Surprises and Counterattacks – Cedar Creek, October 19, 1861

I typically try to provide short, easy to digest battle blog posts regarding the places I've visited. The last few weeks, however, have been packed with deadlines and personal life adjustments. As a result, I'll be providing a great video that summarizes the activity at Cedar Creek instead of a written summary. This comes from…

Seven Days Battle, Touring All Six Battlefields – Part 1

Richmond, along with holding the title of the former Confederate Capital, is absolutely packed with history, especially Civil War history. One could easily spend a week in this massive city and still have missed a few places. Three campaigns took place in and around the city between the years 1861 and 1865, most of the…

Visiting Spotsy

In a previous blog post pertaining to traveling to battlefields, I stressed the point to always, ALWAYS do your research before going so you won’t inadvertently miss any important or interesting spots in the park. Well, I didn’t take my own advice last year when trekking through the Overland Campaign battlefields. I missed quite a…

Wilderness Recap (Links)

It occurred to me that I wrote a LOT of posts about the Wilderness in this last blog series and they were a bit scattered between non-Wilderness posts. So, for the convenience of future readers, here are the links to each of these posts so you'll be able to find them in some reasonable order.…

Hidden 7th Georgia Marker – Manassas

One of the treats of battlefield exploration is discovering something new – or at least feeling like you’re discovering something new. The summer of 2018 was my genesis into Civil War research. I was writing a novel about a Confederate soldier in the 7th Georgia Infantry. Though the book starts off the evening before the…

Natural Bridge – Florida’s Hidden Gem

The more I dig into the Civil War, the more I find these rare little gems about my own state. It’s incredible what you can find in your own backyard. Like the fact that Tallahassee was the only capitol of the Confederacy not to fall into Union hands. Thanks, largely to the efforts of young…

Tips from the Traveler

I thought I’d take a break from research for a moment to impart some of the wisdom I have earned over the last six months when it comes to traveling to these battlefields. When I started to plan my first big Civil War expedition, I was going to Virginia and I thought I was pretty…

Olustee: Florida Plays its Part

When I started my big research into the Civil War, I had never heard anything about Florida, my current resident state. I took for granted the lack of obvious materials I found, so I just assumed nothing happened in Florida of any significance besides maybe some forts being taken. Well, I was wrong. Especially once…

A Soldier’s Story: Battle of Shiloh

Continuing in January’s dedication to the Battle of Shiloh, I thought it’d be important to give some direct soldier accounts from both the Union and the Confederate side. So much of history is told in facts and dates, but the first-hand stories are sometimes overlooked. What we forget is that the first-hand stories are where…

Lay of the Land – Battlefield Terrain

The Civil War was fought in over 1,000 locations across the country. The big ones that almost everyone knows are Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Vicksburg, etc. But the war was also fought in smaller places like Olustee in Florida, or Glorieta Pass way out in New Mexico. No matter where the armies moved or where the…