Editor's note: In the spring of 1864, with the Army of the Potomac encamped in northern Virginia, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant vowed, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." As it happened, the ensuing campaign would take all of that...
Editor's note: The two-day battle at Shiloh (Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee) marked the first major Union victory of the Civil War and proved a gruesome portent of the fighting to come. From "The Devil's Own Day," FATEFUL LIGHTING, by William Hillenbrand: By the first...
September 12, 1862: On this day in a Union encampment outside Frederick, Maryland, Corporal Barton Mitchell made a happy discovery while crossing a stretch of meadow. There, wrapped in a piece of paper, were three cigars whose rightful owner was nowhere to be found....