The H.L. Hunley—the world’s first successful attack submarine, in service with the Confederate Navy in 1864—has finally revealed its propulsion secret more than 17 years after being raised off the ocean floor. The Hunley was nearly 40 feet long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, and launched in July 1863. She was then shipped by rail on August…
Human nature rejects and despises heroes who engage our admiration and our veneration only to ultimately fail us. The failed hero cannot be redeemed. Like the suicide of old, he is buried outside the consecrated ground of public esteem.
By Clint Lacy. For many in the South, the war did not end immediately with the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. In the West, many Confederate troops and their commanders refused to capitulate, preferring to continue the fight or leave the country. One of…
By John Tiffany. After suffering months—even years—in confederate PoW camps, these union soldiers were ecstatic to be finally going home. So optimistic were they, these emaciated former POWs didn’t even complain when they were packed like sardines on the steamship Sultana—the boat that was to take them back to their families. But though they had…
The heroic John Singleton Mosby eluded the efforts of Union troops to capture him throughout the War Against the South, earning the nickname of the “Gray Ghost.” Special counter-partisan units were organized to squash him. One such force faced off against Mosby in West Virginia. The guerrillas defeated the unit and captured its leader.
During the War for Southern Independence, that great conflagration that was waged from 1861 to 1865, there were in the Confederate Army a total of approximately 1,050,000 service members. Of these 1-million-plus individuals, there were roughly 3,000 who were commissioned officers.
Mention the name “Ulysses S. Grant” to most Americans at least slightly aware of their country’s history, and they will tell you he was a whiskey-sodden “Civil War” general whose post bellum presidency was notable for its corruption. But there is a lot more to this man, once America’s most popular president, when he took office, than the establishment would have you think.
Pat Shannan. If the south had won its war for independence, as the United States did some 80 years earlier, the world might today be a much better place for all of us—Northerners and Southerners, white and black alike, believe it or not. The author shows how it could rather easily have happened, had the…