Blog Posts

In the early months of the Civil War, the Confederacy was eager to test innovative means of offsetting the Union’s overwhelming naval superiority. One of the boldest experiments came on October 12, 1861, when the ironclad ram CSS Manassas launched a…

On October 8, 1861, General William Tecumseh Sherman was appointed to command the Union’s Department of the Cumberland, a position that—while short-lived—offers a revealing window into both Sherman’s career trajectory and the broader state of Union …

On October 1, 1861, President Jefferson Davis convened a conference on Confederate war strategy with his leading generals—a moment that may not rank with the famous battles of the Civil War, but one that sheds light on how the Confederate high comma…

On September 27, 1861, a pivotal moment unfolded in the early days of the Civil War: Major General George B. McClellan engaged in a heated discussion with President Abraham Lincoln over the conduct of military operations. This confrontation was not …

September 26, 1861, holds a unique place in the moral and spiritual landscape of the early Civil War, not because of a battlefield triumph or a strategic maneuver, but as a day formally designated for “humiliation, prayer, and fasting.” This proclam…

The fighting around Lexington, Missouri, in September 1861—often called the Battle of Lexington or the “Battle of the Hemp Bales”—was one of the most notable early engagements of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. While overshadowed in …

In September 1861, the question of whether to remove General John C. Frémont from command of the Union’s Western Department revealed not just concerns about military strategy, but also deep tensions within President Lincoln’s Cabinet. Frémont, a for…

In the fall of 1861, the Cheat Mountain Campaign marked one of the first significant military operations in western Virginia, a rugged region where both Union and Confederate forces sought to secure not just territory, but also vital transportation …

On September 10, 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed General Albert Sidney Johnston to command the sprawling Western Department, a vast military theater that stretched from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. The decision ca…

In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with Dr. Robert Tracy McKenzie (Arthur F. Holmes Chair of Faith and Learning and Professor of History at Wheaton College), a renowned historian of the American Civil War and American democracy, to exp…