in the world. Robert E. Lee
1864. Beautiful Arlington House, the family home of General Robert E. Lee and his family, is in a shambles. The rose gardens have been turned into cemeteries. [...]