At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Philadelphia was the second-largest city in the country and had the industrial might to earn the title "Arsenal of the Union." With Pennsylvania's anthracite coal, the city mills forged steel into arms, and a vast network of rails carried the ammunition and other manufactured goods to the troops. Over the course of the war, Philadelphia contributed 100,000 soldiers to the Union army, including many free blacks and such notables as General George McClellan and General George Meade, the victor of Gettysburg. Anthony Waskie chronicles Philadelphia's role in the conflict while also taking an intimate view of life in the city with stories of all those who volunteered to serve and guard the Cradle of Liberty.

Few students of the Civil War know that legendary historian Edwin C. Bearss produced a classic study on the little-known but significant Tupelo Campaign. The fighting in Mississippi has been overshadowed by Nathan Bedford Forrest’s more spectacular victory at Brice’s Crossroads a month earlier. Bearss performed the research and writing for the Department of the Interior in 1969, and only a handful of softcover copies were produced and circulated. It is published here for the first time, with the assistance of award-winning author David A. Powell, as Outwitting Forrest: The Tupelo Campaign in Mississippi, June 22 - July 23, 1864 . The engagement came about when Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith marched a Federal expeditionary force consisting of his 16th Army Corps into northern Mississippi in early July. The thrust forced a response, the largest of which was delivered by the combined Confederate cavalry commands of Stephen D. Lee (who was in general command) and Forrest. The tactical result was a Union defensive success. The larger Confederate strategic play, however—one that might have changed the course of the war in the Western Theater—would have been to unleash Forrest on a raid into Middle Tennessee to destroy the single line of railroad track feeding and suppling the Union armies of William T. Sherman in his ongoing operations around Atlanta. Instead, his men were contained with the Magnolia State, where his combat effectiveness was severely damaged. Editor Powell has left Bearss’ prose and notes intact, while adding additional sources and commentary of his own. The result is an exceptional study that has finally been made available to the general reading public as part of the Savas Beatie Battles & Leaders Series.

This report has been prepared to satisfy the research needs as cited in CHOH-H-6, Historic Structures Report: Bridges on the C&O Canal. This report was to be a 'thorough historical study of the types of bridges along the C&O Canal;" to insure that the reconstruction of certain of these structures be "authentic and accurate."

This publication was prepared to satisfy the research needs as enumerated in Historical Resource Study Proposal FOSU-H-4, The First Two Forts, 1776-1904, and so much of Historical Resource Study Proposal FOSU-H-1, Historical Base Maps, Fort Moultrie, as applies to the first two forts. This report documents the structural history of the Revolutionary Fort Moultrie and the 1794-1804 fort. Fort Moultrie is well-known to students of American History. On two occasions actions centering on the fort had important and far reaching repercussions for our country. On June 28, 1776, American Patriots posted behind the palmetto and sand parapets of the fort repulsed, with heavy losses, a formidable British naval squadron. This victory came at an important time for the Americans. Until this moment, General George Washington in 1176 had accomplished little beyond hurrying the British evacuation of Boston. The American army sent to overrun Canada had collapsed. Now word came of a victory in the South. News of the success reached Philadelphia shortly after the Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed. Now independence might become something beyond the bold statements set forth on parchment. Then in December 1860 Major Robert Anderson, when threatened by South Carolina Secessionists, evacuated Fort Moultrie and transferred its garrison to Fort Sumter. Three and one-half months later, South Carolina artillerists from Fort Moultrie participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which sparked the Civil War. There have been three Fort Moultries. The first of these was the palmetto and sand fort of the American Revolution, which the South Carolina assembly named in honor of Col. William Moultrie, following the repulse of the British fleet. Fort Moultrie, No. 1, disappeared in the post-Revolutionary years. Tradition has it swallowed by the sea. In 1794, when war with Great Britain appeared imminent, the Congress appropriated money for coastal defenses. Construction was started on Fort Moultrie, No. 2. With the easing of tensions following the Jay Treaty, work was suspended. The fort, a typical First System work, was completed in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France. Fort Moultrie, No. 2, was battered by high tides in 1803 and wrecked by the hurricane of 1804. Four years later, in 1808, when war again threatened with Great Britain, the construction of Fort Moultrie, No. 3, was commenced. A masonry work of the Second System, the fort was completed and garrisoned in December 1809. This is the Fort Moultrie of today, although it was greatly modified during the Civil War, the years 1872-1876, and between 1897 and 1903. There are no surface remains of the first two Fort Moultries, and this study is designed to provide information as to the structural history of these two forts. The location of these two forts will be pinpointed in hopes that an archeological investigation will be undertaken and their foundations exposed.

"Incredible ... Anyone interested in the hardship, frustration, and courage of soldiers at war will be enthralled by this book." -- James G. Hollandsworth, author of The Louisiana Native Guards

Until now, Union army colonel Nathan W. Daniels has been a forgotten man with a forgotten regiment. The white commanding officer of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard Volunteers, a black regiment, he was removed with his men from mainland military activity and confined to obscure duty on Ship Island, ten miles off the coast of Mississippi. However, as Daniels' intriguing diary documents, despite an unrenowned existence that has earned them little attention from historians, the 2nd Native Guards represent a pioneering stage in the history of black troops at war.

