The Front Line

Dillon J. Carroll's "Invisible Wounds" is a fascinating study that unequivocally illustrates the links between the Civil War and mental illness.

Abraham Lincoln was not a military man, yet in March 1861 he became commander in chief of forces that would soon face the task of suppressing an 11-state rebellion. Other than a few months’ service in the Illinois militia in 1832, he had no experience or training on which to draw. He would need to rely on the professional officers commanding his army and navy, but some of them joined the...

We recently asked Jeniffer Maloney, director of marketing and public relations at American Civil War Museum, about their new Robins Theater opening this month. She gave us a first look at the facility and film it will show, A People’s Contest.

Josiah M. Favill, a young officer in the 57th New York Infantry, kept a detailed diary during the Civil War. In one entry, dated May 16, 1862, Favill writes in detail about a common summer pest found (then and now) in the eastern U.S.—the wood tick. Read his itch-enducing description of his—and his comrades'—encounters with the aggressive insect.

Between May 31 and June 12, 1864, the armies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee clashed near Mechanicsville, Virginia, in the Battle of Cold Harbor. June 3 witnessed particularly fierce fighting after Grant ordered repeated attacks against the strong Confederate positions—attacks in which Union forces suffered casualties two to four times greater than their opponents. Among those who...

Looking for good books on Civil War photography? We asked Ronald S. Coddington, author and publiser of Military Images magazine, for three books on the subject that he considers essential reads. Here are his picks: 

I suppose you could say that I started researching my recently published book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, when I was 12 years old. In 1998, I met a man from my hometown of Akron, Ohio, who spent much of his late teens and early twenties crisscrossing the Midwest in search of the last survivors of Abraham Lincoln’s armies. Nearly 70 years old and the son of a ...

A case study in the negative impact of dysfunctional command relationships ...

Several European journalists and military officers wrote about their experiences with the Army of Northern Virginia. Almost all of them, it is important to acknowledge, adopted a very favorable stance toward Robert E. Lee and his soldiers. The most quoted by far is Arthur James Lyon Fremantle,