“And retaliation will be our practice now . . .”
After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the U.S. Army began recruiting black men in earnest. The Confederate government...
“behind the enemies lines”
By 1864 the ranks of the Confederate Army were thinning as a result of disease and combat. This report from a Union scout highlights another drain on Confederate...
“My dear Wife”
Behind Union lines, under a “flag of truce,” Confederate surgeon Robert J. Bell wrote to his wife of the death of her brother Sylvester at the Battle of Helena...
“reward for the arrest and delivery to me”
This clipping offers a $30 reward for each Confederate deserter listed and described. The South was especially hurt by deserters. Confederate Army desertion rates for...
A raid in Virginia
This letter describes a raid on Falls Church, Virginia, by one of the Confederacy’s most daring partisan commanders. John Singleton Mosby and his cavalry, Mosby’s...
A real Prince of a soldier
This portrait, one of many photographs of Civil War personalities taken by the Mathew Brady studio, is of Confederate Major General Prince Polignac. A French...
A widow’s plea
Nancy Woodward, a Confederate widow, wrote to President Davis and asked him to release her only son from the Army so he could return home and help her. Southern...