It is impossible to overstate the importance of cotton to the South during the antebellum period, or its contribution to the chain of events that resulted in the Civil War. As the major export of the South - perhaps the United States - cotton economically supported the South. As a crop [...]

The use of “colored troops” during the Civil War was a controversial practice that was debated by both the Union Army and the Confederate Army. Although African-American soldiers existed in the Confederate Army, they were few and far between, but in the Union Army, African-Americans accounted for ten percent of the [...]

Next to Longstreet and Jackson, I consider A.P. Hill the best commander with me. He fights his troops well and takes good care of them. Robert E. Lee
While Confederate General A.P Hill was a household name during the Civil War, he is little known nowadays, despite the fact that he was [...]

Although they are not widely known, the vivandieres and cantinieres who traveled with regiments during the Civil War were women who, despite the constrictions of Victorian society, chose to serve alongside men during wartime in a role that American women thus far had not played. A part of their regiment, these [...]

During the Civil War, thousands of former slaves joined with the U.S. Army as they were liberated from the homes and plantations where they were enslaved. Although many of these freed men and women would be relocated, there were men among them who joined the Army, and women among them who [...]

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. U.S. Constitution, Article One, Section Nine
The right of a prisoner to know the charges upon which he has been imprisoned is one of the [...]

A boastful man of questionable morals, and one of the more irascible figures of the Civil War era, Union General Joseph Hooker also gained a reputation as an officer beloved by his men but reviled by almost everyone else.
Born in Massachusetts, Joseph Hooker attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in [...]

The modern U.S. army has a wide array of food products available to them in base camps and in the field. There are a large number of MREs (which are actually quite tasty) and other portable foods available to them when on missions and when stationed in hostile terrain. And when posted at an established [...]

The Confederacy was between a rock and a hard place in 1863. Lee was being thwarted in the East, while Vicksburg was besieged to the West. Perhaps a diversion was needed, something to create havoc on the border and in the North, and distract Federal troops. [...]

It seemed to be an established fact that George McClellan was one of, if not the most ineffectual officer produced by either the Union or the Confederacy during the Civil War. Yet recently, some historians have begun to re-examine the legacy of McClellan, on the basis [...]