By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved
Confederate President Jefferson Davis is memorialized in monuments at various locations in the South. They have now come under fire, with demands that some be removed from public grounds.
Continue reading “Jefferson Davis Monuments Being Removed?”By Sid Sidlo
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: At the time this article was originally published in The Charger in the fall of 2001, Sid Sidlo was editor of the The Ramrod, the newsletter of the North Carolina CWRT.
Hitting a distant target with a bullet only looks easy. It takes a keen eye, steady hands, a great deal of training and practice, and a good firearm. Even with those qualifications and today’s high-powered rifles, it is difficult to hit a man-sized target at three hundred yards without resting the rifle securely. And the black powder of the Civil War era was not high power. Now imagine firing a rifle at a distant enemy on a battlefield covered with powder smoke, with shell fragments flying around, and with the enemy riflemen and artillery in turn finding you a very desirable target. It took cool nerves under those conditions to estimate carefully the distance to the target, determine the high trajectory needed at the time, and allow for any wind. But that was the task of the Civil War sharpshooter, both Union and Confederate.
Continue reading “The Sharpshooter and His Weapon”By Sid Sidlo
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the spring of 2001. Its author, Sid Sidlo, was then the editor of the North Carolina Roundtable’s Ramrod newsletter and long-time friend of the Cleveland CWRT.
During the Civil War, almost all roads were of dirt that became quagmires of mud after heavy rains. Only a few hard-surface, all-weather roads existed. These hard-surface, all-weather roads were called “macadamized” roads after their inventor, Scottish civil engineer John Loudon McAdam, who in turn was indebted to the road builders of the ancient Roman empire.
Continue reading “Civil War Roads”By Dick Crews
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2001, 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the winter of 2001.
Among the many responsibilities of the Union and Confederate quartermaster departments was that of furnishing army supply wagons, the mules and horses to draw them, and their support and repair facilities. A standard wagon body was ten feet long. A canvas top, which usually bore the corps and unit names and identified the nature of the contents, could be drawn closed at both ends. At the front of the wagon there was a box for tools. At the rear was the feed box, and when it was time to feed the mules, the feed box could be set up on a pole to feed the mules three to a side. Grease and water buckets hung under the rear axle.
Continue reading “Mule-Drawn Wagon Trains”By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2017, All Rights Reserved
The American Civil War saw many innovations in military warfare. One of the most significant was the use and strategic importance of railroads in moving troops and supplies to the armies. In 1860, the United States had 200 railroads and 30,000 miles of rail, with 21,000 in the North. In the under-industrialized South, the Confederacy had one-third of the freight cars, one-fifth of the locomotives, one-eighth of rail production, one-tenth of the telegraph stations, and one-twenty-fourth of locomotive production.
Continue reading “Railroads in the Civil War”By Sid Sidlo
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: At the time this article was originally published in The Charger in the winter of 2002, Sid Sidlo, a long-time friend of the CCWRT, was editor of the North Carolina CWRT’s newsletter, The Ramrod.
It is a truism that by the time of the Civil War, the bayonet had outlived its usefulness in combat. Yet like many truisms, it tells only part of the story. Certainly the bayonet was not used in the 1860s as it had been before then. Up through the war with Mexico, the last conflict fought with smoothbore muskets, the bayonet’s value was as a “shock tactic” to disorganize the defenders and take the ground, but not necessarily to win by killing. Men would often break and run from an attack of gleaming bayonets. Most, if not all, of the casualties would be caused by rifle fire, but in a sense the victory belonged to the bayonets.
Continue reading “Technology in the Civil War: COLD STEEL!”By Syd Overall
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a presentation made by the author to the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable on February 12, 2014.
The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter was a 33-hour, one-sided ordeal which triggered the War of the Rebellion. Within a week, the basic policies of the war were determined. Two days after the surrender of the fort, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteer troops from loyal states to preserve the Union against the insurrection of seven Deep South States organized as the Confederate States of America. Four Upper South slave states then declared for secession. Two days later, Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed the issuance of letters of marque to private ship owners to be Confederate privateers to attack United States non-combatant ship owners following the American practice in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Lincoln then proclaimed a blockade of the Confederacy. Three weeks after the insurrection at Charleston, on May 6, the Confederate Congress formally declared war on the United States.
Continue reading “The U. S. Navy and the Naval Battles of Charleston, 1863”Reviewed by William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2002, 2007, All Rights Reserved
The March 9, 1862 clash of the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack) has always had a tenacious grip on the American imagination. It is easily the best-known naval engagement of the war. Many historians call the first-ever battle between two armored warships a draw; after all, neither warship was sunk or seriously damaged. However, when the battle was over, it was the larger, more heavily-armed Virginia which withdrew, and the smaller, more maneuverable Monitor which remained in place, having successfully guarded the vulnerable wooden warships of the U.S. Navy blockading fleet in Hampton Roads, Va.
Continue reading “Sailing Aboard the Monitor: Reviews of Two Books about the USS Monitor“By William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2004, 2007, All Rights Reserved
The United States Navy, steeped in tradition and history, honors its remarkable service in the Civil War through the names of many of its ships today.
Continue reading “Today’s Navy and the Civil War”By Greg Pizzuto
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the fall of 2001.
Horace Lawson Hunley, a lawyer and planter from New Orleans, understood the importance of the shipping trade to his beloved Confederacy. Hunley and his two partners, James McClintock and Baxter Watson, set out to create a three-man vessel that would travel underwater to assist in keeping the vital shipping lanes open for trade with Europe.
Continue reading “The Life and Death of H.L. Hunley”