Cease firing

On August the thirty-first Hood fought and lost the battle of Jonesboro. On September the first he evacuated Atlanta, besieged now for forty days, bombarded and wrecked and ruin...

“It is said to be easy to defend a mountainous country,” said General Braxton Bragg, commanding the Army of Tennessee, “but mountains hide your foe from you, while they are full...

On the eighteenth of October, the grey being again drawn up at Fisher’s Hill, Gordon, with General Clement Evans and Jed Hotchkiss and Major Hunter of Gordon’s staff, climbed Ma...

From the thirteenth to the twenty-first they bivouacked on and near the battle-field of Sharpsburg. By now they were used to revisiting battle-fields. Kernstown—Manassas—many an...

She was a wise as well as a fair woman, and yet, the day after the burning of Columbia, she took a road that led northward from the smoking ruins. In the cold morning sunlight S...

The two came from beneath the dripping trees out upon the cleared bank of the Mississippi, and into a glare of pine torches. The rain had lessened, the fitful wind beat the flam...

For seven days Rocky Face Mountain echoed the rattling fire. Milk Mountain behind also threw it back, and Horn Mountain behind Milk. Crow Valley saw hard fighting, and Mill Cree...

Five days before the fight at Brandy Station, Ewell and the Second Corps, quitting the encampment near Fredericksburg and marching rapidly, had disappeared in the distance towar...

Maury Stafford was not a newcomer, but the substance of this catechism was graved in his mind and daily life and actions. He had passed the stage of violently beating against th...

The sun of the first day of July rose serene into an azure sky where a few white clouds were floating. The light summer mist was dissipated; a morning wind, freshly sweet, rippl...

Thirty guns of the horse artillery moved into position—not for battle, but for a splendid review. Right and left, emerging from the Virginia forest and the leafy defiles between...

Eight gunboats held the river in front of, above, and below the doomed town. Under the leafy Louisiana shore the blue placed seven mortars. These kept up a steady fire upon the...

All day the twenty-first the shattered blue army lay in position at Rossville, five miles away. But Bragg, his army likewise shattered and exhausted, his ammunition failing, did...

If he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city, Robert E. Lee was a general doubly great. The gallantry of the three days’ fighting at Gettysburg he left like...

“When I assumed command of all the armies, the situation was about this: the Mississippi was guarded from St. Louis to its mouth; the line of the Arkansas was held, thus giving...

The twenty-eight guns sent out continuously shot and shell against the blue ironclads, the gunboats, the transports. The blue returned the fire with fervency. Not before had the...

The stockade enclosed a half-acre of bare earth, trodden hard. The prison was a huge old brick building with a few narrow, grated windows. It had been built to store the inanima...

Van Dorn’s raid and the battle of Chickasaw Bayou made of naught the December ’62—January ’63 push against Vicksburg. Grant fell back to Memphis. McClernand, Sherman’s superior,...

Eight thousand strong the Second Corps, Jubal Early at its head, left the region of the Chickahominy on the thirteenth of June, marched eighty-odd miles in four days, boarded at...

The blue army was massed beyond Noonday Creek, in front of Pine Mountain, and on the Burnt Hickory road. The grey held a line from Gilgal Church to a point beyond the Marietta a...

It might have been guessed from the first,” said Cleave. “Only, fortunately or unfortunately, mankind never makes such guesses. Given, with all our talk to the contrary, North a...

On the thirteenth of June grey countermines were begun from all the main grey works. The men worked continuously upon these, and in the night-time they strengthened the breaches...

“Grant and Sherman are preparing to swoop. The first is at Oxford with fifty thousand men, the second has left Memphis. He has thirty-five thousand, and the Gunboat Squadron. We...

The countryside lay warm and mellow in the early autumn air. The mountains hung like clouds; the vales cherished the amber light. The maple leaves were turning; out on the edge...

The two men were strong, magnificently formed negroes, one middle-aged, one young. “It ain’t easy, marster,” said the first. “River’s on er rampage. Jes’ er-look how she’s swirl...

At Petersburg, on the Appomattox, twenty miles south of Richmond, June went by in thunder, day and night, of artillery duels, with, for undersong, a perpetual, pattering rain of...

Through the cool October sunlight three grey regiments and a battery of horse artillery were marching upon a road that led from the Rapidan to the Rappahannock. They were coming...

Early’s task in the Valley throughout this summer and autumn was to preserve a threatening attitude toward blue territory on the other side of the Potomac, to hinder and harass...

For ages and ages, water, ceaselessly streaming, ceaselessly seeping, through and over the calcareous silt, had furrowed the region until now there was a medley and labyrinth of...

In this February the grey Congress at Richmond created the office of Commander-in-Chief of all the Confederate Armies, and appointed to it Robert Edward Lee. On the twenty-third...

The river ran several thousand miles, from a land of snow and fir trees and brief summers to a land of long, long summers, cane and orange. The river was wide. It dealt in loops...

A Confederate soldier, John Wise, speaks of the General-in-Chief. “I have seen many pictures of General Lee, but never one that conveyed a correct impression of his appearance....

Roughly speaking, the Confederate position in the three days’ battle of Spottsylvania—country of Alexander Spottswood, sometime periwigged Governor of the Colony of Virginia—was...

Morning broke with a heavy mist over Oostenaula and Connesauga, over Rocky Face and Snake Creek Gap, over the village of Resaca, over the Western and Atlantic Railroad, over the...

Steve had had no intention whatever of rejoining the army. And yet here he was, embodied again in the Sixty-fifth, and moving, ordinary time, on Staunton! How it had happened he...

By most the words were sobbed out. May the eighth, and the Wilderness vast in the minds of all, and fresh battle impending, now at Spottsylvania! It was a congregation of men an...

The log cabin looked out upon a wooded world, a world that rolled and shimmered, gold-green, blue-green, violet-green, to horizons of bright summer sky. In the distance, veiled...

Virginia Military Institute cadets were younger than they used to be. To suit the times the age of admittance had been dropped. Even so, steadily from the beginning there was a...

Sairy, sitting in the toll-house door, threaded her needle. “You an’ Tom, Christianna, air awful young yet! Life ain’t dead. She’s sick, I’ll allow, but, my land! she’s stood a...

Miss Lucy opened the paper with trembling fingers. “‘A great cavalry fight at Brandy Station! General Lee’s telegram. Killed and wounded.’” Her three nieces came close to her. “...

These were the moves of the following two weeks. Six days, from the day of the Bloody Angle to the eighteenth of May, the two armies stayed as they were, save for slight, shifti...