#Civil War Battles

[deadpresidents]

After that terrible Sunday at Shiloh, I started out to find [General] Grant and see how we were to get across the river. It was pouring rain and pitch dark, there was considerable confusion, and the only thing just then possible as it seemed to me, was to put the river between us and the enemy and recuperate. Full of only this idea, I ploughed around in the mud until at last I found him standing backed up against a wet tree, his hat well slouched down and coat pulled up around his ears, an old tin lantern in his hand, the rain pelting on us both, and the inevitable cigar glowing between his teeth, having retired, evidently, for the night. Some wise and sudden instinct impelled me to a more cautious and less impulsive proposition than at first intended, and I opened up with, "Well Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" "Yes," he said, with a short, sharp puff of the cigar; "lick 'em tomorrow, though."

-- General William Tecumseh Sherman, on General Ulysses S. Grant after the first day of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh in 1862, as told to the Washington Post (published May 17, 1891).

[roscoe-conkling]

Major General Eugene Asa Carr was known to his men as 'The Black-Bearded Cossack' for his courage and tenacity. During the Civil War, these qualities served him well at the Battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas on March 7, 1862. Carr, a colonel commanding a Union army division, despite being wounded 3 times under heavy gun and cannon fire, refused to leave the field, holding his ground and continuing to deploy his men. Union forces prevailed on the following day, driving the Confederates south and establishing Federal control over Missouri and northern Arkansas. For his actions, Carr was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1894.

[ariclassof09]

i hope your brother isnt as obsessed with star wars as mine is, his whole room is covered in the merch and stuff he always goes on and on about it its so annoying

Oh my G-d, mine is into all of this, like... It's not nerd shit, because some nerd shit is actually cool, like anime and stuff.

But like he's into just the dweebiest bullshit.

Like he has this game where he paints an entire army of little guys in armor with huge guns, and some of the guys are green and have fangs or something?

Like come on, dude, you're already a hardcore Pokemon competitive battler. You don't need to compete to have the lamest hobbies in the world.

I guess my dad would probably beat him, though, because at least his lame plastic models are sometimes tanks or whatever.

Imagine painting little models, but they aren't even space guys or whatever. They're like friggin Civil War soldiers.

Like if you're gonna do something art-related, at least have it be creative, right?

[coloradomartini]

My surprise at this Civil War battlefield

I had no idea the surprise I would find about my family history that day. Driving from the Outer Banks to Raleigh, North Carolina. We approached a sign saying, “Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site, next exit.”

Bentonville Battlefield, North Carolina I had no idea the surprise I would find about my family history that day. It was a nice summer’s day, we were driving from the Outer Banks to Raleigh, North Carolina. We approached a sign saying, “Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site, next exit.” Having some extra time before our airplane took off, we took the exit onto the country road to see the…

[newsvistaarblog]

16 दिसंबर, संघर्ष में डूबी हुई क्रूरता: नैशविले की लड़ाई (1864)

Written By Shafeek Ahmad, Published On 16-December-2023. अमेरिकी गृहयुद्ध के दौरान दिसंबर 1864 में लड़ी गई नैशविले की लड़ाई, राष्ट्र को आकार देने वाले उथल-पुथल भरे संघर्षों के प्रमाण के रूप में खड़ी है। यह विस्तृत अन्वेषण इस महत्वपूर्ण संलग्नता की ओर ले जाने वाली घटनाओं, संघ और संघ दोनों सेनाओं द्वारा अपनाई गई रणनीतियों और युद्ध के प्रक्षेप पथ पर इसके स्थायी प्रभाव पर प्रकाश डालता…

[vigilskeep]

when you first start the cousland origin, you can have some conversations with arl howe, teyrn cousland, and duncan that shed some interesting light on the political situation in ferelden. it’s definitely the origin where you get the most context on the rebellion and on cailan and his father. while howe isn’t exactly the most trustworthy of sources, he is also one of the most openly critical of cailan that we have access to, which i think is worthy of interest

howe remembers maric with what the toolset describes as “genuine fondness”: “your father hasn’t spoken of our time with him? that man took care of his friends. as they say, he was large as life and twice as tall!” i think we should pay particular attention to that man took care of his friends.

