Henry Carter Hull

"Attack at Daylight and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 describes the Civil War battle fought near Pittsburg Landing, and Shiloh Church in Tennessee and is also a guidebook to Shiloh National Military Park. Union army commanders Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell defeated Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. Shiloh was the first battle of the Civil War in which both sides lost more than 10,000 casualties."--Provided by publisher. This...

To many of the Federal soldiers watching the Stars and Stripes unfurl atop Lookout Mountain on the morning of November 25, 1863, it seemed that the battle to relieve Chattanooga was complete. The Union Army of the Cumberland was no longer trapped in the city, subsisting on short rations and awaiting rescue; instead, they were again on the attack. Ulysses S. Grant did not share their certainty. For Grant, the job he had been sent to accomplish was...

Abraham Lincoln knew if the Union could cut off shipping to and from New Orleans, the largest exporting port in the world, and control the Mississippi River, it would be a mortal blow to the Confederate economy. Union military leaders devised a secret plan to attack the city from the Gulf of Mexico with a formidable naval flotilla under one commander, David G. Farragut, a native New Orleanian. Jefferson Davis also understood the city's importance-but...

As the 1864 Overland Campaign shifted from the Wilderness toward Spotsylvania Court House, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee successfully bottlenecked the Federal army just outside the village. Undeterred, Union commander Ulysses S. Grant sent part of his forces on a wide flanking maneuver to attack Confederates from the east. Lee scrambled to block them. Thus the Civil War came to the property now known as Stevenson Ridge. Traces of the Bloody...

In the late summer of 1864, Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant set one absolutely unconditional goal: to sweep Virginia's Shenandoah Valley "clean and clear." His man for the job: Maj. Gen. "Little Phil" Sheridan-a temperamental Irishman who'd proven himself just the kind of scrapper Grant loved. The valley had already played a major part in the war for the Confederacy as both the location of major early victories against Union attacks, and as...

After the unprecedented violence of the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant turned his gaze south of Richmond to Petersburg, and the key railroad junction that supplied the Confederate capital and its defenders. Nine grueling months of constant maneuver and combat around the "Cockade City" followed. As massive fortifications soon dominated the landscape, both armies frequently pushed each other to the brink of disaster. As March...

Explore the sites of the American Civil War's Battle of Antietam and its history with this extensive guide. September 17, 1862-one of the most consequential days in the history of the United States-was a moment in time when the future of the country could have veered in two starkly different directions. Confederates under General Robert E. Lee had embarked upon an invasion of Maryland, threatening to achieve a victory on Union soil that could potentially...

In late June 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia drove back Maj. Gen. George McClellan's Army of the Potomac from the gates of the Confederate capital. Richmond was safe-at least for the moment. Another threat soon emerged when the Army of Virginia, a new command under Maj. Gen. John Pope, moved toward Fredericksburg, threatening Confederate communications, supply points, and Richmond. Pope, who had a reputation as something of...

For James Longstreet, the transfer to the Western Theater in 1863 offered opportunity. For his opponent Ambrose Burnside, the hope of redemption. Longstreet, who Robert E. Lee called his "Old Warhorse," had long labored in the shadow of both his army commander and the late Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. When Confederate fortunes took a turn for the worse in Tennessee, both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee dispatched Longstreet and most of his...

Ironclad against ironclad, we maneuvered about the bay here and went at each other with mutual fierceness, reported Chief Engineer Alban Stimers following that momentous engagement between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimack) in Hampton Roads, Sunday, March 9, 1862. The day before, the Rebel ram had obliterated two powerful Union warships and was poised to destroy more. That night, the revolutionary-not to say bizarre-Monitor slipped...