Posts from the ‘Eastern Theater Issues’ Category

The Battle of Bentonville (Volume 32, #6)

The line of blue infantry crested the hill just as the officers gave the order to halt. Men caught their breath and then looked to their weapons in anticipation of resuming the fight. As his men enjoyed a few minutes of rest, Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower took stock of the situation. A veteran of Corinth, Vicksburg and the Red River Campaign, Mower had watched as his division shattered the thin Confederate left flank. He was now well beyond the Union position.

Mower stood poised to push even farther and inflict more damage in the enemy’s rear. Through the course of the attack, his brigades had lost cohesion, and he had been forced to break off the advance. The pause was fatal. Suddenly, in the distance, a line of infantry in ragged gray and butternut appeared, bearing down on their foe. Mower’s opportunity had withered away.

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The Confederate Blockade of the Potomac River • May ’61 – March ’62 (Volume 32 #5)

Formed from headwaters that flow through four states before passing the United States capital, the Potomac River has rightfully been called the Nation’s river. First used as a highway of exploration and settlement by European settlers, the river famously served as an avenue of invasion by British forces during the War of 1812. Forgotten today, between Spring 1861 and early Spring 1862, Confederate batteries effectively stopped all riverine traffic. While the Confederate Blockade of Washington, D. C., never realistically put the fate of the city in doubt, it severely embarrassed the Lincoln Administration, particularly during a time of repeated Union disasters.

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Historic Crossings of the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers (Volume 32 #3)

by Eric Nelson

Civil War campaigns in and around Fredericksburg, Va., required an advancing army first to jump the Rappahannock River. As a consequence, river crossings loomed large at the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. At Fredericksburg in 1862, the pontoon bridge sites became the initial points of contact and men died as engineers struggled to build their floating bridges under fire. The hard lesson was that bridges were best built when an army controlled both sides of the waterway. During the Chancellorsville Campaign in 1863, the Union army again crossed the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, but sent assault forces over first to seize the opposite shore before the bridge building began. These crossings in the tidal part of the Rappahannock River were a diversion from the advance of the main Union force, which occurred far upstream. Where the upriver fords remained usable and lightly picketed, an advance guard could splash across and secure the crossing site. Some fords, however, had become altered by dams and canals, and establishing military crossings there posed additional challenges.

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