what howe’s talking about is a really important aspect of kingship, where you win the consent and enthusiasm of the nobility for your rule by offering rewards like wealth, land, and prestige to the loyal. kingship is always less stable than it’s portrayed, and this is one of the ways that kings must essentially sell to the nobility that answering to them is worth their time, which would be especially important in ferelden given everything we know about its culture. fereldans believe someone only has power when it is given by the loyalty of those below them, who have the right to freely rescind that loyalty. the dao codex says that “the sight of [fereldan kings] asking for—and working to win—the support of ‘lesser’ men is a source of constant wonder to foreign ambassadors.”

i suspect howe is remembering a maric fresh from the victories of the rebellion, who was able to reward those who had followed him with the spoils of those victories. at the end of the stolen throne, we see that in the final days of the rebellion, maric was killing those who had betrayed his mother to the orlesians even when they arrived under truce to meet him on holy ground. in dao, we see no lingering orlesian nobility except for those who married in and continue to be met with marked hostility. i think we can safely surmise that maric elected to make no conciliatory measures and give everything to those who had followed him; with the orlesians on the run and his people out for blood, he was in a strong enough position to do so, and it certainly served to win the fond memories of men like howe.

by contrast, howe goes on to say, “it’s too bad cailan isn’t half that.” the toolset notes establish very clearly that it’s the same issue, elaborating on howe’s thoughts: “bitter turn, i don’t get as much from the current king”, and “disdainful, i have no use for him, he does me no favours”. this isn’t a minor character detail, if howe’s last words when killed by the player are anything to go by. “maker spit on you... i deserved... more...” whatever it is that howe feels he should have been given, by the crown or anyone else, it characterises his actions and his defining treachery.

it’s in these same conversations that we see another side of this demonstrated. there are two points where howe can openly criticise the king, and bryce immediately admonishes him for both. one even has the toolset note: “speaks sharply, as a lord to a lesser man, not a friend to an equal”. it definitely comes across that way; the way he tells howe “that’s enough” is not far off the voice he uses when the player, his child, displeases him. bryce can’t tolerate any criticism of cailan, as the couslands in dao are ardent supporters of the king. to venture some hc, i suspect that this is not merely royalist fervour, and that howe’s resentment for having been given less is matched by bryce’s awareness of the precariousness of having more.

over the centuries, the theirins have consolidated their power and eradicated almost all the teyrns (the noble rank that is second only to the king). with the only other lingering teyrn being loghain, who is essentially part and parcel of the royal family, the couslands stand alone as the only real rivals to theirin power within ferelden. there are rumours that bryce was once considered for king instead of the theirins; he too could have decided to believe he “deserved more”. but unlike howe, and perhaps understandably given his strong position and happy growing family, he is satisfied with what he has. he will not take the risk of even the slightest challenge being made within his hall

(i expect that bryce’s satisfaction with the current situation further spurred howe’s dissatisfaction to its heights, given the complicated cousland-howe history and the fact that he was expected to accept a friend he had fought beside as a superior for the rest of his life.)

i don’t think howe’s judgement on cailan is likely to be without basis. we don’t hear about any victories the young king has to his name, from which he could have passed around spoils. (to be fair, cailan had harder luck than maric in this regard. a king who raises a successful rebellion gets to bring glory and prestige to everyone who follows him, whereas a king trying to rebuild after that rebellion mostly gets to bring, uh, taxes probably. especially on wealthy centres of trade like howe’s amaranthine, one might assume.) cailan also takes a far more diplomatic approach to the question of orlais, which perhaps predictably did not win over many nobles of howe’s generation. it makes sense that cailan’s strongest supporters would instead be men like bryce who hope for things to simply continue, peacefully, as they are. perhaps in another world where cailan had won the battle of ostagar, he might have earned wider respect. (you could actually argue on this basis that there’s more sense and purpose to cailan’s glory-seeking than he usually gets credit for.) but howe already acts before ostagar, which can only demonstrate his certainty in cailan’s failings at this point: his belief that even if cailan could win, he would not be stable enough to pursue justice for the couslands

[sgtgrunt0331-3]

On July 2, 1863, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain lead his men of the 20th Maine on a bayonet charge down the slopes of little round top, during the battle of Gettysburg. He would later be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.

This clip, from the movie Gettysburg, depicts the epic moment in history. It's one of the best, if not the best scene in the movie.

