Civil War History – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

When Grant Captured Richmond
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

A moving account of the fall of Richmond, pieced together from various eyewitness accounts:

The whole Rebel Government was on the move, and all Richmond desired to be. No thoughts of taking Washington now, or of the flag of the Confederacy flaunting in the breeze over the old capitol! Hundreds of officials were at the depot, to get away from the doomed city. Public documents, the archives of the Confederacy, were hastily gathered up, tumbled into boxes and barrels, and taken to the trains, or carried into the streets and set on fire.

General Grant’s March on Richmond
(The Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

The Atlantic Monthly who witnessed Grant’s maneuvering outside the city of Richmond filed this article:

General Grant’s entire force could not have been less than a hundred and thirty thousand, including Sheridan’s cavalry, the force at City Point, and the provisional brigade at Fort Powhatan. Lee’s whole force was not far from seventy thousand, – or seventy-five thousand, including the militia of Richmond and Petersburg…

Click here to learn why Richmond was chosen as the capitol of the Confederacy

General Lee’s Unique Bond with his Army
(Atlantic Monthly, 1911)

Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870) is the topic of this psycho-graphic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the celebrated biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932).

…Lee won the hearts of his soldiers by living as they did. He managed the business of his position with as little fuss and parade as possible. Foreign officers were struck with the absolute simplicity of his arrangements. There were no guards or sentries around his headquarters, no idle aids-de-camp loitering about…

John Brown Examined
(The North American Review, 1910)

A 1910 book review of Oswald Garrison Villard’s biography of John Brown (1800 – 1859). Believed to be one of the more honest biographies on Brown, Villard’s effort is said to have five chapters dealing only with Brown’s activities in Bloody Kansas, including the slaughter at Pottawatomie.

Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes
(Atlantic Monthly, 1913)

Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.

Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.

‘The Sunset of the Confederacy”
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

This book review is a wonderful read, punctuated with interesting descriptions of the Civil War’s most prominent players. The book in question is The Sunset Of The Confederacy by former Confederate General Morris Schaff (1840-1929), author of The Battle of the Wilderness (1910).

The Struggle for California
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the The Dial Magazine book review of Elijah R. Kennedy’s The Contest for California in 1861. Kennedy maintained that a large party in California and Oregon sought to deliver that region to the Southerners and might have succeeded were it not for the efforts of one Colonel E.D. Baker.

Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.

A Union Snoop
(A Spy of the Rebelion, 1883)

When the Civil War broke out, Alan Pinkerton (1819 – 1884) was given charge of the Union Intelligence Service, having previously gained tremendous credibility as a detective in Chicago. It was at this post, early in the war, that he was assigned a task by General George McClellan (1826 – 1885) to proceed south of the Ohio River in order to gain a more thorough understand as to the loyalties of those people. Pinkerton first wrote about this mission in his Civil War memoir, A Spy of the Rebellion.

Click here to read another account of Civil War spying.

Confederate General Johnson Hagood
(The Dial Magazine, 1911)

A book review from 1911 covering the Civil War memoirs of the Confederate Brigadier General Johnson Hagood (1829 – 1898) who fought many battles during that conflict, most notably Cold Harbor and the battles of Weldon Road and Bentonville. At war’s end he surrendered to General Sherman.

Lincoln and Lee in 1918
(The Nation, 1918)

On the first anniversary marking the American intervention into the First World War Charles Payne of Grenell College, Iowa, wrote to the editors at The Nation and cautioned his fellow-Americans to remember the conduct and humility of Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Click here to read about the heavy influence religion had in the Rebel states during the American Civil War.

Union General James Harrison Wilson
(The Dial Magazine, 1912)

Attached is the review from a respected literary journal concerning the autobiography of Brigadier General James Harrison Wilson (1837 – 1925). Under the Old Flag Wilson is today best remembered as the U.S. Army cavalry officer who captured the Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his flight from Richmond. Following the Civil War, where he rose rapidly in the army hierarchy and finished as brigadier general, Wilson continued to play important rolls in the U.S. military; serving during the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion

An Eyewitness Account of Lincoln’s Visit to Richmond
(Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

Abraham Lincoln was walking their streets: and worst of all, that plain, honest-hearted man was recognizing the [slaves] as human beings by returning their salutations!

-so wrote the Atlanta Weekly journalist, C.C. Coffin, in this report to his readers concerning the 1865 tour Abraham Lincoln made to a very humiliated Richmond, Virginia.

The Two Lincoln Inaugurations
(Inaugural Program, 1949)

Callously torn from the binding of the 1949 inaugural program were these pithy paragraphs describing the somber moods of both Lincoln inaugurals. The anonymous author noted that

when Lincoln delivered his Inaugural Address, four future Presidents of the United States stood on the platform near him: Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Benjamin Harrison.

To read the text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, click here .

Woodrow Wilson on Lincoln
(Collier’s Magazine, 1916)

Here is a paragraph that was pulled from an interview with President Wilson in 1916 in which the bookish president remarked upon the various interesting aspects of President Lincoln:

He was not fit to be president until he was president.

Did President Lincoln Really Need the Beard?
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

When an eleven year-old girl advised Abraham Lincoln to grow some whiskers, the great man humbly took her suggestion to heart:

I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.

The rest is history.

Click here to read an 1862 review about the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.

The Books Lincoln Read
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

Examine Lincoln’s prose and the fruitage of his reading will appear… The easy quickening of Lincoln’s mind came from books like Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Caruso and Pilgrim’s Progress… To a man who knew intimately so many creatures, both wild and domestic, the fables seemed natural.

The Clothing of Abraham Lincoln
(Coronet Magazine, 1950)

The attached article is a segment from a longer one about the history of Brooks Brothers and it confirms that the Great Emancipator was one of their customers, as were the Union Army Generals Grant, Sherman and Hooker.

Click here if you would like to read the entire article about the first 132 years of Brooks Brothers.

The Accomplished Civil War Generals
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Five thumbnail portraits of the most consistently victorious generals of the American Civil War; three Union and two Confederate:

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Phillip Kearny

• George B. Thomas

• Thomas J. Jackson

• Robert E. Lee