Civil War History

Find old Civil War articles here. We have great newspaper articles about the Civil War check them out today!

General Grant’s March on Richmond
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

The Atlantic Monthly who witnessed Grant’s maneuvering outside the city of Richmond filed this article:

General Grant’s entire force could not have been less than a hundred and thirty thousand, including Sheridan’s cavalry, the force at City Point, and the provisional brigade at Fort Powhatan. Lee’s whole force was not far from seventy thousand, – or seventy-five thousand, including the militia of Richmond and Petersburg…


Click here to learn why Richmond was chosen as the capitol of the Confederacy

General Lee’s Unique Bond with his Army
(Atlantic Monthly, 1911)

Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870) is the topic of this psycho-graphic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the celebrated biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932).


…Lee won the hearts of his soldiers by living as they did. He managed the business of his position with as little fuss and parade as possible. Foreign officers were struck with the absolute simplicity of his arrangements. There were no guards or sentries around his headquarters, no idle aids-de-camp loitering about…

John Brown Examined
(The North American Review, 1910)

A 1910 book review of Oswald Garrison Villard’s biography of John Brown (1800 – 1859). Believed to be one of the more honest biographies on Brown, Villard’s effort is said to have five chapters dealing only with Brown’s activities in Bloody Kansas, including the slaughter at Pottawatomie.

Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes
(Atlantic Monthly, 1913)

Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.

Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.

Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes
(Atlantic Monthly, 1913)

Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.

Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.

The Struggle for California
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the The Dial Magazine book review of Elijah R. Kennedy’s The Contest for California in 1861. Kennedy maintained that a large party in California and Oregon sought to deliver that region to the Southerners and might have succeeded were it not for the efforts of one Colonel E.D. Baker.



Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

A Union Snoop
(A Spy of the Rebelion, 1883)

When the Civil War broke out, Alan Pinkerton (1819 – 1884) was given charge of the Union Intelligence Service, having previously gained tremendous credibility as a detective in Chicago. It was at this post, early in the war, that he was assigned a task by General George McClellan (1826 – 1885) to proceed south of the Ohio River in order to gain a more thorough understand as to the loyalties of those people. Pinkerton first wrote about this mission in his Civil War memoir, A Spy of the Rebellion.


Click here to read another account of Civil War spying.

Confederate General Johnson Hagood
(The Dial Magazine, 1911)

A book review from 1911 covering the Civil War memoirs of the Confederate Brigadier General Johnson Hagood (1829 – 1898) who fought many battles during that conflict, most notably Cold Harbor and the battles of Weldon Road and Bentonville. At war’s end he surrendered to General Sherman.

Lincoln and Lee in 1918
(The Nation, 1918)

On the first anniversary marking the American intervention into the First World War Charles Payne of Grenell College, Iowa, wrote to the editors at The Nation and cautioned his fellow-Americans to remember the conduct and humility of Civil War General Robert E. Lee.


Click here to read about the heavy influence religion had in the Rebel states during the American Civil War.

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