[illustratus]

The Death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth by Justo Jimeno Bazaga

[chaotic-archaeologist]

I'm a 10 but I just found this while packing up my apartment 🤣

[daguerreotyping]

Ambrotype of a pipe-puffing pair of comrades in arms, c. 1861-65

[oldschoolfrp]

Gettysburg (Avalon Hill, 1958) is considered the first wargame to depict an historic battle. It was released in advance of the centennial of the bloodiest engagement of the American Civil War, fought July 1-3, 1863. Designer Charles S. Roberts acknowledged the game had some flawed mechanics and balance issues due to a lack of playtesting but it remained in print for many years, with a 2nd edition in 1961, a 3rd ed in 1964, and later printings through the 1970s and 80s. Attempts to fix the movement rules resulted in different editions of the game switching back and forth between a square grid and hexes on the board.

Suggested improvements to the game included those offered in The General V1 N5, January 1965, by Staff Sergeant Lou Zocchi (later a published game designer himself and the founder of dice company Gamescience):

[roscoe-conkling]

Union Army Colonel James Schoonmaker received the Medal of Honor for gallantry when he led a cavalry charge against Confederate artillery, driving them back and capturing many prisoners during the Third Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864. Fought near Winchester, Virginia, it was one of the largest and bloodiest battles fought for control of the Shenandoah Valley, and was a victory for Union forces under the command of Major General Philip Sheridan.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, November 25, 1863, the Battle of Missionary Ridge occurred. During this military engagement, Union troops, led by General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), defeated the Confederate forces commanded by General Braxton Bragg (1817-1876) at Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, successfully concluding the Siege of Chattanooga.

The outcome of the Battle of Missionary Ridge had major implications for the Confederate Army. It exposed vulnerabilities in their defensive strategies and highlighted the challenges of commanding a dispersed and demoralized force. In the aftermath of the defeat, General Braxton Bragg faced intense criticism from both his troops and Confederate leadership, which eventually contributed to his reassignment.

The success at Missionary Ridge marked a key turning point in the Civil War. It secured control of Chattanooga and opened up the Deep South for subsequent Union offensives. This triumph set the stage for General Sherman's Atlanta Campaign and his infamous March to the Sea. It also reinforced the Union's commitment to prevail against Confederate forces until the war's conclusion in 1865.

The success of Union forces during this battle underscored the importance of strong leadership and coordination among troops. General Ulysses S. Grant, known for his aggressive and strategic military tactics, was later appointed commander of all Union armies and played a pivotal role in the war's conclusion. He would later become the 18th president of the United States.

Today, Missionary Ridge is preserved as part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, where visitors can learn about the battle strategies, the soldiers' experiences, and the broader context of the Civil War.

The images come from the following books in our Civil War Collections:

Lee and His Generals by Capt. William P. Snow, published in New York by Richardson & Company in 1867.

Braxton Bragg, General of the Confederacy by Don C. Seitz, published in Columbia, S.C. by The State Company in 1924.

The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant by Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, published in New York by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1929.

Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant published in New York by C. L. Webster in 1885.

Life and Public Services of General Grant Being a Complete Life of the Great Hero Following His Career from the Cradle to its Close ... by William Ralston Balch, published in Chicago by J.S. Goodman in 1885.

View more of our Milestone Monday posts

-Melissa, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[my-pjo-stuff]

Okay but......... imagine if Luke reincarnates as a demigod child of Nemesis.

And he actually has a fairly decent home life and manages to get to camp safely.

So suddenly Annabeth is confronted with a child with hauntingly familiar eyes, a strong sense for justice-

-and also an abnormal interest in anything concerning revolts or revolutions against unjust systems.

[blueiscoool]

Ancient Warship’s Bronze Battering Ram Sunk During a Battle Between Rome and Carthage Found

Found near the Aegadian Islands, just west of Sicily, the bronze rostrum played a role in the last battle of the First Punic War, which ended in 241 B.C.E.

In 241 B.C.E., two empires faced off in a naval clash off the coast of Sicily. By then, Rome and Carthage had been fighting for more than two decades. Rome’s victory in the skirmish, officially called the Battle of the Aegates, brought an end to the First Punic War, the initial conflict in a series of wars between the two ancient powers.

Now, explorers have recovered a piece of that final battle: the bronze battering ram of an ancient warship. According to a statement from Sicily’s Superintendence of the Sea, the ram was found on the seafloor off the western coast of the Mediterranean island, at a depth of around 260 feet. To retrieve the artifact, the team used deep-water submarines from the Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites (SDSS) and the oceanographic research vessel Hercules.