The story of the Louisiana Native Guards is essentially the story of the first black commissioned officers in the Civil War. Ordered by General Benjamin F. Butler, the promotion of seventy-six educated, free blacks was an experimental step taken during the early days of black enlistment. However, within one year, nearly all the officers, including their white colonels, were forced out or had resigned in frustration.

Daniels lived the tale of these removals and confided his thoughts to his diary, a rare surviving narrative from someone of his rank and position. Woven through daily entries of routine life on the military post are his comments about his responsibilities and frustrations of being caught between the black and white military worlds of the day. He vividly recalls a fierce skirmish on the mainland at East Pascagoula, Mississippi, in which his black troops, having fought superbly, suffered most of their casualties from apparently intentional "friendly" fire from the Union gunboat Jackson, sent there to protect them.

In May, 1863, Daniels was arrested in New Orleans on seemingly trifling charges related to his duty on Ship Island. He continued his diary in the Federally occupied city, giving fascinating details of life there and chronicling his slow torture in the machinery of the military bureaucracy. He eventually separated from the army under circumstances that remain curious.

The diary also provides never-before-published pictures from wartime Ship Island, including photographs of members of Daniels' regiment, visiting ship captains, and Major Francis E. Dumas -- the highest-ranking black officer to see combat during the war. A superb resource in and of themselves, these photographs will fascinate Civil War enthusiasts.

The first published personal narrative by a regimental commander of free black troops, Thank God My Regiment an African One offers a unique glimpse into the daily lives of white leaders of the earliest black soldiers. It is a significant contribution to the ongoing documentation of the experience of black troops in the Civil War.

On the morning of December 12, 1862, the Union gunboat Cairo, nosing her way up the Yazoo River north of Vicksburg, Mississippi, triggered two Confederate demijohn mines. Within minutes the 512-ton ironclad had sunk six fathoms to the muddy bottom with no loss of life -- the first armored war vessel ever downed by an electronically activated mine. A whole new era of naval warfare had begun.

In Hardluck Ironclad Edwin Bearss tells how he and two other Civil War historians discovered the Cairo almost a century later -- still intact at the bottom of the Yazoo, her big guns loaded and ready to fire, much of the gear aboard just as it was that December morning when the crew abandoned her -- and how, almost miraculously, she was later salvaged and restored.

No history of the West is complete without the story of Fort Smith, the fort that ""refused to die."" Established in 1817, Fort Smith was repeatedly abandoned and reoccupied during the following fifty years, eventually becoming the mother post of the Southwest. The original fort was installed on the Arkansas River by Major William Bradford and a company of the Rifles Regiment. Bradford's mission was to stop a bloody war between the Osages and the Cherokees, a conflict discouraging the emigration of eastern Indians to the lands west of the Mississippi and thereby interfering with the government's removal policy. During the Civil War, Confederate armies at Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove were supplied from Fort Smith, and the Rebel force that crushed Opothleyoholo's band marched from Fort Smith. The fort was taken by Federal troops in September 1863 and served as a Union base for the remainder of the Civil War. In 1871 the army again abandoned the fort, but the Federal Court for the Western District of Arkansas soon moved in. Under Judge Isaac Parker, the renowned ""Hanging Judge of Fort Smith,"" the court became a force for law and order in much of Indian Territory.

If you think you know a lot about the Civil War, challenge yourself with this instructive and intriguing book of questions. Covering every battle of the war, commanders and ordinary soldiers, weapons, and armies, this book will test the knowledge of even the most dedicated history buff. Degrees of difficulty range from elementary to questions that even the author had difficulty figuring out, and everything in between: What position did Confederate President Jefferson Davis hold in the federal government prior to the Civil War? Who was the first reputed casualty at Gettysburg? These and many more provocative questions will sharpen the knowledge of Civil enthusiasts everywhere.

The role that African Americans played in the Gettysburg Campaign has now been largely forgotten. This work seeks to rectify this oversight by bringing to light the many ways that Black Americans took part in the crucial battle at Gettysburg, how they were able to influence the military outcome, and the impact the Civil War had on their lives. Author, James M. Paradis, a former licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, examines the active prewar role played by Gettysburg citizens, both black and white, in dramatic rescues of the Underground Railroad. Readers are introduced to an impressive ensemble of characters from the black community in Gettysburg including farmers, blacksmiths, teachers, veterinarians, preachers, servants, and laborers. He also dispels the myth that no black men fought or were killed defending Gettysburg from the Confederate invasion. By filling in the missing pieces, this book will help African Americans take back their own history in this dramatic struggle for freedom. African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign will appeal to scholars and general readers alike. Civil War buffs and potential Gettysburg visitors will find the tour for today and points of interest sections valuable tools for enhancing their experience of this sacred ground. Maps, photographs, and illustrations appear throughout.