Without question, the most famous battle of the Civil War took place outside of the small town of Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. Over those three days, nearly 8,000 would die, over 30,000 would be casualties, and the most famous attack of the war, Picketts Charge, would fail Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia. The South would go on to lose the war, and when it did, the importance of Gettysburg as one of the high tide marks of the Confederacy became apparent, making the battle all th...

One of the most important, and controversial, Confederate generals during the Civil War was Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Robert E. Lees old warhorse. Longstreet was Lees principal subordinate for most of the war, ably managing a corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. Longstreet was instrumental in Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, while he was also effective at Antietam and the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was nearly killed by a shot thr...

Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818 April 11, 1902) was one of the foremost Confederate cavalry leaders during the Civil War and afterward a politician from South Carolina, serving as its 77th Governor and as a U.S. Senator. At the start of the war, he resigned from the Senate and enlisted as a private in the South Carolina Militia; however, the governor of South Carolina insisted that Hampton accept a colonel's commission, even though he had no military experience at all. Hampton organized and...

In the narrative of the Civil War, Edward Porter Alexander has loomed larger in death than in life. Just 25 years old when the war broke out, Porter Alexander had already served as an engineer and officer in the U.S. Army, but the native Georgian resigned his commission in May 1861 and joined the Confederacy after his home state seceded. Porter Alexander spent 1861 as an intelligence officer, and he served as part of a signal guard, but he soon became chief of ordnance for Joseph Johnstons...

After the American Civil War began in April 1861, Ulysses S. Grant made a meteoric rise to the top of the Union war effort. Illinois. On April 6, 1862 a determined full-force attack from the Confederate Army took place at the Battle of Shiloh; the objective was to destroy the entire Western Union offensive once for all. Over 44,699 Confederate troops led by Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard, vigorously attacked five divisions of Grants army bivouacked nine miles south at Pittsbu...

On 14 May 1804, one Captain Meriwether Lewis and his companion William Clark led a thirty-three-man expedition to the new lands of Louisiana. 8,000 miles and two years later, after rafting up the Missouri and crossing the Rocky Mountains, they reached the far side of the world, the Pacific Ocean.Fredrick Nolan explores the first US settlers of the American West, including the remarkable stories of unsung heroes and heroines, the bloody battles between settlers and the native Americ...

The Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre, the Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has...

Daniel Harvey Hill or D.H. Hill (July 12, 1821 September 24, 1889) was a Confederate general during the Civil War who was known as an aggressive leader, and as an austere, deeply religious man, with a dry, sarcastic humor. He was brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson and a close friend to both James Longstreet and Joseph E. Johnston, but disagreements with both Robert E. Lee and Braxton Bragg cost him favor with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Although his military ability was well re...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.The American Civil War started when eleven southern ‘slave’ states declared their independence from the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln’s Republican government were strongly against slavery and fought to abolish it and keep the country united.The American Civil War: History in an Hour gives a concise and authoritative overview of these four years of bloody and devastating warfare to help you understand how the ...

The most famous attack of the Civil War was also one of its most flawed and deadly. Having been unable to break the Army of the Potomacs lines on the left and right flank during Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee decided to make a thrust at the center of the Unions line with about 15,000 men spread out over three divisions. Though it is now known as Picketts Charge, named after division commander George Pickett, the assignment for the charge was given to General James Longstreet, whose 1s...

A huge column of blood red smoke rose a thousand feet as the battleship USS Arizona blew up. The USS Oklahoma capsized. The California, Nevada and West Virginia were all sunk at their moorings. 181 Japanese warplanes had attacked the US Pacific Fleet as it lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor. There had been no formal declaration, but the United States of America was now at war...Read about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, along with the merciless invasion of South East Asia by the a...

The Knights Templar – Medieval Cult or Modern Nemesis? -- History of this famous group and the organizations that claim descent from them. Were they really destroyed in the fourteenth century or do they survive and even prosper to this day? Who are their descendants? Are there ties to the Nazis and the Mormon Church? A must-read for anyone interested in conspiracies or the occult.