The seabed off the Aegadian Islands “is always a valuable source of information to add further knowledge about the naval battle between the Roman and Carthaginian fleets,” Regional Councilor for Cultural Heritage Francesco Paolo Scarpinato tells Finestre sull’Arte. He adds that the find is yet another confirmation of the work of the late archaeologist Sebastiano Tusa, who spearheaded exploration of the seabed as the site of the 241 battle after a separate ram, also known as a rostrum, was first found there in the early 2000s. In the two decades since, researchers have recovered at least 25 rams from the seabed.

At the time of the Battle of the Aegates, Rome and Carthage had been at war for 23 years, fighting for dominance in the Mediterranean. As the Greek historian Polybius later wrote, the Romans sank 50 Carthaginian ships and captured another 70 along with their crews, taking nearly 10,000 sailors prisoner during the naval battle. Rome forced Carthage to surrender. But the fragile peace was short-lived: Over the next century, Rome would go on to fight a second and third war against the Punic people, winning each time.

“It was very costly, both in terms of human life and economically,” Francesca Oliveri, an archaeologist at the superintendence, told BBC News’ Alessia Franco and David Robson in 2022. “In the last phase, Rome even had to ask for a loan from the most well-to-do families to arm the fleet and build new boats.”

The recently discovered ram has been brought to Favignana, one of the Aegadian Islands, for further study. Though its features are difficult to make out because the object is covered in marine life, researchers have been able to discern a decoration on its front: a relief depicting a Montefortino-style Roman helmet decorated with three feathers.

The battering ram adds to the wealth of war relics found on the seabed, which also include 30 Roman soldiers’ Montefortino helmets, two swords, coins and many clay amphorae (large storage jars).

According to the SDSS, rams were the most important naval weapons of their time. They were placed on the bows of warships at water level so that sailors could crash their boats into enemy vessels, damaging and sinking them. The plethora of rams scattered on the seabed are testaments to the weapons’ effectiveness in ancient battle.

“We are finding so many things that help to illustrate a little better the world of the third century [B.C.E.],” Oliveri told BBC News in 2022. “It’s the first site of a naval battle, in the world, that has been scientifically documented like this, and it will continue to be documented—because the area of interest is very large. … It will take at least another 20 years to explore it fully.”

By Sonja Anderson.

[ospreyeamon]

the falls of the revanchist jedi

The narrative doesn’t directly examine why the Jedi who followed Revan and Malak fell. It is spoken of as a given – they followed Revan into war, so they followed Revan into darkness. That’s not how people work though. That’s not even how people under the influence of the Dark Side of the Force work. Spending twenty years as Palpatine’s thrall didn’t prevent Vader from throwing his Master into the reactor shaft to save his son. Revan can murder every NPC available to be murdered until reaching Rakata Prime only to pull a 180, redeem Bastila, and be feted as a hero of the Republic, Sith-eyes and all.

All but one of the surviving Revanchist Jedi who followed Revan and Malak into the Mandalorian Wars followed them again into the Jedi Civil War. Even the Exile, that lone dissenting actor, can say that they would have fought with their fellows against the Republic had their connection to the Force not been severed; that they were unable, not unwilling. Yet, the Exile can also say that they would not have followed Revan and Malak in attacking the Republic, that they went to war to defend the innocent. Many of the other Jedi who joined the war effort alongside them must have felt the same way, in the beginning.

Many of the soldiers of the Republic like Carth Onasi returned home after the Mandalorian Wars were over, even those like Saul Karath who would bow to Revan again. What then are the factors that led every surviving Revanchist Jedi, save the Exile, to follow Revan from the Mandalorian Wars into the Jedi Civil War?

1) The Mandalorian Wars changed the Jedi who fought in them. The Exile’s dialogue provides the different reasons why they might have left to fight in the war – to protect the innocent, to test their power, to defend the Republic, to win glory – reflecting varying motivations of Knights and Padawans recruited by Revan and Malak. However, despite the differences in the initial reasons for defying the Jedi Council to answer the Republic’s call, they all would have gone through similar uniting experiences during the war. Terrible experiences. Shared hardship often serves to reinforce group identity.

Older Jedi like Kavar and Arren Kae had fought wars before, but the initial expedition led by Revan and Malak was almost entirely composed of young Knights and older Padawans. Military morality, ethics in warfare, tends to be rather twisted from the perspective of modern western civilian morality. Your ability to prosecute the war and the safety of your soldiers takes priority over the lives of enemy, and sometimes even allied, civilians. Ruthless is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity. Collateral damage is an inevitability. For young relatively inexperienced Jedi, raised on ideals of valuing all life and always seeking non-violent resolutions, the transition to military command positions where they were not only required to kill, not only required to led troops to their death, but required to give orders which they knew would directly result in the deaths of civilians would have been distressing.

