The Front Line

Beef for the Union Army Cross the Long Bridge at Washington.

"You will please constantly to bear in mind the precise issue for which we are fighting; that issue is the preservation of the Union and the restoration of the full authority of the general government over all portions of our territory..."

The Civil War Monitor editors would like to extend a big THANK YOU to all of the veterans and active duty personnel of our armed services. We salute you! To remember the Civil War veterans of yesteryear...

To celebrate the 236th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps, we found this image of Civil War marines. 

The following cartoon is from the 9 November 1861 issue of Harper's Weekly...

Ingenuity was wielded as a weapon during the American Civil War, with inventors plying their trade in the “arts of death,” as Shaw put it. One newspaper, noting that the “inventive faculty of the country is in the Northern States,” put out a colorful call:

Wilder Dwight was a Lieutenant Colonel inthe 2nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Prior to dying September 19, 1862 from wounds at the Battle of Antietam, Dwight wrote some conjectures about the events at the Battle of Port Royal.

— From the 9 November 1861 entry of John Beauchamp Jones Diary—

After the Union victory at Port Royal, Major General George Brinton McClellan wrote the following letter to his wife, Mary Ellen Marcy McClellan.

William Thompson Lusk (May 23, 1838 – June 12, 1897) was an American obstetrician, who left medical school to join the Union Army. Lusk participated in the Battle of Port Royal and wrote about his experiences. Unusually, Lusk did not vilify the Southern soldiers he encountered; he seemed to regard the Southerners highly, often criticizing the "Yankee hordes" who invaded the Southerners' ...