We know that the Exile once led troops directly into a minefield during the Battle of Dxun, but I think that barely scratched the surface. We aren’t given the full laundry list of the Mandalorians’ war crimes, but at the very least it includes the crime of aggression, murder of civilians, use of child soldiers, and conscription of captured civilians into the Neo-Crusaders and for forced labour. Given this disregard for the lives of civilians, I consider it likely that the Mandalorians also used hostages and headquartered themselves inside buildings like schools and hospitals. I suspect both sides used poison weapons, nuclear weapons, torture, and executed prisoners of war.

2) The Battle of Malachor V was a purge and a crucible of conversion. Kreia, HK-47, and the recording of Bastila Shan all say it; “a series of massacres that masked another war, a war of conversion”, “the intention was to destroy the Jedi, break their will, and make them loyal to Revan … Revan was "cleaning house" at Malachor V”, “to convert the last of the Jedi who fought beside [Revan] – and murder those who would not”. The Jedi in the radius of the Mass Shadow Generator would have included the Jedi Revan did not believe would agree with the plan to invade the Republic.

I think many of the Revanchist Jedi had already been falling by inches before Malachor. The Mandalorian Wars were brutal and one of the major symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is emotional dysregulation. Irritability, anxiety, depression, guilt, anger – the ongoing effects of trauma make a person more susceptible to inadvertently drawing on the Dark-Side of the Force. Using the Dark-Side of the Force was forbidden by the Code enforced by the Jedi Council, but the Revanchists had been pressured to compromise their ethics in other ways to effectively prosecute the war.

For any Jedi who had not already fallen, the detonation of the Mass Shadow Generator was a final blow they could not withstand. They all fell – into the Dark-Side, into death, away from the Force.

This was the conversion that Revan desired. The moral conversation – the acceptance of actions that violated their previous moral code, the previous moral code that would not have permitted making war on the Republic. The conversion in the Force – pushing Jedi to the Dark-Side ensured that they would not be accepted back into the Order by the Jedi Council even if they desired to return.

3) The Jedi Council’s decision to exile the Jedi who returned to face them was a gift to Revan and Malak. The Council’s judgement might have been rooted in their discomfort with what the Exile had become but the reason they publicly gave is that the Exile disobeyed the Council to follow Revan to war. That reason applied equally to every single other Revanchist. By exiling the one Revanchist to return the Jedi Council exiled them all, whether or not they intended to. They may not have, but by deciding to keep secret the true reasons behind their sentence of exile they ensured the other Revanchists could interpret their judgement no other way.

Telling the Revanchist Jedi they would never be welcome to return to the Jedi Order ensured that they would never go back. Onwards was the only path left to them.

4) Revan was extremely charismatic and competent. The Revanchist Jedi had already decided that Revan and Malak judgement was better than the Jedi Council’s when they chose to defy the Council’s orders to follow them to war. Revan, Malak and the Revanchists then won the war for the Republic. In fact, Revan even discovered the shadowy threat the which had been the Council’s justification for sitting out the war through engaging in it, while the Jedi Council remained ignorant.

The Republic government probably bungled the early stages of the Mandalorian Wars by not intervening sooner. The Mandalorians were committing more than enough war crimes for them to justify it, but they allowed Mandalorians to expand their territory, build their forces and industry, and entrench their advantage. When the Republic did enter the war, it wasn’t because the Republic leadership had made a strategic decision, or even a moral one; it was because some corrupt politicians organised bribes to fast-track Taris into the Republic because it was under threat and they wanted to protect their business holdings there. The Jedi Council was also tangled up in the culture of corruption; Lucien Draay was given a seat on the Council even though he’d been accused of planning and assisting the murder of four Padawans because of his powerful family connections.

The Old Republic was more an aristocratic republic than a democratic one. Alderaan, Onderon, the Empress Teta system – they were all monarchies during this period, not democracies. If aristocrats could hold power through right of blood and plutocrats through wealth, then why shouldn’t Revan lead the Galactic Republic by right of merit and conquest?

Revan was secretive, but at least some of the other Revanchist Sith knew about the shadowy threat – the True Sith Empire. If the Republic was going to need to fight another war against an even greater enemy, surely it would need better leadership. Leadership like Revan.